I began writing four years ago and sharing stories with many friends and unsuspecting strangers. Their comments and feed back kept me going and led me to submit these little fictions to some of the many on-line journals for consideration -- twenty or thirty times until one little piece (Hello Pretty Boy) stuck on a Scottish site: http://www.shortbreadstories.co.uk/search/results/#axzz2fLsHInzs).
One benefit of sharing and submitting is that it has prompted me to rework material as I
learn to better see and hear what is on the page. During the last several years, stories have accumulated along with a novella which came out of my participation in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November 2011.
At some point I got the idea of bundling them into a collection with the novella as the capstone referencing each of the stories and set the goal of actually putting it out there in public, becoming a published author. Wow.
The next challenge was figuring out how to do this, a task which breaks down into two parts: publishing and marketing. (We´ll look at marketing next time.) Fortunately, there are blogs and people accessible on the Net to help. Unfortunately, there are so many that my writing took a backseat to research on publishing.
One outcome has been this author website which I set up as a platform for blogging and marketing. For now, rather than buy/rent the domaine www.williamgeuss.com, I chose the free option www.williamgeuss.weebly.com; a number of sites offer the same, e.g. www.wordpress.com, www.web.com, etc.
In coming installments, I will talk in more detail about how to:
found an imprint to publish from (in my case Backcourt Press).
find editors (to edit my ca 90,000 word ms).
reserve rights to an image for your cover and hire a designer.
find someone to format your book for upload
to both Amazon Kindle and Smashwords.
purchase ISBN numbers.
Other good stuff (no doubt).
William as in Shakespeare
ps I plan to blog my way through the above process in more depth with costs and sources to keep things moving. Do let me know how you are progressing and what you want to know more about/share good things you find by commenting here or to williamgeuss@sbcglobal.net.
One benefit of sharing and submitting is that it has prompted me to rework material as I
learn to better see and hear what is on the page. During the last several years, stories have accumulated along with a novella which came out of my participation in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November 2011.
At some point I got the idea of bundling them into a collection with the novella as the capstone referencing each of the stories and set the goal of actually putting it out there in public, becoming a published author. Wow.
The next challenge was figuring out how to do this, a task which breaks down into two parts: publishing and marketing. (We´ll look at marketing next time.) Fortunately, there are blogs and people accessible on the Net to help. Unfortunately, there are so many that my writing took a backseat to research on publishing.
One outcome has been this author website which I set up as a platform for blogging and marketing. For now, rather than buy/rent the domaine www.williamgeuss.com, I chose the free option www.williamgeuss.weebly.com; a number of sites offer the same, e.g. www.wordpress.com, www.web.com, etc.
In coming installments, I will talk in more detail about how to:
found an imprint to publish from (in my case Backcourt Press).
find editors (to edit my ca 90,000 word ms).
reserve rights to an image for your cover and hire a designer.
find someone to format your book for upload
to both Amazon Kindle and Smashwords.
purchase ISBN numbers.
Other good stuff (no doubt).
William as in Shakespeare
ps I plan to blog my way through the above process in more depth with costs and sources to keep things moving. Do let me know how you are progressing and what you want to know more about/share good things you find by commenting here or to williamgeuss@sbcglobal.net.
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