I'm Having a Book for Launch!

It's 6:59 pm on a Wednesday evening and asside from getting married and being present for the birth of my four children, I'm about to do the biggest thing in my life: an honest-to-goodness book launch, starting with a 45-day blog tour. After spending over three months preparing for April 1st, I am one day away from sharing my labor of love with tens of thousands of book blog followers and lovers of supernatural, horror, paranormal, romance thrillers. For a regular guy like me, that's frickin' scary!


The process started two years ago when the concept for REUNION flooded into my head. Like most book ideas, they seem to come out of nowhere. A year later, I had a rough draft, but was advised by an editor to put the book away for a while because I didn't write it according to the common rules of fiction.I did. 


Over the next year, I wrote my follow up thriller, Act of Vengeance (coming late 2011). When I turned my attention back to REUNION, I was also advised to focus on one protagonist, and that he mustn't be a wimp.


I couldn't do that.


REUNION is not about one brilliant superhero; it's about the suffering and recovery of a group of flawed and changed individuals - survivors. This book is not a cliched paranormal romance, there are no vampires, there are no werewolves,  no zombies and it overlaps genre boundries as if they didn't exist. But that's okay. I had to tell the story as it played out in my mind, rules or no rules.


That was work. Writing, in my opinion, however, is enjoyable work. Crafting and molding the rough story into a fully developed novel is the best part. But I didn't want this book to get stuck in literary mud, read only by surfing internet shoppers. It needed to be read and I needed to do something different with REUNION, because when I launched my first novel, I had no idea what I was doing. I still don't have it all down, but I stepped out there and worked the blogosphere and put a tour together so I could share this story with as many readers as my life could practically allow. It's not a 90-day, shoot-me-when-I'm-done Scott Nicholson Blog tour, but it is a fairly modest blog tour for a rookie. If you want to know the details about how I put it together, you can get the skinny at IndieHorror.org. I wrote a guest blog there today outlining each step. I will also write a post-tour article as a follow up sometime in late May, after I take a break with my family.


I still have several guest blogs to write, and I imagine I'll spend way too many hours obsessing over book sales the next thirty days or so, but I kind of think that that's pretty normal. I'll spend some time each day reading the blog comments and answering questions, trying not to forget what day it is, because I have to do all this while working my regular job. But WHO CARES! This is such a cool experience. I really don't mind losing sleep for the next month. I want to savor the excitement, taste the fear, and enjoy knowing that at least a few people enjoyed my work.


I think new authors believe that all you have to do is write a book, get feedback from family and friends and if everyone likes it, then it's ready to be published. In the words of Dwight Schrute from The Office...False! Getting your book uploaded into the Kindle DTP is easy. Making your book the very best it can be and creating a sturdy platform, a launching pad if you will, takes a lot of work. In my case, it took two years. But what are the results? I don't know. Time will tell. So far, REUNION has not been reviewed by any of my family members or friends, and it's getting great reviews. 


I'm nervous about reviews, but more than anything, and I mean this wholeheartedly, I want this book to impact the reader in a way that other books don't. My greatest ambition for REUNION is not book sales, but that the reader walks away from my book, shaking their head, wondering why they can't seem to forget the message, the story and the characters. Be sure to follow the tour and try to win a FREE Kindle or one of two signed copies from my Goodreads giveaway that starts on April 1st!



You can get REUNION now at most online retailers, but I'd love it if you'd wait until April 15th...TAX DAY. Why? Because I'd like to skyrocket REUNION up the Amazon ranking system to take advantage of Amazon's exposure algorithms. BOOM!

Bullying Needs to Stop.

When kids are tormented by a bully, their life can change fast. Many smart, happy, family centered kids  take a terrible turn because they are bullied to the point that they are afraid to talk about it. Sometimes they feel so alone and hopeless that they take their own life. It's sad and it's infuriating. Here are a few words about bullying from Dr. Phil. I hope you enjoy these clips and I hope you comment, sharing your experiences.

REUNION - my supernatural thriller is not just about school shootings. It's about a lot of issues including bullying. I am passionately opposed to bullying and have trained my 4 children that under no circumstance will I tolerate any level of that kind of behavior. They know that it is hurtful, and understand the damage it can cause to one's spirit. I hope you have talked with your kids or grandkids about bullying. If you want to watch the pain of this kind of behavior unravel in real time I'd suggest reading REUNION. And watch these videos. They are very informative.

Bullies come in all shapes and sizes from elementary students to parents to bosses to co-workers. The thing is, we all have our issues, but we need to work them out ourselves and stop taking our stress out on those around us. Then, we need to teach our children to respect and care about others.

I've only been in one fight in my entire life, with the exception of my brothers and friends, and that fight was with a bully. He made repeated threats to me and my brother. One day, in 1985, he stepped on my white jeans with dirty shoes and that was it. I had had enough. I let him know that I wasn't going to take his crap any more and I proceeded to get my butt kicked. Sure I had a black eye the next day, but he never bullied me again.

I don't tell you that because I was super brave or that I think fighting is the solution. I tell you that story, because I know how scary it is to have someone pushing me around and threatening me. I took that experience into writing Reunion and I hope it makes
a difference, somehow encouraging you to be aware and averse to Bullying at home at school and at work. BOOM!

What's your story? Do you have a bullying experience you'd like to share?

Live from Best Buy!

Hello writers and readers,
I'm here at Best Buy writing today's post because I can.

I've done a lot of things in my life and most of those things required me to be present whenever I was actually doing the task.  For example, when I was a kid, I couldn't deliver the newspaper while shopping at Kmart, or sweep the shop floor while eating at The Tasty Freeze. But writing...now that's a different story. I can write anywhere.

I can write while driving. I can write from my iPhone. I can write at home. I can write at Starbucks. I can write anywhere now and it is amazingly freeing! I'm no longer tied down to a PC or a typewriter - although  I haven't used one of those for a long long time. The point is, writing has got to be the best job in the whole world. You can work at your own pace, and set your own hours, and live anywhere you want. There might be a few other occupations that compare, such as day trading, or internet marketing, but those jobs are all about the money and I'm not into that. I love to create...and I'm most creative when and where I'm inspired.

So here I am, bent over the display table, writing a blog post, inspiring you to take advantage of the technology available to you, reminding you that you can be so much more efficient, thanks to Microsoft and Apple computers.

I'd like to take the concept further by telling you some of my favorite places to write. Here they are....

• At Home.
• At Starbucks
• At Panera Bread
• At work.
• At Meme's House (Mother-in-law)
• In the car.
• At the cabin in Tennessee
• On the airplane
• On the back porch

That's all for now. The sales reps are giving me the evil eye, so I better log off. Thanks for reading. And remember, my new supernatural thriller is coming out in April. More news about that to come! BOOM!

Absent Fathers Suck.

I know this topic is a tad off my usual subject matter, but an important one nonetheless.

I'm really enjoying my children lately - always have - but life as a daddy has been especially good lately. That may sound strange to you, but my wife and I have four children, ages fifteen through nine and our world gets really crazy at times. Yet with all the wackiness, we managed to have a great weekend. I spent quite a bit of time with each one of them, doing something they enjoy, like playing video games, making necklaces, writing, reading, boxing, wrestling. And now, as you can imagine, I'm exhausted, muscles sore, head aching and in need of a little peace and quite.

I'll confess, there were times over the course of the last several years where I put other things ahead of them, not always, but times. I'm sure I had my list of reasons, all justified in my eyes: quotes were due, had to finish the job, chapters almost done, you name it. But the thing is, I always hated myself later. When I finished whatever it was that kept me from them, I was always filled with remorse.

Children grow up way too fast, sometimes leaving before we're ready for them to go. They watch and learn and observe our mannerisms, imitate our dialect and mirror our integrity. As I was thinking about this, I thought of the moments I've failed and then remembered the things I've done right and then sighed, somewhat pleased that although I've not been perfect, I know that I've not been absent.

As a writer, it's very easy to be absent, because writing is such a solitary act. The very thought of interruptions, just about gives me a migrain. And so I have to be very careful, and my wife does a great job at making sure I lift my head up and engage in our family. On my own, I'm afraid the story, or the platform building, or the emailing would consume me. In fact, I know it would. My nature is to keep my head down, driving forward like a Wisconsin snow plow, smashing mail boxes and digging up sod along the way!

The point is, absent fathers suck and they come in an assortment of colors: emotionally absent, physically absent, financially absent, and spiritually absent. They breed absent teenagers, absent citizens, absent husbands and absent daddys. And when they look back on their life they shrivel up and die with regret, because when an absent father finally lifts his head and discovers that no one is there, he looks back and wonders what it was that pulled him away, what was so damn important that took precedence over his family.

Absent fathers suck. Don't be an absent father or mother. Write, read, create, but live your life with balance, frequently taking time to laugh and wrestle and talk with your children. If you choose to give your family the scraps of your life, you'll regret it for all eternity. But you'll never regret keeping your head up and engaging with your children. BOOM!

Building a Blog Tour

If word-of-mouth is the best advertising, than word-by-blog has got to be the second best.

If you've written a book and want to share it with the world, the last thing you want to do is publish it and then tell everyone you have a great book for sale. After observing and studying book launches over the last two years, I've discovered that one of the best ways to get people talking about your book (with the exception of a 100K marketing budget) is to have a Blog/Review tour. 

If you aren't familiar with the term, a blog tour is much like a book tour, except as the author, you travel from blog to blog, guest blogging, interviewing and/or giving something away - like a free copy of your book, or if you really want to up the ante, give away Amazon gift certificates, a free Kindle, etc. In most cases, book bloggers focus on writing reviews, so guest blogging and getting reviewed sort of go hand-in-hand.

To have a successful blog tour, you'll want to "appear" on blogs that talk about books - books that are in your genre. How do you do that, you ask? The answer is, with a lot of hard work. I scheduled my blog and contacted all the hosts on my own. If you don't have the 40+ hours it takes to do that, I'd suggest contacting a blog tour marketing specialist. There are dozens of online businesses that can do that for you at a cost ranging from $99 and up depending on the number of stops you make. But if you want to go the cheap route, you can do it yourself.

As your own publicist, you can do this at zero cost with a little know how. 

The first thing to do is... look at your calender and plan in advance when you're "touring" in relation to your release date. Once you've blocked out your calender, you'll have to write a "Review/Guest blog pitch". Here's a link to a copy of my pitch. It worked great, I think, and covered all the bases (Sample Pitch). The next step is to google "book, review, blog, your genre" and see what pops up. After you've hit a few blogs, check out the blogs they follow and you're sure to find a bunch more. Once you've found a list of potential hosts for your tour, you'll have to read their submission/review requirements to be sure that you and the blog are compatible. If so, then you can send an email requesting a review and/or guest spot on their blog!

Important notes:

• The sooner you plan, the better chance you have of getting your book read, reviewed, and a guest-post scheduled. Plus, many of the reviewers require a print copy, so if you are going all digital, you will limit the number of reviewers you'll attract. 
• Although I'm printing with Lightning-Source, I used Createspace to generate my ARC (advanced review copy - or proof), while applying for my publisher account, and sent one to every reviewer who requested a print copy. I also made sure my PDF was formatted (same PDF for the printer) and in tip-top shape, and professionally edited for those who accepted my ebook version. 
• I spent a little money on the proof copies and postage, but if a reviewer/blogger has 500-2500 followers, I'd say it could be worth every penny.
• Be sure to attach a PDF and cover jpg. with every review/guest blog request so the reviewer can scroll through the book and cover and get excited about your work.
• Keep track of every contact name, blog url, and dates scheduled on a seperate sheet of paper or document, because it can get very confusing if you lose track of who's accepted and whose rejected your request.
• Finally, remember that publishers take their time publishing for a reason. There is a lot to do to prepare for a book launch. If you get in a hurry and throw your work out there without getting early reviews and bloggers helping you pitch your work, you will have an uphill battle spreading the word. Why? Because word-of-mouth is the best advertising! And bloggers were born out of the need to share messages, and if all goes well, they'll be talking about your book. BOOM!

As you can see, I've posted the REUNION Blog Tour schedule below. <----Click on the link to see all the cool topics I'll be blogging about! Then click on the links below and visit these cool sites or even contact them to get your book reviewed. And be sure to follow my blog tour, because each stop will have a unique post about REUNION, publishing, or my writing techniques.

Date            Blog                                                Topic
April
1 - Candace's Book Blog  - "The Story behind the Story." (REUNION available to eReaders.)
2 - The Cajun Book Lady  - "Meet the Survivors."
3 - Julia Madeleine's Blog - "Why write fiction about a school shooting?"
4 - Bewitched Book Worms - "Why ghosts make great antagonists."
5 - Indie Paranormal Book Reviews - "Creating back story: David Ray's dark past."
6 - The Creative Penn - "Got Story? - Get Edited."
7 - Pinnacle Writing - "Author Interview."
8 - Jemima Valentino's Blog - "From story to Book...Making it happen."
9 - Swamp Dwellers, Dark Fiction Book reviews - "The Dark in Fiction."
10 - Jennifer Wylie's Blog - "Author Interview."
11 - Kait Nolan - "Supernatural, Love, and Fear."
12 - The Writing Bomb - "Character Interview with Lana Jones & Noah Berkley."
13 - Reading Without Restraint - "Twenty years after the shooting."
14 - OPEN
15 - Preternatural Primer - "Building Suspense one Ghost at a Time."
16 - 100 Stars or Less - "Author interview"
17 - OPEN
18 - Lost For Words - "Interviewing Tanner Khan: The Lost Survivor."
19 - I Am a Reader Not a Writer - "Author interview."
20 - The Writing Bomb - "Remembering Columbine: April, 20, 1999."
21 - OPEN
22 - Reena's Blog - "Making a story go from scratch."
23 - OPEN
24 - You Wanna Know What I Think? - "The Motivation Behind Reunion."
25 - OPEN
26 - My Reading Room - "Author Interview"
27 - My Neurotic Book Affair - "Character Interview with Nick Tooley: The cRaZy One."
28 - Courtney Conant's Blog -  "Questions about REUNION."
29 - The Writing Bomb - "Character Interview With Kate Schmidt Tooley: ."
30 - Paranormal Haven - "I'll have a Love, Ghosts and Fear Martini."

May
1 - The Writing Bomb - "Character Interview with Maria Vasquez: The Lonely One" (REUNION Available in Print!)
2 - My Eclectic Bookshelf - "My life as a Guest Blogger!"
3 - Fang-tastic Books - "Why I write Supernatural Thrillers."
4 - Bookhound's Den - "Proofing REUNION, what the Bookhound discovered."
5 - Patricia's Vampire Notes - "The story of Earl: My real ghost experience."
6 - AOBibliosphere - "Getting the story into Print and the Passion behind it."
7 - Book Noise - "How to Make a Book Read Loudly!"
8 - TzhaBella's Book Shelf - "Thoughts on Bringing Life into Paper."
9 - Rex Robot Reviews - "Thoughts on Plotting: How to pull it all together."
10 - JoJo's Book Corner - "Would the Correct Genre Please Stand!"
11 - Paul Joseph Writes - "Why Bullies Suck!"
12 - OPEN
13 - OPEN: Last day of The REUNION Blog Tour!
14 - The Writing Bomb - Tour Wrap Up...Packing for Vacation.
15 - Announce Winners of Kindle Giveaway!

Authorschizoitis!

I think I over do it sometimes.
I take that back. I know I do!

The world of a writer can be overwhelming. I've talked about this before. If my memory serves me correct, I think I said that writers are perfect candidates to be sent off to Crazyville. And if you're a writer, you know what I'm talking about, because you're probably half way there already. Today, however, I'd like to relax and take a minute to recharge my lit-thuim batteries...Get it? Lit as in literary and thium as in lithium, ah never mind! I've never been much of a humorist. Seriously. Ask anyone who knows me; I'm pretty dull, and I rarely get jokes. Guess that's why God made me a thriller/suspense writer. Anyway, I digress. But that's okay...because I'm relaxing...I'm chillin'.

That's right. I'm going to slow down for a couple of hours and stop thinking about books, and writing, and publishing, and cover art, and blog tours, and ISBN numbers, and wholesale discounts, and return policies, and blog posts (ehem), and Pixels Per Inch, and reading, and studying, and Garamond font, and setting up accounts, and web traffic, and, and, and! Whew! I really needed to throw all that junk on the table. Hope you don't mind me regurgitating my literary vomit in front of you. Sorry. I know - that's gross. But so is having a one track mind. And that's the point.

I can become pretty yucky when all I think about is writing. Ask any writer! I'm sure he or she has been there before. Writers are all too familiar with the tell-tell-signs of our friends and family going on with their lives, saddened, as we wander off into the writing abyss of MSs and all the other crap that we find ourselves wrapped up, twisted and drowning in. They have this look about them that screams "There he goes again... off into the stormy sea of words and busy work that means so little to us! Man over board! Dads lost it! Hurry! Get the life preserver. He's turning blue!"

Do you ever get that? Do you have a method to keep you in check? I don't and that's why I'm writing this post. Well I take that back. Now that I mention it, I do have this new rule that after 8:00 pm when I'm home - I'm done with all my writing stuff - everything, emails, twitter posts, facebook, etc. But other than that, I've got a bad case of authorschizoitis - as in I can't stop, 'cause I choose to embrace everything they tell us writers are supposed to do. I know. You're shaking your head. Poor, poor, Jeff.

Thank you for the sympathy. But there's no need for pity.

I'm going out on a limb here, but aren't writers supposed to embrace the more important things in life like family, balance, health and faith? Or should I ask - Can we embrace those things if we need meds for authorschizoitis?

Maybe you aren't here...yet...where I am. But when you get there, be sure to shoot off a flare, wave a white flag and RELAX. I am...for a time...and it feels good. BOOM!

Be sure to get your copy of The Red Church, by Scott Nicholson. It's the Thrill of the Week. Do you have a thriller worthy of next weeks thrill? Let me know and I'll post it FREE!

Book Trailers 101

I don't know about you, but sometimes the post-editorial aspects of publishing can be almost as fun as writing the book in the first place. Take for instance, the book cover. You all know how much fun I had designing and laying out that puppy! And then there was the contest (i.e. subliminal book promotion). How fun was that?  And now...as if you thought I was finished with the pre-pub excitement...I get to talk about book trailers. Oh yes, the HOT new method to promote your book.

They say the best way to get your message across today is through video. That's right, if you want anyone who's anyone to notice your precious little baby, you have to go VIRAL! Of course being the high tech wannabe that I am, I have to get in on the action. It cost me $5 to make a decent book promo. And I'm going to tell you how I do it!

It's easy really. I use Animoto.com. It's FREE if you only create a 30 second video. But that's not much time. I upgraded to the "Plus" account ($5 a month), so I can make a 60+ second trailer. When I'm done using the program, I end my subscription and pay only $5 for each month used.

Basically all you have to do is upload pictures, text or video into the slots provided. They offer several backgrounds to choose from and a pretty good sized library of music. And...you can pick any style of music to match the genre of your book. The pace of the video and the type of action displayed, is based on the genre and song choice. And you will never get the same results twice, because every time you make a change, Animoto recalculates the entire sequence.

In my opinion, the videos turn out very classy. Yet, there is more to the book trailer concept than flashy graphics and sweet tunes. You have to tell the story. And here are lots of companies that will do that for you. A book marketer can create a video with more text options, video and the mother of them all, the book trailer that actually plays out like a movie. And lets not forget the good old fashioned author interview!

Or, if you have a good digital video producing program, you can do it yourself!

In order to be the helpful guy that I am, I looked up a few companies that offer this service. There's a whole lot more of them, but this'll get you started. I'm pasting the links further down the page.

THE REAL QUESTION is...are book trailers worth the expense? Do they pay for themselves in book sales? I think they can. I think they have the ability to generate excitement. But do they bring the right reader to the point of sale? That's the million dollar question. I could've upgraded to $39 a month and had a link button at the end that'll take the reader directly to the point of sale...but I didn't...not yet anyway.

What do you think? Have you had any luck with book trailers or live author interviews? Let me know. BOOM!

Book Video Creation - Their videos looked pretty decent and cost anywhere from $99-$299 for more advanced videos.

Book Videos.tv - This producer makes really good trailers. They made the video for the best seller "Huck"

Ghost Writer's Extraordinaire - They're more affordable, although quality is a bit lower. Prices start around $79.

Again, I am not an affiliate! I do not get paid for posting these links.

CreateSpace or Lightning Source???

Are you an indie author preparing to publish your latest and greatest work of art? Your masterpiece? Your baby? If so I want to applaud you and congratulate you for accomplishing one of life’s greatest feats. Lots of people talk about writing a book...you are one of the few who actually did it!

But wait!

Before you ship your precious baby off to LuLu or CreateSpace, did you get your little darling professionally edited? I hope so! Is the cover art up to snuff? It better be! What about the interior? Is your PDF perfect? Are your ebook paragraph indentions and chapter headings in the right place? I sure hope so.

Have you thought about using Lightning Source as your printer? Huh? Who? Lightning Source, L-i-g-h-t….oh, never mind! Lightning-Source is one the biggest and best printers for small and independent publishers…and if your an indie author, that means you! After much debate and research I’ve decided that there is no better choice.


DISCLAIMER:

If you're interested in selling digital books only and paperback books via Amazon & B&N, than Create-Space or LuLu is probably the best place to go for your print copies. They’re quick, cheap, easy and come with a FREE ISBN. But if you want to sell books to brick-n-mortar stores or have a book signing at your local B&N or Books-a-Million, you better go with Lightning Source. 


Don't let CS or LULU fool you into thinking advanced distribution means you can sell in stores...You can't!       


Here's a few things you need to know that CS & LuLu won't tell you.

•      Lulu and CS, do not offer the industry standard wholesale discount of 40-55% to retailers. They offer more like 25%, which is not high enough to get into stores. I tried having a book signing 10 miles from my house with a B-a-M and they flat refused, because my book did not offer a 40% discount through Baker & Taylor. I had no idea! I thought I had paid for full distribution. WRONG!

•      Another major stopper is the issue of “Returns”. If you want to get your book into stores, you have to offer returns (be willing to pay the bookstore back the wholesale price of the book if they don’t sell). Some local stores and B & N’s might let you place a book on consignment…but maybe not. Most stores demand that your book be returnable, especially if they want to buy it through their distributor.

•      Lightning Source, allows you to do both. You can choose the wholesale discount and the method of taking returns. You can pick a 25, 40, or 50% wholesale margain! And, you don’t have to feel embarrassed when you tell your local bookstore manager that your book is non-returnable.

•      At lightning Source, you are the publisher, no longer giving Create-Space 60% of your wholesale margin. You do, however, have to provide a print ready cover (front-back-spline) and interior PDF’s. But fear not, if you can’t learn to do this yourself, there are many affordable folks out there who will format your interior for $99 and create a polished cover for around $300 or less (I paid $40 to have an artist add the back cover to my front cover that I designed. That’s extra, but a great incentive to learn how to make a good cover! If you were planning to sell in stores, it could be worth the expense. Besides, $300 is cheaper than the going rate for many self-publishing companies who offer custom covers.

•             Lightning Source will also upload your book to Amazon and B&N and other sources for you. Best of all, you get ALL the publisher's profit! You have to do a little more work, but it’s worth it.

•      Lightning Source offers great service! You get to talk with a real person. So if you have questions, you just dial a number and POW! there’s a live person BAM! on the line SMACK! waiting to help. (How'd you like the Batman reference?)

•     Lightning Source is cheap. A $75 set up fee and a $12 a year renewable print fee. That may sound like more than the $0 for Lulu and CreateSpace' $39 Advanced Distribution Channel. You'll have to buy your own ISBN, which can cost up to $125, or as little as $1, depends on how many you buy, but you will be the publisher. Period.

Listen, if you want to go indie, and go all the way, you have to think like a publisher...become a publisher and LEARN everything that goes with it. 

• You have do what they do. 
• Get Arc’s (advance reading copies) and send them out to reviewers. 
• You have to take your time and plan a blog tour, contests, giveaways! 

Publishing isn’t just about writing a book and having it magically appear on Amazon. There’s a reason the process takes 2 years in the Pub industry. Even if you publish an eBook, you should still take your time, get it edited, polish your cover and publicize and get reviews first.

If you think of self-publishing is a business, indie authors will always have a much leaner structure. You only have to report to yourself and your readers; you owe them that much. Anyway, you can get that book out their quickly, professionally, and with the same quality and wholesale policies as the big boys, but ONLY through Lightning Source.

I used Lightning Source with REUNION and it's only cost me about $100 to get my cover assembled. 


I used CS to get an initial proof of the interior and Cover art. They did a great job, but in the end, I’m going to publish more books (Act of Vengeance in October 2011), and I’d like to be professional and match publishers pricing, discounts and returnability. 


We indies have a stigma of poor quality to overcome. It’s time we take the bull by the horns, create our own destiny and do this right! 

The Mistakefree Zone!

"This is your life...Are you who you want to be?".

Ahhh... words beautifuly sung by Switchfoot. Followed by..."This is your life...is it everything you dreamed that it would be...?" I think I've struggled with those questions more than any other over the course of my adulthood. For the longest time I was constantly pushing..pushing for what I thought life was meant to be...what I thought I was supposed to get from life, work, relationships, only to find that I had not met my own expectations. Asking questions like the ones above may put your selfesteem at risk, if you (like me) have had such big expectations that you unknowingly have set yourself up for disappointment.

But, hold on a minute! Why be disappointed? What can possibly be disappointing about learning from our mistakes or having opportunities to grow? I've made some ginormous mistakes in my life. There are consequences, yes, but did I learn some ultramegalifelessons? You bet! I think the best we can do is to learn from our mistakes, work hard at changing the things that are broke in us and enjoy every experience as they come especially with our family and friends.

In fact, if I hadn't made said mistakes in my life; if I hadn't sunk to the deepest, darkest holes in Hell, I might not have started to write, to meditate with words, to escape into another world, where its just me and the story - a very mistake free zone.

How about you? How do you deal with screw ups? Does writing help? Is writing or reading your mistake-free zone?  Please comment vigorously. BOOM!

Mistakes I've made in Publishing

Like many indie authors, I've made mistakes... and I've payed for them, dearly.

I learned a lot about the book biz after publishing my first novel, Killing the Giants, with Outskirts Press in 2008-2009. Of course, I didn't really have a choice in the matter - I didn't know diddly squat to begin with. All in all, I payed about $1500 to get that gem of mine in print... and my left eye still shakes and jerks every time I think about it. Yeah, big mistakes have a way of creating new bodily ticks!

But why has that experience damaged my optical nervous system, you ask? Simple. I hadn't heard much about going indie and I didn't know anything about the Kindle at that point, and after a long, disappointing run with agents and publishers, I finally gave in to my impatientness. Besides, I wanted that book darn it! And I just knew the rest of the world did too!

So what did I learn about the "self-publishing" world that is so disappointing? Here's a list of some of the things I know now.

• Don't get in a hurry. This seems to be the second biggest mistake authors make, and self-publishing companies rush you through the process, because they want to publish as many books as possible. I rushed the whole process, even to the point of neglecting to get a professional edit. If you want your book to succeed, you have to take the time to get it edited, and plan for a longer pre-release schedule (more on that to come). Slow down and do this right.

• Only spend money on the essentials. No one should pay to publish when you can epublish for free. That sounds so simple, but it's true. The publishing world is changing so fast it just about makes my head spin, and so why would you want to invest your $$$ in publishing a print copy of your book, when technology in 2011 allows you to go online for free with Kindle/Smashwords publishing and/or Createspace/Lightening Source? You don't have to. All of these sites have excellent tutorials and customer forums that will help you format your interior and or provide you with names of people who will do it for you for next to nothing ($35-99). Good formatting is vital, but you don't have to sell off your body parts to get it done.

• ePublishing makes great training. If you are working on your first book, and have tried the agent/publisher routine, you should definitely take advantage of these low cost publishing options. Then as you grow your audience and your platform, you can spend more on cover, design etc.

• Cover art is massively over priced ($299-$599). Although the first step to getting someone to buy your book is through good cover art, I've learned to make pretty decent covers by using picnik.com and it has cost me $0. I've seen some book covers professionally designed and wanted to puke! I felt so bad that someone payed for junk. I did - it came with my "package". But now, all you need is a picture that fits with your book and lots of practice. Picnik.com has an array of cool tools that will make a good cover. You can always spend more later on your next masterpiece.

• Do pay for the most important things. If you are no good at cover design or formatting, you should pay for those things, including editing (the number one thing authors fail to do). They are that important.

• Don't pay for Amazon add-ons. I payed extra to get my book in the Kindle edition and to get the "Look inside" option. Duh! It is all FREE. I was too scared to investigate and figure out how to format my book, so I payed about $299 for those "services". Nuf, said. That was stupid. Lesson learned.

• Don't pay for reviews or a blog tour. I've sent out about 45 review/blog tour requests and to my surprise, the blogger/reviewers are graciously accepting to review my book AND do an interview/guest blog spot. This cost me zero, but would have cost at least $299 if had someone else arrange it. 

• Allow time for Reviews and a blog tour, because no amount of local media and local book signings will give you near as much exposure as a blog tour. The fact is, a good book signing will net maybe 5-10 book sales. You should do book signings and book release parties, but they are only good for building local hype, and will not help near as much as a blog tour where book buyers are waiting to hear specifically about your genre. Again, don't get in a hurry to publish...take your time and plan to get reviews before you publish. You can even use some of the review blurbs on the back cover! Here's a link to a long list of reviewers.

• Plan a release date. This is the number one way to get a major jolt in intial book sales. After all the reviews and guest blogging and Q & A sessions, you'll have a gazillion readers standing in line to buy your books. So why not have an online book signing/release party the day you release your book? You'll get a much better initial rating with a sudden leap in book sales, which will in turn, create more visibility through the ranking systems. The authors of Machine of Death accomplished this with great success. Of course the authors already had a following, but if you utilize a blog/review tour, you can do it too. Also you can use the same Press release site the self-publishing sites use to post a press release. They don't pay anything, why should you?

• Get Social Media. Get involved in Facebook and Twitter and blogging. Don't always talk about your book. Share other valuable information dealing with the content of your book or writing or reading, but get people to listen to you and just be yourself. People like buying from writers they know and trust.

Mainly, I've come to the conclusion that I can do almost everything I payed for, with more passion, greater attention to detail, and at or near zero cost (with the exception of time).  There are other things I've learned, but I think I've demonstrated enough of my stupididy for one day. My pride can only take so much abuse, you know.

But what about you? What have you learned that could help the unsuspecting  author ready to cash in his life savings to publish his or her latest and greatest masterpiece? Got any more ideas? Share them and comment vigorously! BOOM!