Inspiring writers to write and get published

Is your book invisible?

In a previous post I set out to explain the way in which big publishers operated and why this gave literary agents so much power. In essence, big publishers work on a model that predicts just a handful of titles making excessive profits in any given year. Publishers accept that most titles will make little, if any, profit and it is the handful of ’successful’ titles which support the business. Since it is next to impossible to predict which titles will sell, publishers need to release a range of books, taking a scatter gun approach to finding the hits.

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3 Ways to Market your Book for Free

he publishing world has changed and the days of a writer being able to sit back and let a publisher market their books are long gone. Today a successful writer needs to be a marketing machine in their own right. Below are three classic ways to market your book for free. You have probably seen or used some (or all) of these method in the past. However, what I hope to do is to breath fresh life into these tried and test techniques.

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Why is it so hard to get published?

Getting published is tough – really tough! For new writers it often seems as though the publishing industry has set up a succession of doors and hurdles to make it as difficult as possible to get published.

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6 things every writer with a blog needs to know about attracting more traffic

We all want visitors to our sites and the best source for new visitors is search engines. Here are a few tips to make your blog more visible to search engines such as Google

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Writers and Stumble Upon

I would like to point writers in the direction of Stumble Upon. I have used this for a number of years and the service regularly brings traffic to this blog. The basic premise is that people using the service install a tool bar, highlight the topics they like (e.g. writing) and hit the stumble button. They are then taken to pages that have been identified as potentially interesting. Readers rate these pages meaning only the best material floats.

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Writers and Adwords

You know those text ads that you see in search results on Google. Well those are text ads that advertisers write and Google displays in relation to relevant keywords. The advertiser then pays each time someone clicks on the ad

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Boosting a writer’s online presence [video]

As we move into 2010, and all it holds, I would like to point all writers who are looking to develop an online platform to the video below. It shows marketing guru Chris Brogan talking about how a publisher (or in our case writer) should use the internet – it is still the single best place to start when looking to build an online platform.

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And What Do You Do?

It is a modern truth about writers that very few are able to make a full time living from writing books. One solution is to work a normal 9-to-5 job and write in your spare time. However, another route is to treat writing as a part time job, and take of three or four other part time jobs to produce a number of income streams to pay the bills. If you are considering taking this approach (apperantly it is called Portfolio working), or already do, then And What Do You Do? is the book for you.

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Non-Fiction book proposals

The main difference between a non-fiction book proposal and a fiction book proposal, is that for a fiction book proposal the chances are that the book will already be written. However, for a non-fiction book proposal the book will probably NOT yet be completed.

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8 things Horrible Histories taught me about writing

When I first started on my writing career I was lucky enough to work for Horrible Histories writer terry Deary. I spent a number of years working with alongside Terry as a researcher on a string of Horrible Histories titles. Looking back this was more than just a job, it was an apprenticeship. It opened my eyes to, not only, writing children’s non-fiction, but was also an insight how big publishers works and how it was possible for writers to actually make money in a very competitive industry.

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