Self Publish - Attract Buyers to Your Novel

The draft of your book is complete. You are very pleased with your achievement and rightly so. Now you are in a new realm of, perhaps, writing a worthy synopsis and trying to find a Literary Agent who, in turn, will try to champion your work to various good publishers. Maybe you can achieve this and if so, fine – I wish the very best for you and your book. You will not need to heed the rest of this because these things will be done by the worthy publisher and editors of their choice, who will be very good. For many of you, however, there will be the endless attempts at trying to get your work looked at and even when you do get a publisher to view your writing; it will most likely be a disappointing outcome. Sorry to be gloomy, but then one can always keep trying or maybe look at self-publishing.

To try and self-publish a book in this day and age is easier than it has ever been before. However, this is where the first problem will be; because you can get published easily, you really need to be careful not to become too lax due to over excitement with what you are presenting. Your work will not be worthy without proper editing. People are fussy so your editorial work being of good quality is an absolute must. This has got to be the first thing on your agenda before you go ahead with self-publishing. Generally readers will steer clear of amateur written work because most of the time it is sloppy and unprofessional. You will need an independent editor and the web is full of them. Again, there can be pitfalls here too, because anyone can advertise on the net as an editor. Therefore, look for an organisation that has an agency of editors on their lists. These might be editors from various parts of the world that are vetted and have portfolios about their work. I cannot stress the total importance of this because no matter how often you go through your work; there will always be glaring things that you will miss. I can remember working with my editor for one of my novels and some of the things that came back were very obvious, yet I had missed them time and again. Also there will be other less noticeable things that you’ll be grateful of too. When you go to a listing sight of editors; you’ll put your work up for tender and you’ll get various editors bid to do the editorial work for your book. If the novel is about 90,000 words, I think you might be looking at about UK £500 minimum for a basically good editorial job over all. If you are in another country; you’ll need to convert to your currency to get an idea of the outlay. Some might be more and others may be less. Less is not always a good sign unless it is a new editor to the agency books and he/she is trying to break into the sphere. It might be about £450, if it is less; I would be surprised against a word count of 90,000. Obviously if your work consists of about 50,000 words, then you would look at less expense. You might think that this is a lot to pay for editorial work, but I would stress that it is money well spent to get your writing flowing and trim for your readers. Always ask to see a sample and they’ll do one if they want to win your business. The sample usually comes in the form of two presentations. One attachment will be your work with all the corrections clearly plastered about it and suggestion in the right column. The second attachment will look as it does with all the corrections added. When you read this section, you’ll be encouraged by the flow of your work and discover it is usually better. You might get so many good examples, that it will be hard to choose which editor you want. Obviously, you’ll get particular editors that specialise in various different agendas and you’ll be able to choose one suited to your book’s subject matter.

http://www.freelance-proofreaders.co.uk/ (Check out this sight for editors)

At this point you might stop and reflect on self-publishing before you proceed. After all, now you have your work well edited, you might want to consider publishers and Literary Agents again, who might look at your work in a more favoured light. It is worth thinking about for some people. If not, then on with the notion of self-publishing.

Next might be artwork. Most of the publishers you come across will have artwork ideas for your book, but not all of these might be to your taste. You might want to go for an independent artist and once again there are on line agencies that have various artists for such work. This can be costly, so it is up to you.

http://www.freelanceuk.com/find-a-freelancer/art-directors (Check out this site)

As I have mentioned before; there are pit falls along the way and this can become a learning process. Because of the Internet and eBooks, the market is very versatile and there are many people you can reach all over the globe. The problem is trying to reach them because many of the publishers might be small concerns. They’ll get your novel up on the main eBook sights like Amazon, Fictionwise, Diesel etc. However, they will be among thousands and there will be punters sifting through many choices. You will need to attract shoppers to your story. Most of the small publishers don’t have an advertising program for your self-published book and this you must bear in mind. Therefore I would recommend a blog like the one you are reading now. Fill it with all sorts of things of interest and advertise your novel among other adverts. Try to advertise with subtle ways and write things in your blog that you enjoy doing. You’ll learn what type of things will attract people and build links to your blog via YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Use AdSense and advertise other independent products with your own advert among them.

Again in short:

1.     You decide to self-publish (Get editorial work done properly. Do nothing until this is in order)

2.     Once editorial work is done (Stop, think in case you want to try Literary Agents and Publishers again)

3.     If deciding upon self-publishing (Remember you’ll have to try and plug your book too. Blogging with link to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter or other visited sights. If you know anything on SEO it will help to)