Tag Archives: self-publishing

Publishing

Inspiration Behind My Book and Self-Publishing with Archway Publishing

The following are the words of Lawrence Bodner, author of IBS is BS. Download the Archway Publishing free publishing guide for more information on our supported self-publishing services. 

What key drivers inspired me to write my book?

The first driver must be your burning desire to get your story or message out to the general public. Writing is an art that is usually innate and therefore difficult to cultivate. Writing is usually stimulated by one’s desire to get their story out in order to entertain, educate, influence and or effect social change in the reading public. Continue reading →

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self-publishing tips

From Mock Copy to Self-Published

The following are the words of Donna Fantacone, author of Officer Tony Says, “Be Careful.”  Check out her website here for more info about the author and her book. Download the Archway Publishing free publishing guide for more information on our supported self-publishing services. 

There is nothing more satisfying than holding the completed and published book in your hands.  However, the road to publishing is not an easy one.  It started out that I had a promise or a great interest of a publishing company, one that was in constant contact with me, expressing interest in my idea.  They told me it was a go; I then had to produce the “mock copy” of the book.  The “Mock Up” is an entire work, with a number of complete illustrations in the exact format of the book. Continue reading →

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Writing

Four Ways to Manage Your Writing Schedule

Rumor has it J.K. Rowling worked for five years, building the world of Harry Potter and plotting all seven books before she began writing anything. Jack Kerouac reportedly wrote the draft of On the Road in less than a month. How long will it take you to write or finish your book?

The right answer is up to you.

The one thing you will absolutely need is some kind of plan. It doesn’t matter whether your writing plan is a month long or a year long. The time is less important than the plan.

In the post-Four Ways to Manage Your Writing Schedule, Archway Publishing offers 4 easy tips you can use to help you keep to your writing plan, whatever it is.

Click here to read more >>

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self-publishing tips

Five Tips to Help You Get Your Manuscript Finished

You were inspired. You started out strong, but you’re starting to run out of gas before the finish line. Not to worry! Here are Archway’s five surefire tips to help you complete your manuscript and self-publish it. Put them into practice and you’ll holding your first book signing before you know it.

Calendar1. Set a target date when you want to hold a finished copy

Imagine what it will feel like to hold the first copy of your book. Having that goal in mind can be a key motivator to keep you writing. It might be a specific day like your birthday, wedding anniversary, or a date that coincides with an upcoming event (a speaking engagement, conference or convention).

2. Pay attention to your best time/place for writing productively

Most people are more productive at certain times of day than others. When you write, keep track of the time and location when you’re most effective, and try to set aside that time each day for writing. You might be at your most creative in the morning, for example, or at night after the kids have gone to bed.

3. Set a schedule that will allow you to hit your target date

Now that you have a target date for completion, work backwards to establish a schedule to reach your goal. Let’s say you want to have a book signing in six months, but it will likely take you two months to get your book designed, printed and distributed. You need to submit your manuscript for production four months from now. Do you intend to have it copy edited? If so, you’ll probably need to allow another 60 days, leaving you only two months to get your manuscript ready to go.

4. Make yourself accountable to someone for finishing your book

Designate someone who will hold you accountable for sticking to your schedule. It can be a friend, family member, or someone familiar with the process. For example, publishing consultants at AuthorHouse have served in this role for thousands of authors. A firm but gentle hand can be all the encouragement you need to stay on track.

5. Plan an event to celebrate the book’s completion

For many authors, writing and publishing a book is one of the greatest accomplishments of their lives. Celebrate this feat! Throw a launch party at your home for friends and family. Give out copies of your book to those who’ve inspired you. This is more than a book, it’s part of your legacy. Take a few moments to pat yourself on the back and enjoy your achievement.

Millions of people have an idea for a book, but only the disciplined few earn the title of published author. You can be one of them!

Archway Publishing is always looking for content for its blog. If you’re an Archway Publishing author and would like to share an idea for a guest blog post, please tweet the Archway Publishing Twitter account @ArchwayPub or send us a message at the Archway Publishing Facebook page.

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Social Media

Basic Tips for Setting up an Author Website

Why Do You Need a Website?

In the twenty-first century, it’s almost impossible to succeed as an author without a website. You probably won’t sell many books there, but that’s not why people will come. Readers will come to your website because they’re curious about you as a person after reading your book.

It’s true. Even if you’re sitting there thinking “Oh, no one will ever care about my website,” think of the last time you looked up the author of a book.

Maybe it was a book you just finished and you wanted to know when the next one would be out. Maybe it was because it was really good, and you wanted to know more. Or maybe because the author said something in his or her book to drive you to that website.

Web Sites Work

Web sites give your readers a place to congregate, to get in touch with you, and to get news about you and your books direct from the source. Even if you pay someone to manage a site for you, there are some basic things you should pay attention to.

Learn what some of those things are in the post-Basic Tips for Setting Up an Author Website from Archway Publishing.

Archway Publishing is always looking for content for its blog. If you’re an Archway Publishing author and would like to share an idea for a guest blog post, please tweet the Archway Publishing Twitter account @ArchwayPub or send us a message at the Archway Publishing Facebook page.

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Author Feature

Q&A with Betsy Sleath, Author of “Pelican Island Pharmacy”

This blog is by Archway authors for fellow authors, giving them the opportunity to share stories and perspectives about their individual self-publishing journeys. The following are the words of Betsy Sleath, author of “Pelican Island Pharmacy”.  For more info, visit her blog.  Download the Archway Publishing free publishing guide for more information on our supported self-publishing services. 

What inspired you to write Pelican Island Pharmacy?

I always wanted to write a book set in a pharmacy with a soda fountain that had characters that drew you into the story.  My mom worked in an independent pharmacy with a soda fountain when I was growing up in the small New England town of Durham, Connecticut.  I have always loved the feeling of community and belonging in small town pharmacies.

I go to Carolina Beach, North Carolina to relax and write.  I regularly walk down to the docks where the fishing charters come into with the pelicans following not far behind.  One day I had the idea to create a novel inspired by the town of Carolina Beach with one small change-I added a pharmacy on the canal where the fishing boats pull in.

I decided to make this a positive yet suspenseful story of a single mom leaving a domestic violence situation who finds friendship and support in a small beach town as she rebuilds her life.  Having been a victim of domestic violence and knowing many women who also have been, I wanted to create a compelling yet fun story focusing on an issue that is often difficult to talk about publically.

What research did you do before writing Pelican Island Pharmacy?

I have experience working as a pharmacist which helped when writing the book.  Since many of the scenes in the book occur at a soda fountain, I visited pharmacies that still have soda fountains when traveling.  I also went to the North Carolina Museum of History and the Museum of East Tennessee History to do research. Both have excellent displays of old-fashioned pharmacies with soda fountains.  I spent time in the exhibits imagining Norma behind the soda fountain being sassy to her customers. Hanging out in these places helped the story and characters come alive in my head.

When it came to creating a military romance, it helped that I live in North Carolina where there are several bases and that my partner was active military when I met him.  I have interacted with many of his colleagues and friends across the world.  I have visited several military bases and have even been to two military balls.  These experiences helped me create the character of Tom and the realistic intersection of soldiers visiting North Carolina beaches.  I learned about deep sea fishing by regularly watching the fishermen on the docks and by reading all of the pamphlets they had out at the docks.  Someday I want to go deep sea fishing myself!

What do you hope readers will get from reading Pelican Island Pharmacy?

I want people to enjoy reading the book.  I strove to create a good story about resilience and hope.  I have always been told, “Write a book like the ones you like to read.” So that is what I did.  There are many men and women functioning as single parents who are attempting to rebuild their lives after difficult divorces like Jessie.  As the novel unfolds, readers watch Jessie struggle with learning to love and trust again.  I love the saying “What doesn’t break you makes you stronger.”  I tried to create characters that exhibited strength that resulted from challenging life situations.

Why did you choose to self-publish and why with Archway?

9781480821590_COVER.inddBefore I decided to self-publish, I did send out two query letters to agents.  One agent responded that Pelican Island Pharmacy was not a genre they were focusing on and the other nicely told me that the beginning of the book did not draw her in fast enough.  So I rewrote the beginning of the book to grab the reader’s attention immediately.  I have a very busy job as a professor and division chair at UNC-Chapel Hill so I decided to self-publish because I did not have a lot of time to write query letters.  When I do have free time, I like to focus it on writing.

I chose Archway because they had everything that I needed in the bookseller’s package–cover design, editing, Goodreads giveaways, and worldwide distribution through IndieBound, Barnes and Noble, and all the major book retailers.

What has been the most satisfying thing about publishing Pelican Island Pharmacy?

To be honest, I published under the pen name Betsy Hess Sleath because I thought I better separate my life as a professor from my life as a fiction writer. I was not sure how my university colleagues would react. However, I am amazed at how much those in my university life have enjoyed the book and have encouraged me to write more.  They can’t wait for the sequel. That has been the most satisfying part of writing and publishing Pelican Island Pharmacy. The UNC-Chapel Hill student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, even featured an article about the book.

What tips would you give to aspiring writers?

First, I would join your state or local writing organization.  The North Carolina Writer’s Network has been a huge support in my writing experience.  Second, take as many writing classes as you can.  I took fiction writing classes at UNC-Chapel Hill and learned tons.  In the advanced fiction writing class with Rich Krawiec, I wrote the first eighty pages of Pelican Island Pharmacy.  Rich is an amazing teacher and his encouragement kept me going even after the class was over.  Finally, figure out your writing pace. I strove to write five pages a week because that is all I had time to do each week.  The strategy worked because I finished the book in a year!

Betsy Hess Sleath (Betsy Sleath, Ph.D.) is a distinguished professor and chair of the division of pharmaceutical outcomes and policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  She lives in Chapel Hill and spends as much time as she can on Carolina Beach, North Carolina.  She has published over 127 scientific articles and this is her first work of fiction.  Her second book, Love at the Soda Fountain, which is set in Connecticut in the 1960s, will be completed by December 2016.

Archway Publishing is always looking for content for its blog. If you’re an Archway Publishing author and would like to share an idea for a guest blog post, please tweet the Archway Publishing Twitter account @ArchwayPub or send us a message at the Archway Publishing Facebook page.

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Author Feature

Q&A with Moustafa El-Guindy, Author of “Beyond Love”

This blog is by Archway authors for fellow authors, giving them the opportunity to share stories and perspectives about their individual self-publishing journeys. The following are the words of Dr Moustafa El-Guindy , author of “Beyond Love“. Download the Archway Publishing free publishing guide for more information on our supported self-publishing services. 

  1. What inspired you to write your book?

Many facts and many people inspired the story and it wasn’t all at the same time and they weren’t all linked with each other. Things happen or you meet people and the writer stores it in his memory, then the creativity join the facts, creates others, recovers the characters, crafts others and builds the story that will take you to new places, some of them are happy, others are devastatingly sad, but all of them stretch their bounds in our dreams and fantasies. That was the story with Beyond Love.

  1. You have published books in multiple languages and in a variety of genres, tell what prompted you to write this book.

9781480822832_COVER.inddMy passion always had been writing, romances, short stories, poems, my real passion is writing, but I can’t deny that I love to write long and very emotional stories of love. The romance that gains its strength from its bounds with the reality, then grows with the imagination navigating in a new world build by our creativity and inventiveness, just like a tree its roots go deep in the soil and its branches go everywhere in the sky.

  1. What do you hope readers will get from reading the book?

I wish the reader learns that the great meaning of life is loving. Loving is the bird flying, the music playing and the little child smiling. Love is the river cutting its way through the rocks, the drop of the water touching the sky and coming back to the earth. Love is the dream of living, the pleasure of giving, and the happiness to be able to do that. Love is the hands extending, the smile shining, and the deep desire to have the lover in the heart forever.

  1. Why did you chose to self-publish and why with Archway?

I searched many companies, I was looking for quality. The effort and hard work employed in the production of the manuscript deserve a qualified publisher to produce the book, of course with an affordable price. That is why Archway Publishing.

  1. What has been the most satisfying thing about publishing a book?

Two moments are very special for me. First, when I received the first copy in  my hand. It was like listening to the first scream of  a newborn. The second moment was when someone approached and asked me something about the book. The moment when I felt that somebody shared the same feeling and my passion.

  1. What tips would you give to aspiring writers?

Keep writing, be persistent, go forward, don’t be intimidated by rebuffs or rejections. Keep writing, and publish, don’t keep your writing for yourself. Writing is only alive when you share with others, so the great tips are keep writing and publish.

Archway Publishing is always looking for content for its blog. If you’re an Archway Publishing author and would like to share an idea for a guest blog post, please tweet the Archway Publishing Twitter account @ArchwayPub or send us a message at the Archway Publishing Facebook page.

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Marketing

How to Best Choose Your Book’s Marketing Plan: Part 2

This blog is by Archway authors for fellow authors, giving them the opportunity to share stories and perspectives about their individual self-publishing journeys. The following are the words of Sharoq AlMalki, author of “A Tale of Two Beehives”. For more info about her, check out her website, Twitter and Instagram. Download the Archway Publishing free publishing guide for more information on our supported self-publishing services. 

Read part 1 of How to Best Choose Your Book’s Marketing Plan here.

  1. Segmentation

Decide who your target audience is. We all want the world to read what we’ve written, but the truth is that there will be sections of society who are much more likely to buy your book. Your marketing activity should all be directed at that narrow section.

  1. Get yourself a website

SKU-001061073No matter how much you may not want to go down that route, you need to have a website. And it needs to be your website about you. Some people build it around the name of the book, but that is never going to work as well, be as powerful or engaging, or have the flexibility or longevity of a site about the author. Don’t worry if you have barely learned to use Word. Getting your own site is cheap – or free, and is a straightforward process. Off the shelf ones are good and slick, and if you do need help, there are many companies offering cheap packages to get you online.

There is no need for the site to be too flashy. It is just a door that you want people to go through to learn more about you and your book. Have an “about me” section, anything else that you think is relevant, such as short stories you have written, but don’t fill it up with stuff that is not relevant to your main aim – selling you and your book.  The other thing you need to have on your site is a

  1. Blog

Writing a blog is a great way of engaging with your potential readers. You have done something that many people have done themselves, just as many are struggling to do, and many, many more will never do in their life. As mentioned in number 2, this is a good thing to do while you are still writing your book. If you do it well, and are lucky, you will have a number of customers waiting with bated breath for your book to hit the shelves. One thing you need to be aware of when writing the blog, is that you are showcasing your talents as a writer, so write well.

  1. Email

It may come as a surprise, but email is probably the most powerful marketing tool available to you. Building up your email list is essential. Do this by offering newsletters, free stories, offers on your book etcetc, anything that means people sign up. Then use it wisely. Like your blog, whenever you send anything to someone, you need to make sure you are giving them something of value. It needs to contain something that will entertain them, offer useful insight, or just plainly be of monetary value to them.

  1. ReviewsSharoq-27MAR2016-017

These are essential if you are to get people outside your immediate sphere of influence to buy your book. They are especially important at the beginning of your books life. Aim for between 8 and 12 to ensure your book is easily discoverable on Amazon. There is nothing wrong with getting family and friends to leave a review, and ask those on your email list, or anyone who has received a free book from any competitions you have run to kindly leave a review. The other way, and probably the most beneficial is to go directly to one of Amazon’s reviewers. Find ones that review books in your genre, and email them (their details are provided in their bio), being polite and attaching a copy of your book.

  1. Pricing

This is the trickiest one. How much do you charge people for your book? Here opinions differ wildly, and it is very much down to your own preference. Me, I feel that when buying a book, it is as much an investment of my time, as it is of my finances. If I find a book I like the look of, whether it’s 99p, or 2.99 isn’t going to make much difference to my decision to buy it. It is very easy to think that simply by reducing the price it will increase your sales. In reality that probably isn’t going to be the case, and if you have done everything else well, the price should and does, almost become an irrelevance.

Archway Publishing is always looking for content for its blog. If you’re an Archway Publishing author and would like to share an idea for a guest blog post, please tweet the Archway Publishing Twitter account @ArchwayPub or send us a message at theArchway Publishing Facebook page.

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Marketing

How to Best Choose Your Book’s Marketing Plan: Part 1

This blog is by Archway authors for fellow authors, giving them the opportunity to share stories and perspectives about their individual self-publishing journeys. The following are the words of Sharoq AlMalki, author of “A Tale of Two Beehives”. For more info about her, check out her website, Twitter and Instagram. Download the Archway Publishing free publishing guide for more information on our supported self-publishing services. 

So, you’ve finally finished that book that’s been inside you all those years. The sacrifices you’ve made; the hours spent staring at the blinking cursor and the mocking empty white page; the endless rewrites and edits – have all been worth it. You’ve finished. The End. Unfortunately for the vast majority of writers, that is where the real work begins. Because, unless the only people you want to read your magnum opus are your long suffering partner and parents, you need to get it out there into the big wide world.

SKU-001061073 This is the bit where a lot of people come unstuck. They are writers, not marketers or PR professionals. This isn’t why they picked up that pen or started banging away on that keyboard all those weeks, months and years ago. At first it can appear to be a minefield, and you are going to have to quickly learn new skills, embrace new techniques and more than likely spend a lot of time outside your comfort zone.But there is help out there.

The methods and techniques below are predominantly designed for those going down the self-publishing route. However even those who have been fortunate enough to get a publisher on board, the reality is that in today’s publishing world the majority of the effort still has to be undertaken by the author themselves, albeit from a considerably better position.

The first thing that will strike you – well it certainly did me – when you start to dip your toe into the world of promoting your book is just how many people out there who have done the exact same thing. Hidden away in your dark room, bleary eyed from the artificial light and caffeine, it is easy to think that you are, maybe not unique, but certainly in a small club of like-minded individuals pouring your heart, soul and very being into your book, for an eagerly waiting public, desperate to devour your words.

Sadly this isn’t the case. The fact that now everyone has a computer, and that it has never been easier to get your book published is very much a double edged sword for the writer. Yes it makes the process so much easier, with the route to the potentially massive marketplaces such as Amazon relatively simple – and free. But that comes with the obvious drawback. The world and his wife (and very often his pet cat too) have gone down that route as well. Suddenly it becomes a case of those staples of every marketing textbook – differentiation and promotion. And that, my friends is where the problems begin. But rest assured here are the best techniques for you to market your book.

  1. It’s not all about the book

Though the ultimate aim is to get as many people to see and then buy your book as possible, you need to start thinking of yourself as a marketable product too. This is easier for some people than others, but more often than not it is easier for people to buy into us and who we are than a random book. So you need to create a presence for yourself. Don’t forget, this is going to be a presence that you are going to have to maintain for the foreseeable future. Plus, once things are on the internet it is very hard for them not to be on the internet. So, despite the temptation to make yourself out to be some uber smart, buzzy, personality with your finger on every pulse and trend out there, resist it. Be yourself. It will be much easier to maintain, and at the end of the day, you’ve finished a book – you have things to say, you have achieved something millions couldn’t. You have a story to tell, and not just the one in your latest (soon to be!) blockbuster.Sharoq-27MAR2016-017

  1. Start before the end

You can never start too early to build up your profile, and raise the awareness of this fresh new author on the block and their book. It can often take a while to go from zero presence to one where you can do some damage, so if you are able to start while writing your book, you will be in position to go when you complete the manuscript.

You can even use your progress in your book as a method to get followers and their attention. Problems you are facing and how you overcome them are something that are common among writers, and everyone is always keen to know how others cope with those issues.

You could even run competitions or polls on how your novel should progress, or on the names of characters etc. Any way to get people to engage is a massive plus point.

 

Read Part 2 of this blog here>>>

 

Archway Publishing is always looking for content for its blog. If you’re an Archway Publishing author and would like to share an idea for a guest blog post, please tweet the Archway Publishing Twitter account @ArchwayPub or send us a message at the Archway Publishing Facebook page.

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Author Feature

Self-Publishing My Children’s Book

From time to time, Archway Publishing turns over its blog to its authors, giving them the opportunity to share stories and perspectives about their individual self-publishing journeys. The following are the words of Caryn Umetsu, author of “Little Liar”. Download the Archway Publishing free publishing guide for more information on our supported self-publishing services.

my mom sis and II was 4-years-old when I left my birth country of Japan, my parents divorced and that’s how I came to live with my new father in Hawaii. My mom often played a song about a little blue-eyed blond doll made of celluloid who was leaving America to go to Japan.  The doll was homesick and wondered if she would make friends. By the tone of the latter half of the song, we know that although she left her home country, she made fast friends in her new country. That is how I felt, I was sad for the divorce but thankful for my new life and the new me. I renamed myself Caryn which means “one of the seven stars of the constellation Orion.”

I don’t remember much of Japan but I do remember saying good bye to my aunt and uncle as we pulled out of the train station.  Nothing is more romantic and forlorn, the way a train leaves ever so slowly then faster and faster leaving behind your loved ones who grow smaller and smaller like figurines in a dollhouse. My aunt and uncle gave me a book to remember them by, a Chinese folktale called “The Magic Brush”.

For most of my life, books have always played a significant role in shaping who I am. First grade was the first time that I ever set foot in school.  I didn’t know how to speak, read, or write English in my new country; my mom said I cried every day for two weeks. My dad was the one who patiently sat with me under the lamp on the edge of the couch on a nightly basis to read with me “A Pig Can Jig.”

julian and nicholasEvery Saturday, my dad took my sister and I to the library where we could borrow as many books as we wanted, we felt like Hansel and Gretel at the Gingerbread House.  In no time, I was out of the ELL class and devouring whatever I could get my hands on, I moved beyond the picture books to the chapter books.  I moved up quickly in reading level from the very bottom to the very top; my teachers were amazed and so proud of me.  Later in college years, my sister and I said that we would become sister writers, I would be Emily and she would be Charlotte Bronte.

My latest children’s book “Little Liar” is based on my oldest son “Bobby”. When he was four and my middle son “Mitch” was two, we wrote the “Little Liar” book together and after many nights, we finally finished and stapled it together with pride. Although we went to the library twice a week, that was their favorite book. Even with all the dinosaur and construction books we borrowed and reborrowed, it continued to be their favorite bedtime story. I still have the purple tattered and torn copy of the original  book which I used to create “Little Liar.”

The most powerful tool about self-publishing that I have come to find out is that we are able to, as authors, be in full command of how the book turns out. For me, the illustrations were truly important. I liked the cartoonish style of illustrating, similar to a “Peanuts” comic book. It was beyond words, the feeling that we three experienced, bringing our once beloved and nearly forgotten book that we had created so long ago when I was a housewife, to life.  “Bobby” and “Mitch” are now 23 and 21, a fireman and a marine. My youngest son who is introduced on the last page of the book is 14.3 sons

I have so many books that I am currently working on and I hope to continue publishing.  It has been so amazing working with Archway Publishing. I feel that every day brings me closer to my dream. Just like Marie Lelay  in the movie “Hereafter,” I will one day become an author proudly sitting at a book signing.

Thank you Archway, I believe what you do is phenomenal. Check out my new website carynyumetsu.com. I am also making a plushie of Bobby by Budsies and another Bobby doll by Ginta from ParisJavaDoll from Etsy. What I have in mind is that eventually my book will be popular enough and in demand so I can order many plushies to sell with my book.  I am also preparing for a book launch with SCBWI. If you want to email me, I am at carynyayoi@yahoo.com. I am a high school 11th grade English teacher so I have summers and many holidays off to work on my books. Let’s network and help each other make our dreams a reality. I would love to hear and learn from you!

Archway Publishing is always looking for content for its blog. If you’re an Archway Publishing author and would like to share an idea for a guest blog post, please tweet the Archway Publishing Twitter account @ArchwayPub and Like the Archway Publishing Facebook page.

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