Where Normal Need Not Apply
Back when I started thinking of self-publishing, one of the first things I researched was cover artists. In my usual over-thinking/over-analyzing way, I uber-researched the cover artist landscape to track down cover artists and design trends. And I figured some of what I learned might be helpful to others.
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Indie publishing isn’t made up of just one decision to put us on one path. Last month, we identified four options for the distribution of our books, and we started with a closer look at two of those distribution options. This month, we’re looking at the other two distribution options and when they might work best for us.
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A common suggestion for how to attract readers is “offer a freebie.” However, there are risks to that strategy that we should be aware of before we can make an informed decision.
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For many writers, the point of writing is to connect with others through our words. Because of that desire, it’s hard to ignore feedback, and during editing, we don’t want to ignore suggestions. But what about after we publish? Should we read reviews of our published work?
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We often have too much to do and not enough time, so it’s normal to need help sometimes. Yet many of us struggle with asking for help. We might find it difficult to trust someone else, might not want to be a burden, or might feel like a failure for not being able to do it all. But we all will need help occasionally–like with guest posts. *smile*
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How are villains, character likability, subtext, and point-of-view all related? In many stories, our antagonist is a non-POV character, and for non-POV characters, my previous tips about likability will be limited to subtext. So even though we might not be trying to make our villain likable, we might struggle to make them layered.
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In writing, it’s difficult to balance “not enough” and “too much.” Not enough flaws can make our characters flat, and too many flaws can make our characters unlikable. Some genres can get away with unlikable characters, but for those stories that can’t, here are 3 1/2 tips to fix the problem.
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An interesting conversation grew out of Misti Wolanski’s guest post earlier this week. She mentioned that sometimes readers enjoy finding typos. Let’s take a closer look at what that means for readers and for us as authors? Should we leave typos in our work? What say you…
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Many writers write both fiction and non-fiction (even if the latter is just blog posts), but the two types of writing require different skills—from authors and from editors. The better we understand the differences, the better we can follow the right rules at the right time and the better we can judge whether an editor is skilled in the right areas to be a good editor for us.
Pin ItIndie publishing isn’t made up of just one decision to put us on one path. The choice to self-publish is just the first of dozens, maybe hundreds, of decisions we’re going to have to make as part of our indie career. One choice we have to face is how we want to sell our books. There’s no right or wrong answers—only what works best for us.
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