My first novel will be published soon!

[Morgan.A.Collins]

Hi everyone, I've read the rules for this forum and can't remember reading "please don't use this space to market your work" or something similar.

I'm currently searching for ways to market my book, ideas welcome!

I've got my website - morganwords.com
my twitter @morganwords
and announce that GIRL IN FATHERLAND is available for pre-order on amazon now to everyone on my mailing list. (And you guys here, obviously, now. Hope that's OK.)

Comments, hints and tips, experience, critique (constructive, please) are very welcome!

 

[Richard Turner]

Welcome - do you have some sample material?

 

[Morgan.A.Collins]

The blurb is on my website. You mean like an excerpt from the book? Haven't thought about that yet, to be honest. I can post the first page of the book or something, if that's what you mean?

 

[Richard Turner]

OK - presumably you are going straight to self-publishing. I was thinking of the normal synopsis and sample chapters needed to try to attract an agent. The first page would also tell us a lot about your writing so yes.

 

[Morgan.A.Collins]

p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; line-height: 120%; }

Suddenly, she stood in my kitchen. It was summer, I must have left the terrace door open, and sat with the back to it, and did not see her come in.

I just heard the fridge door close, nearly jumped out of my skin, and turned around.

There she was, eating an apple she obviously had just taken out of my fridge.

I was so startled, I did not even get angry. She held the apple with her teeth, took the bread with one hand and the knife with the other, then cut herself a slice. An unpleasant feeling appeared up my spine when I saw her grabbing the knife. Weird. The strange woman in my kitchen did not make me too uncomfortable, no fear, just surprise, but when she reached for the knife, and it was just a bread knife, the big kitchen knife right beside it, she calmly left lying there, a fright drove through me.

She put the knife down, took the apple out of her mouth, after having taken a considerable bite, put it beside the knife and spread first peanut butter, then a thick layer of jam on her, that is my, bread. After that, actually she still chewed on that chunk of apple, but she was eating with a routine, as if she did spend all day systematically processing large amounts of food, she skilfully and languorously bit into the peanut butter bread. Finally, without interrupting her mechanical chewing process, she sighed contently.

"How can you eat like that and be so slim?'' I asked. A really daft question, regarding the fact that those were the first words I spoke to her.
GIRL IN FATHERLAND first page.


She raised her eyebrows and looked at me, as if I had missed something obvious. She took another bite of the apple, and spoke with a full mouth, "Are you getting it, at long last?''

I looked at her in confusion. "Getting what?''

"Oh man. A lifetime of searching and you don't savvy this. Stupidity has gotta be punished. If you don't savvy it yourself, I can't help you.''

She was gone. I stood there, shortly paralysed, then ran after her.

She had just gone through the terrace door into our garden, she had not had enough time to walk so far that I could not have easily caught up with her, but the garden was empty.

It didn't make any sense. My garden was fenced in, she could not have gone anywhere without me seeing her. But she was gone. Panic gripped me, a sudden feeling of loss. I wanted her to come back. I opened my mouth to call her, but then didn't. What should my neighbours think, when I shout like that? And what should I have shouted? "Hey, you strange young woman, who just stood uninvited in my kitchen and helped herself to my food, come back?''

No, thank you. People already believe I'm off my rocker, I don't need to confirm that by acting the part. More than usual, I mean.

But I could feel my body hurting when she was gone.



You have to own the pictures. Or the pictures will own you. Andrew Vachss.

I was haunted by I did not know what. I was one of those women, who fall apart from the inside out, consumed by illness no one can explain, with varying degrees of, ''Maybe it's all in your head, dear."

Of course, there was always another theory, another specialist to see, another test to perform, another diet to try.

Keep the nigger boy running. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man touched something in me. Keep the nigger boy running. How long would I let them keep me running? How long?

When what felt like every doctor on the planet had declared me "healthy", I turned to homoeopaths, acupuncturists, osteopaths, basically to every kind of medical profession with a -path or an -ist at the end. I suffered from everything, and therefore, obviously, had nothing.

You have to own the pictures. Or the pictures will own you. I had been owned enough. It was time I owned myself, no matter what the mess was I would be left with.

 

[Morgan.A.Collins]

I've spent the entire last year researching intensely the publishing/self publishing market. It seems that even though, relatively speaking, I'm a rather young woman, I've been living like a dinosaur. From my perspective, self publishing was a sign of bad quality (only those who can't get a book contract the traditional way do it out of vanity). So I thought "never gonna happen!"
Now I learned that agents and publishers seem to make their own job easier by just picking those who self publish successfully and offer them book deals, instead of getting through the slush pile themselves.
The good authors no longer get to say "I've got a book deal", but "I self published with success!"
Ten, maybe even five years ago, it was vanity of people who may not be good enough to get a contract to publish themselves. Nowadays, it's the other way around. You get to say, for your own vanity, "I've got a contract with a publisher", but the really successful ones are those who make it on the market themselves.
Thus far my research, NOT necessarily my personal opinion! I was hoping for a publisher, because I dread doing the marketing myself (only to learn that, even if you have a publisher, you'll have to, there's no way around it!) and because, yes, I also believed in the "gatekeepers" as "quality control". Now, with everything I've learned about the market, I'm not so sure any more. It seems "quality control" is the public now, not the agents, they just jump in when there's something which is _already_ hyping... (?) So as an unknown person, what other chance is there than to throw it on the market and hope for the best?
Though I'm nervous, and still have my doubts, I decided to self publish, yes.

 

[TonyP]

Welcome Morgan.

 

[Kitty]

Now I learned that agents and publishers seem to make their own job easier by just picking those who self publish successfully and offer them book deals, instead of getting through the slush pile themselves.

I'm not sure that this is entirely accurate. I'd be interested in knowing your source. Certainly self published authors who show huge sales do get picked up by agents/publishers, but they are a tiny proportion of the number of books self published each year. Most people I know who are agented got there through the slushpile and my former agent obtained about 90% of her clients that way.

 

[Peggy Lou]

Congratulations. And welcome.

 

[Emurelda]

Welcome and congratulations on getting to the publishing stage.

 

[Sea-shore]

Congratulations and the best of luck!

 

[Rita Stradling]

Hi Morgan! Congrats! I have a couple suggestions about self-publishing promoting

1) If you want your book on bookbub, basically the promotion site that will make your book don't change the price or discount your book immediately or for a while (it's really, really hard to get onto Bookbub. I've never actually managed to get on there, but I've done my research). They want your book to not have changed price for a while (check the website for specifics). To get on there you'll need a lot of reviews, which brings me to #2

2) Do not be afraid to give away your book. Actually, give it to as many people who will agree to review it (only about 10% will actually review it, and be sure not to bug them if they don't review it). You can give away review copies on LibraryThing member giveaways, Goodreads Read 2 Review forums, you can pay for a book tour company for a 'review query' where they'll give out your book for you, or you can join a NetGalley coop for about $35-50 dollars a month (this will get you the most reviews, good and harsh), or you can query bloggers in your genre yourself. Please believe me, do not spam, you can and will be blacklisted by bloggers. And, never ever respond to a negative review. You can get bigtime blacklisted by the whole bookblogger hierarchy and be dead in the water for it. If reviewers reach out to you saying they loved your book, offer to have them be the first to receive the ARC of your next book (this builds a very loyal following). If anyone offers to beta read, take them up on it. Ask reviewers to cross-post, they're usually happy to do it.

To make review copies, convert your word file to html at this website: Convert document online
Then download a program called Calibre for free. You can use it to make high-quality ebooks on your computer in all formats.

3) Join Triberr and regularly share relevant information for your audience of other author's. If you haven't already, set up a facebook author and twitter author page separate from your personal page. This is how fans will connect with you and make sure you connect everything to your website.

4) can you do basic video editing? You should have a program on your laptop for it. You can join a freetrail for videoblocks, audiobloblocks and bigstock videos and get stock video to use on a book trailer. Make it dramatic and only last about 1 minute. This is the best advertising tool on social media, especially facebook ads and Instagram.

5) put your book on ACX and query narrators directly. Make sure you search out 'royalty share and/or work for $0-50 pfh'. A lot of narrators are just starting out or they want to break away from non-fiction to fiction and want to build up their resume. Make sure you ask them politely to audition for your book because sometimes they have a great voice but are poor at audio-editing and you can end up in a contract with someone who's not a good fit. I find audiobooks sell more and for more and sometimes you can find an amazing narrator who will stick with you for royalty share. Once you have your audiobook completed, put it on audiobook boom! it will get you a lot more exposure and reviews.

6) Join author central and put up quotes from 5-star reviewers, especially if they're from a respected blog. I always ask the reviewers permission first, because it forms a trust relationship with my readership and because I like to respect other's work, but it's fair use to use 1-2 sentences. You can use code ★ five times for five stars (if they gave you five stars)

7) This one is 100% my personal opinion and many experts do not agree: Join KDP. I get more money and higher rankings from page reads than anything else. Also, don't underprice your book. Whatever price you put it at, that's what it's worth. I don't recommend putting it for $9.99 but maybe $3.99 or $4.99 and having it be available for reading online through kindle unlimited. That way people will read it more rather than buy it but then the rankings go up and people will start buying it, especially if you have 50+ reviews. Also, you can always go down in price but going up in price is frowned on.

Wow, I wrote a lot lol. If you don't mind, I might edit this and post it on my blog.