Author Feature

Meet Max!: The Writing Process

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 Elizabeth Rosso, author of “Meet Max”. Download the Archway Publishing free publishing guide for more information on our supported self-publishing services.

“Will you be my baby’s godmother?” That’s the question that I was asked twice in one year, and which ultimately brought Max to life – but naturally, it wasn’t quite that simple! Of course I said yes, but that led to more internal questions: what would our relationships be like? How would I interact with these children, and what could I offer by way of example? Reading, of course! And as I was flooded with memories of all my favorite childhood books, it occurred to me that maybe I could make up a few stories of my own. But about what?

I don’t think of myself as a particularly creative person. Ask me to make up a story and suddenly I don’t have any ideas. My mom always told me to write about what I know, though. So, what did I know? Well, I certainly told enough people about all the things my dogs got into over the years. What if I wrote about that? Where would I start? The beginning seemed like a pretty good choice, so I sat down to brainstorm ideas for a story about a woman who gets a puppy… and Meet Max! was born.

Actually beginning the writing process was a little intimidating, but I decided to draw on my experience writing other things – mostly papers for various classes in school, and memos for work. One of the most practical lessons I learned from those tasks was simply to put your ideas on paper – the writing style, word choice, organization, etc. aren’t important at first. Just get everything down on paper so you don’t lose your ideas, and then you can edit later.

I did just that with Max: every little detail about how someone might choose a puppy and take him home went into writing. Needless to say, that first version was not exactly what you’d be looking for in a children’s book! But my ideas were preserved, and as I began to shape them into a manuscript, other ideas came to mind – so many that I realized there might be a whole series of stories I could write about Max.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves! How did I shape those initial ideas into a manuscript, anyway? Stay tuned to find out!

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.

Author Feature

The Secrets of My Life: Vintner, Prisoner, Soldier, Spy by Peter Sichel

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 Peter M. F. Sichel, author of “The Secrets of My Life: Vintner, Prisoner, Soldier, Spy.” Download the Archway Publishing free publishing guide for more information on our supported self-publishing services.

I have recently self-published with Archway, my memoirs “THE SECRETS OF MY LIFE, Vintner, Prisoner, Soldier, Spy.” It is my memoir of a long life. I was born as a German Jew in 1922 in Germany, where my family had lived at least since the 17th century. We were successful wine merchants, as well as exporters and importers of wine, with branches in Bordeaux, London and New York. I watched the takeover of the Nazis, and the eventual flight of my parents, while I was already in school in England. We all moved to Bordeaux, where the French interned us as enemy aliens at the beginning of WWII. We finally escaped France in 1941 and moved to New York. I spent 17 years in American Intelligence, first with the OSS and then with the CIA, the last few years as a senior official. I resigned in 1960 and joined the family wine business, making BLUE NUN one of the first big international brands of wine. I wrote my memoirs initially for my children, but realized that the story of my life might be interesting to a larger audience. My life reads like a Bildungsroman.

After I was not able to find a publisher, I decided to self-publish. I did quite a bit of research, contacting four publishers who specialized in handling self-published books. I decided to use Archway, because their offerings made more sense to me than the other publishers, enabling me to choose from a menu the type of service I believed I needed. The fact that Archway was owned by a major publishing house also helped me to select them.

My experience with Archway has been first class. Their method of operation has one person coordinate all the services as they are needed. At the same time the person offering the service can communicate directly with the author. The handling was efficient, timely and courteous, through the entire process, which included two editorial reviews, which were needed and excellent. It also included design of print face and book cover, and the many small details needed to bring a book to market. Now that it is in the market, I am continuing to avail myself of the promotional and marketing expertise Archway offers and am equally satisfied with the service I now get, again having one goal keeper who coordinates each detail.

Author Feature

Q&A with Nigel Leader, Author of Miami Stretch

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 Nigel Leader, author of “Miami Stretch”. Download the Archway Publishing free publishing guide for more information on our supported self-publishing services.

1. Tell us a little bit about your book. What inspired you to write it?

My book is basically about my entire life from the day I was born, up until present time which was actually too long for one single book so I write the entire story in a two volume series. Miami Stretch covers the very interesting interactions that I have had over my more than two decade career experiences as a limousine chauffeur in South Florida with the four different limousine companies that I have worked for in that two decade expanse of time. I believe the many life stories that I share in my book are very interesting and worthy of telling as well as somewhat unbelievable. I am not a fiction writer however, my imagination is not that good although my memory is.

My inspiration to write this book only came during the time of both during, as well as after my very bitter divorce and at a time when I could not afford an attorney to draw up a custody agreement for my three minor children. The family court had not issued a child custody agreement with the forced divorce decree and had also granted my ex-wife a baseless civil (non-criminal) restraining order. With these two court orders in place, I went about a year and a half without spending any time with my three children and only seeing them during the short time before they got on their school bus after school. During this time I spent the majority of my time and energy writing Miami Stretch because I knew I had to do something better for them as I had absolutely no intention of ever raising them like this when I had decided to get married some eleven years earlier. My stories and this book would be what I eventually figured out would give me the best shot for them to potentially have a better life with me fully involved in their day to day growth.

2. What is the one message you would like to convey to your readers?

The one message that I would like to convey to readers is that ….God is always in control and will always have your best interest at heart if only you acknowledge him and have faith that he can and will do such great things for you. The stories that I share in Miami Stretch, time and time again prove that things are not over when you think they are. God has come through for me on multiple occasions and long after I thought the story was over. I am certainly glad that I have such a great memory to recall my life stories and how God had eventually come through for me and now I can certainly use those stories as a testimony…both the good and the bad.

3. What are 5 things you’ve learned about self-publishing?

1) You have the freedom to say what you want. I believe in the power of free speech and self-publishing is the ultimate form of that expression without having a publisher with “special interests” breathing down your neck.

2) It’s really not that expensive. Looking back, for what I got out of that little investment to self-publish…the payoff is tenfold when I can actually say that I am now a published author! I also now have the business cards to prove it as well as my book being available to be purchased literally worldwide! Well worth it!!

3) It is a very easy process with everything being done from my laptop and my WiFi connection. No running around to downtown offices to do meetings and signings and the business end of book selling as I thought it would be. That freedom alone to me makes it all worth it.

4) Everything is done at your pace…no high pressure anything from self-publishing companies. I had a near two month delay in payment due to my financial situation and I never once heard anything about it except for “let us know when you have the remainder of the funds available.” I certainly thought I would have eventually received a chewing out for not fulfilling the signed contract in a timely manner but that never came and the book was finally released.

5) I have heard other well known authors praise the self-publishing route over the traditional publishing route and I have also heard one best selling author as she had sworn to always take the self publishing route simply because she has had more control in the putting out “her own product” and the simplicity of the self published pay scale versus the pay scale of a full publishing house. Miami Stretch has only recently been released and I am yet to receive pay from the proceeds but I soon hope that I can say the same thing.

4. What do you love most about self-publishing and would you recommend it to other authors?

What I love most about self-publishing is definitely the freedom that it brings, from freedom of speech, to freedom of time, and freedom of expression and choices in your very own product that you yourself are pushing out to the public. Your product is your product…every word, picture, or comma. I can honestly say that with the final release of Miami Stretch. I would highly recommend self-publishing to anyone who has a voice and wants to use that voice to ultimately exercise and express their God given freedoms.

5. What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

My advice to other potential authors would be to drop the excuses. Since my friends and family only recently found out about my writing skills (I mostly kept it a secret right up to the point of the actual book release) I have heard on numerous occasions… “I always wanted to write a book …BUT…” If you have to put a “but” behind that sentence you are not ready. It takes a lot of work and a lot of time to write consistently (it took me three years to get out volume one) so if there are any excuses as to why you can’t write. Focus first on finishing up the “but” so you can commit to pushing out your final product. Your readers will appreciate the time you have spent to put your heart and soul into your writing and making reading your book an extreme pleasure and joy…they will surely know the difference.

Publishing Expert Tips

People DO Judge Books By Their Covers…

Mom told us not to, but we do it, because…science!
Check out the FREE Archway Publishing webinar “Four Tips to a Killer Book Cover Design,” to help draw readers to your book.

By Kevin A. Gray

Mom always insisted “don’t judge a book by its cover.” In doing so, we might miss on meeting some great people, embarking on new adventures, or even worse, reading some great books. Now we’re not one to question mom (that never ends well), but the fact is people DO judge books by their covers.

The good news is, if you’re in the process of self-publishing a book, Archway Publishing has some free help for you when it comes to designing your book cover. More on that later.

Simon and Schuster is letting fans submit cover ideas for its upcoming "T-Swift" fan book. We knew including the photo from the contest page would help this post get more views, because people are visual creatures.

Simon & Schuster is letting fans submit cover ideas for its upcoming Taylor Swift fan book.
We think it’s a cool idea, and we knew including the contest’s promotion picture would drive more views to this post. Why? Because we’re all visual people and we all think “T-Swif”t is awesome.

First, let’s talk science. The smart people at Psychology Today, have written extensively about the psychology of “judging a book by it cover” — in both the metaphorical and literal sense. One easy read for us laymen is this great column, “Judging a Book By Its Cover: How wrappers affect our expectations about lies inside them,” by Dr. Alex Lickerman.

In it, Dr. Lickerman writes that we’re predominantly visual creatures, because the visual area — at the back of our brains — comprises 30 percent of our brain’s cortex. That sounds pretty important, even to those of us who aren’t brain scientists. In short, despite mom’s admonitions, we WILL judge people, products, and (most importantly for our purposes) books by their appearance. Because that’s how are brains are wired.

So, what does this mean for authors?

Generally speaking, traditionally published authors will have some input on their covers; but ultimately, the publisher who owns the right to the author’s work has the final say. For these authors, that means letting go and allowing others to create the tangible visual manifestation of the authors’ personal vision. For creative folks, like authors, that’s got to be tough.

Self-published authors, including those who work with publishing services providers, like Archway Publishing, can have as little or as much input in their covers as they so choose. That’s a lot of pressure, especially if an author isn’t a “design person.” But it can ultimately be a fulfilling and exhilarating creative process (and successful, if you listen to input of the cover experts

Jason Heuer, associate art director at Simon & Schuster, laid out 4 Keys to a Killer Book Cover Design in a free webinar hosted by Archway. We think it’s the best 33 minutes you’ll spend this week, especially if you’re writing a book, considering writing a book, like books or just want to learn more about “killer design” (we assume that’s an industry term).

Visit http://tinyurl.com/Archway-Publishing-Heuer, enter your email address, and download the webinar. Once you’ve listened to it, come back here and let us know in the comments what you learned from Jason. We look forward to having a conversation.

If you’d like to learn more about Archway Publishing supported self-publishing services, grab a copy of the free Archway Publishing publishing guide.

– AWP –

Author Feature, Marketing

Discovering My Marketing Plan while Marketing

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 Tsara Shelton, author of “Spinning in Circles and Learning from Myself.” Tsara is a writer of musings, sipper of coffee, and addict of any story. Having learned life exploring the edges of society she finds her footing in the world through storytelling—as a mom, wife, daughter and citizen. She blogs regularly at Autism Answers with Tsara Shelton. For more about Tsara and her book, visit her on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Download the Archway Publishing free publishing guide for more information on our supported self-publishing services.

Ever since I was a little girl I’ve wanted to write books. When I was young I wrote often and diversely, basking in the compliments and impressed smiles of the grownups. But soon those compliments came with suggestions and constructive feedback, and I shrunk away. I was afraid of the work. No, I was afraid of doing the work only to discover that I wasn’t as talented as I’d led everyone to believe. I put myself on hold; not quite giving up, but not quite ready to do the work either.

Many years later as the mom of four sons who were searching for manhood, I knew I couldn’t keep telling my talented boys not to give up on themselves when I so obviously (and so easily!)had considered giving up on myself. So, I started writing and publishing and proving to myself that I could do the work.

Then, with my husband insisting that my dream coming true would also be his dream coming true, I put together a book of stories that slowly grew up and published with Archway Publishing. In this way I am now showing my sons, and myself, what it looks like to do the work and to value our dreams.

9781480815810_COVER.indd Thus, Spinning in Circles and Learning from Myself: A Collection of Stories that Slowly Grow Up, the beautiful book with the beautiful cover designed by the beautiful people at Archway, was born!

The next step was to show my sons and myself what it looks like to back up those dreams by introducing the stories to the wide, wide world through marketing.

I had two things going for me in this regard. One, my mom is an international mental health expert and I’ve been her personal assistant for a few years. I’ve eagerly taken on the job of sharing her projects (books, shows, inspirational comedy and music, international docu-series) with the media as well as with parents and professionals in the world of mental health. Two, I published through Archway which means I had a team of supportive, knowledgeable, and available others to give me a hand.

I had one (big) thing going against me. A fear of being self-centered and annoying. Sure, I can email busy producers and editors regarding my mom’s stuff because I see and know and have witnessed over and over again its immense value. But my stuff? My book? My words and ideas? Scary stuff, man!

boys and me pic However, I love my book and I love my ideas and I love learning who I am through marketing. With the support of Archway (coaches and consultants who call to check on me just the right amount, keeping me going without applying unnecessary pressure) and the watchful eyes of my sons (who are young men searching for their own voices and marketing tools) I’ve stepped outside of my comfort zone, just enough to discover my marketing comfort zone.

I’ve done podcast interviews, written guest blogs, and discovered book reviewers who adored my accessibility and (thank goodness!) my book. I’ve answered questions about myself as a writer for author interviews, and have been planning an event for families with autism, as well as another event for teens who want to write in order to discover their voice.

Thanks to the support and ideas from Archway, who offer creative marketing tips that fit me and my book, along with author friends and other groups I’ve discovered while on my marketing quest, I’ve grown as a writer. I’ve grown, also, as a mom with ideas for her sons.

I knew that marketing my book, Spinning in Circles and Learning from Myself: A Collection of Stories that Slowly Grow Up, would help me figure out how I was most comfortable marketing myself, and I even suspected it would help me grow as a person.

I was given marketing strategies and ideas by the knowledgeable folks at Archway Publishing, and I started trying the ones that matched me most – which meant discovering what those were.

I discovered my marketing plan while marketing.

I also discovered more of myself.

-AWP-

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 us @ArchwayPub and Like the Archway Publishing Facebook page.

Social Media

Best Practices for Authors on Facebook

If you have already published your book or are getting ready to publish your first one, it is never too late to start a Facebook page for yourself or your book. Your Facebook page is an essential part of your marketing took kit.

Getting Started:

Create a Facebook Page by going to facebook.com/pages/create
Select “Create Page”
Choose a category (Author or Book) under Entertainment
Name your page facebook.com/username
Publish your page

It’s that simple! Lets move on to customizing your page.

Basic steps:

Add a profile photo of you or your book
Complete the “about” section—tell your readers who you are!
Upload a cover photo

Now that that’s done, lets think of what we can post on the page.

Posting on Facebook

Be Authentic- Share your story with everyone, you are an author after all. Post book trailers, excerpts and teaser quotes from your book to garner attention.
Mix It Up- Post a mix of content from photos and videos to quotes and even related articles.
Engage Your Audience – Do a little Q&A with your readers. We’ve included directions on how to do a Facebook Q&A below. If you really want to get involved, see if there are some readers who want to start a book club and send them a short reading guide with discussion questions about the book.
Optimize and Measure- Facebook allows you to see how your posts are doing with the pages insights tool. See how many people your post reached, how many clicked on a link, and so much more! This way, you can concentrate on posting content more people are interested in.
Ask for Reviews – Facebook allows readers to leave reviews of your book on your page for others to read. Suggest to your readers to leave a review of your book. Remember to tell them not to reveal any spoilers!

If you want to do a Facebook Q&A with your audience, here is a helpful guide to get you started.

Facebook Q&As

Post a status update (preferably with a photo of you) a day or two in advance saying, “I will be hosting a Facebook Q&A on X day at X time” (remember to specify time zone)
On the day of the Q&A, post a picture of yourself that you are ready to answer questions with a picture of yourself at your laptop, signing books, etc.
It is a live, threaded, ranked comments feature. If you like (or an admin of your page “likes”) a question before you answer it it will pop to the top.
You can delete any spammy or irrelevant comments
Answer as many/as few/whichever questions you want from the comfort of your home or office (or while you’re on a book tour)

We hope this Facebook page start-up guide has been helpful for you. If you have questions, let us know and we will try to help you out!

-AWP-

Author Feature

Marcee Corn: My Book Marketing Journey

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 Marcee Corn; who along with her sister, Susan McCulloch, co-authored “Unclaimed Baggage,” shares the lessons she learned from their book marketing tour through the southeastern United States. Download the Archway Publishing free publishing guide for more information on our supported self-publishing services.

You’ve written a book. It was hard work, but you are done – you should be proud. You have also self-published your book – better still. So, what’s next? The really, really hard work is next. You want to sell that book that you worked so hard on, don’t you? Of course you do. Your hardest step of all is about to start….BOOK MARKETING.

It took us six years to write our book, “Unclaimed Baggage.” We know, that is a long time. We wrote about our Mother’s journey through

Marcee Corn utlizes vintage props to add color to her speaking engagements.

As part of her book marketing strategy, Marcee Corn utilizes vintage props to add color to her speaking engagements.

Alzheimer’s Disease, mainly for our children. We were elated when it was finally done. We self published our book through Archway Publishing and ordered the smallest amount of books that we could to give to our children and family for Christmas presents.

Archway shared their advice with us on promoting our work. We weren’t even sure that we were interested in active book marketing since our goal was to write our story, our mother’s story, for our children. With their encouragement, we decided to go forward. Little did we know what we were about to embark on. Archway was very supportive and generous with their advice as we listened closely. In the end, we decided to do our own promotions and book marketing and ordered more books and business cards.

Archway’s first book marketing suggestion was the easiest part, our book website. Then, we added a book page and an author page on Facebook. Finally, we added a Twitter account. We also began blogging. All of these book marketing strategies take a lot of time. We have found social media to be very important for promotion as well as a great place to interact with other authors and readers.

But book marketing doesn’t end there.

A few months after our book was released we set out on our first book marketing promotional tour. We loaded up the trunk of our car with boxes of books and hit the road. We covered much of the southeastern US, zigzagging across each state from North Carolina to Texas and back to Florida. It was exhausting.

“We feel strongly that these unique stories should be written down, if not for anyone else, for their children and grandchildren.” – Marcee Corn

We made calls beforehand and set up several meetings and book signings in advance, but, we also visited many places, on a whim, trying not to wear our feelings on our sleeves as we stepped out of our comfort zone. We visited many small bookstores, hospital gift shops, church bookstores, Alzheimer’s organizations and gift shops telling our story and giving away many books in hopes of getting orders. Over the course of two weeks, we consigned some books and sold some. We left our business cards every place we went and hoped for the best!

We funded the entire trip ourselves, which can get expensive, but found, as most authors find, in the end we were very good at promoting our own work.

When we returned home two weeks later, we had book orders waiting for us and were delighted with the positive interest in our book. We received calls for several speaking engagements and book signings for the weeks to come. We were delighted and ordered more books. We are lucky because our book has a platform, Alzheimer’s disease. Many families are being affected by this terrible disease across the country.

This summer we came up with a theme for our summer speaking events. We call them, “Your Story Matters.” We had a sign made and took photos of our stage set up to help in promotions, and use vintage steamer trunks and suitcases (baggage) for our display. This summer we are promoting our book – our story; but we are also reminding our audience that each of them has a unique story to tell as well.

Susan McCulloch, co-author of “Unclaimed Baggage.”

We feel strongly that these unique stories should be written down, if not for anyone else, for their children andgrandchildren. We have four events scheduled for the next few months. We are thrilled.

Telling our story is our favorite thing we do. Meeting the readers at our events is delightful and they always have lots of questions for us. I can’t believe I am saying this, but promoting our book is quickly coming in as a strong second priority.

We still have lots to learn about promotions and marketing, and we have lots of ideas of things we still want to try in the future. But most importantly, we are having fun! AND we are selling books. What more could any author want; except perhaps, to write a second book?

For more information visit www.UnclaimedBaggageTheBook.com and Like Unclaimed Baggage on Facebook. Follow Marcee Corn on Twitter @MarceeCorn.

Publishing Expert Tips

Choosing a Book Title

WEDS. WISDOM FROM THE ARCHWAY PUBLISHING TEAM

Think of choosing a book title like creating an elevator speech. It’s a brief pitch to customers about the value of your book.

Sometimes choosing a book title is easy. Some authors know the perfect title for their work before they even start writing their books. Others spend years and years poring over their novel or documenting their carefully-compiled research only to reach the end have no idea what to name their literary offspring. It may seem like choosing the perfect title is the easiest part of the writing and publishing process. Turns out that’s not always true.

As a team who’s collectively worked on thousands of self-published titles, we’ve seen all kinds of title for all types of books. There are those that the author has over thought. Those that don’t focus on their audience. Those that are just too indecisive.

If you’ve had an idea from the beginning of the work, use it! Don’t over-think it! Use the title was in your mind before you began the writing process, the title you’ve been thinking about has been a driving force throughout the entire process. Or take the key topics from your book and transform it for a working title to the final title. Make sure it is clear and concise.

Would “War and Peace” have reached the legendary literary status with the title “War, What Is It Good For?”

Seinfeld-driven levity aside, the title is the first piece of building your book’s platform. Consider:

Does your title help increase the brand that you are trying to create with your book?
When people hear the title, does it stick with them?
What keywords would someone search for in order to find your book?
Is the title clear and concise or would it confuse potential readers?
Is the title too long and “clunky” or is it catchy and relevant to your audience?
Is your title unique?

Still can’t decide on a title? Why not ask your potential readers?

Sometimes self-published authors take to social media posting their ideas on Twitter or Facebook, asking their audience for feedback. We’ve seen this method work for a number of Archway Publishing authors, after all, who knows what your target audience wants to hear more? It’s a quick easy way to do market research.

Need more guidance? Keith Ogorek offers up seven things authors need to consider when choosing a book title on the Indie Book Writers blog. Whatever path you take; do your book justice and give careful consideration to finalizing your book’s title. After all “War What is it Good For?” might have sunk Tolstoy’s career…

-AWP-

Archway Publishing Writer's Blog

Some sort of nice line about how Archway is great.

Tag Archives: book marketing

Meet Max!: The Writing Process

The Secrets of My Life: Vintner, Prisoner, Soldier, Spy by Peter Sichel

Q&A with Nigel Leader, Author of Miami Stretch

People DO Judge Books By Their Covers…

Discovering My Marketing Plan while Marketing

Marcee Corn: My Book Marketing Journey

Choosing a Book Title