Even if you missed our September 2014 Alliance of Literary Writers, Authors and Yabbering Scribes (ALWAYS) gathering, you can still benefit from several established writers’ top writing and publishing secrets.

A former ALWAYS gathering with Karen Mueller Bryson, Megan Scott, Laurie Fagen, Mallary Tytel, and Ann Videan. Our handful of established authors meets once a month to discuss topics affecting our writing.

An especially large thank you to Karen Mueller Bryson, who shared all her expertise and knowledge about publishing your own books and others’. Invaluable!

Additional gratitude, for sharing other great tips, goes to Karen, Laurie Fagen, Paul McNeese, Shelley Gillespie, Wendy Fallon, and our new friend Patricia. Read their tips and reap:

1. Keep your book cover art blurb to only a few sentences. Readers want concise summaries. Plus, remember to write your back cover for the book buyer (publisher), not the reader, when pitching.

2. Just write! The most important thing you can do to become a better, more prolific, and well-known author is to set aside time every day to write. Religiously!

3. Check out The Passive Voice blog, “A Lawyer’s Thoughts on Authors, Self-Publishing and Traditional Publishing.”

4. Look into the Editor’s Toolkit software, providing tools for editing in Microsoft Word.

5. For an example of a indie self-publisher success story using serial fiction, look up Hugh Howey. Per Amazon, “He is the author of the award-winning Molly Fyde Saga and the New York Times and USA Today bestselling WOOL series. The WOOL OMNIBUS won Kindle Book Review’s 2012 Indie Book of the Year Award.”

5. Inform readers about your sales. Buy ads on bookseller sites—Bookbub, Book Gorilla, BookSends, etc.—to help position your book for bestseller status. It’s relatively easy, especially if you can categorize in a small niche market, and not horribly expensive.

6. See ProofOfExistence.com. This independent online service offers a copyright proof level between your own statement of copyright and that obtained from the U.S. Copyright Office.

7. From BureauOfCommunication, send fun “Mad-Libs”-type forms to friends and co-workers. Fill out a “Airing a Greivance,” “Statement of Gratitude,” “Unsolicited Feedback,” or other crazy-cool online forms.

8. You are not the best editor of your work. Let go. Fresh eyes can make your book better.

Some great ideas. What writing tip can you share with us here?

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Write on!
Ann Narcisian Videan
Write • Edit • Self-publish • Word-of-mouth
avidean@videanunlimited.com