Someone has already mentioned kindle, which is a great way to publish. But there are a few other options that leave you able to publish (digital and print) without shelling out money or waiting for the publishing companies to deny you because you don't have an agent.

Nook (barnes & noble) - Digital - Link
CreateSpace (publishing arm of Amazon) - Print - Link

For those interested in getting their work out there... as most writers want to, they don't spend hours writing only to have it on their computer or 8x10 sheets of paper printed off their computer for family and friends to read, maybe.

cantata wrote:
Bit of shameless self promotion there. ^^^ But SZers please see the footnote!

@Frog - I have made a little "myzone entry" up in the trade section (although again, SZers please see the footnote! ) but I can't get the links to work up there.

@ Starchildren - things have never been better for writers who want to get their work out there and not hang on for the decision of some "editor" in the publishing houses - who you can only get to if you have an "agent" to submit your work. Apart from those sites you have listed (and Kindle) there's also Smashwords, Lulu and a whole bunch of others.

Kindle is definitely the best, though (once you have got them to correct the upload of your frontcover, the layout of your work, etc., grrrr).

The problem is that which I'm starting to look at now:

PUBLICITY that will lead to sales (and so reviews and recommendations).



I put these books up for sale back in May and not a single sale or review yet. To be fair, I've done nothing to publicise them myself as I've been getting other stuff ready, as well as Real Life stuff. And Amazon does nothing in this area either - other than send across the board emails to kindle customers asking them to "Give a new writer a chance" and then adding a list of books so long it's a marathon to read through.

So: Help Me Szers.

How do I publicise them and bring them to attention? Any ideas (coz this really isn't my arena).

Fank Yoo.

Cantata... I know how you're feeling on the publicity of them... I have like 9 books through kindle (given, one is horrible written and another, auto-correct (yes I know...I didn't know when I used it before though) ruined it and it's basically now a "what not to use and why" example instead of a romance so it also needs to be re-written). But the others are fine and I have had them on there since like 2010-2011 and make a sale here or there, get paid 15 bucks every so often (like once every 6 months to a year).

You can try going through magazines to publicize them, although the cost of running an ad is normally outrageous... but also places like craigslist if nothing else, free to run an add but crappy turn out. And places that they say advertise books for free have a list a mile long of what their requirements are, tend to be a waste of time. Google adwords, which I think you have to pay for and automatically get picked up through search engines anyway using amazon/kindle, but the searches kinda have to know your name and the book name already. Can try facebook for advertising, but again, they suck as far as price goes. And of course, major bookstores (barnes and noble for an example) even if you have it with their digital service wont touch your book with a ten foot pole because it is through amazon (a competitor) although they will special order it for people. And local bookstores, if they will put it on a shelve for local writers and out front, does help, but not nearly enough sales occur.

If you go through and format your book yourself before uploading it to kindle so it is already in the format they want and it is formatted how you want it to look, it goes a lot smoother than dealing with them and waiting on them to get everything right. When I remember the program to do it with I'll let you know what it is.

Aw, thanks for the ideas Starchildren - that's got some ideas in the empty bucket of my head! And YaY you, out there and doing it already.

I have to say that computer-wise.... I'm an eejit. I use my computer as a big, fancy typewriter and that's it. So I use a book conversion service:

www.yourebookpartners.com/

coz, well, Alan is just brilliant and doesn't charge heavily (£60 for the conversion with mobi file, epub file and frontcover photo which leaves you all ready to go on Kindle/Barnes & Noble, etc). He's also really great on back-up, too.

Even so, kindle botch things up. The mobi file (which comes out beautifully laid on my mobi reader app, and exactly as I laid it out) can lose its layout when it has been "kindled". So, one book is no longer "justified", but the other is; one story got its frontcover on exactly as sent... the other didn't and it's taken TWO MONTHS to get ir right - even though kindle ask for mobi files as first choice... Go figure kindle, eh.

I'll be sending the next three books to Alan for conversion too.

cantata wrote: You need to do a blog, update it fairly regularly, and get the title of your books and keywords related to them, into the articles as often as possible. This is called search engine optimisation, or you might hear it referred to as SEO.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

I will PM you an example of a very short SEO piece I wrote yesterday, as I'm not sure I should post it up on here.

And then you obviously link to your book(s) on each blog post. They don't really need to be that long, they definitely don't need to be that well written, you just need to get the keywords into them

It probably works even better if you can get your own domain and website, which costs very little, like this one:

markcurtis.info/

Bladdi Hell! He can blog. I'm not sure I can blog, wub. I could give it a shot though - Wordpress costs little enough. and then I can come back and ask how to publicise my Blog. And how to add links to it.

Thanks, as ever, wub!

cantata wrote: Anyone can use Blogger or Wordpress, it's a piece of piss. It's no more complicated than using Hotmail.

Sanctum Zone could provide you with low cost hosting which will have cpanel access and resources which will run a modest wordpress or joomla site and personal email. The cost would probably be in the region of £3.00 per month, although it would really need to be a one time annual payment of £36 PA to reduce the administration and transaction costs. This is just an idea and would need to be discussed with DG and Novum.

Buying a domain isn't expensive. It's not a good idea to go for a free domain and hosting deal because you really want to be in full control of your domain and the associated DNS entries.

Frog wrote:
This sounds great, Froggles.... but what does it actually mean? What is a cpanel access? Or a joomla site? And can I only then run it (listen to me - run it! ) from SZ?

I set up a free site website before - and it was rubbish. You're right there. Plus it was lost is a sea of millions of free sites (although it you knew the website's name back then, it came up top of the google search)..

cantata wrote:
Cpanel is the industry standard hosting panel which allows the user to manage the resources of their hosting environment. It's quite a big subject and if your not into tech speak probably not something which is easy to explain in a thread.

The system we can provide has an application installer which simplifies the installation of software packages such as Joomla and wordpress. Joomla is an open source (free) content management system and is what we use for the Sanctum Zone website. It's far more powerful than wordpress in every respect but has a stepper learning curve as a result. It's actually not that difficult at the most basic level if you have some time and knowledge of html and css. It can be as simple or as complex as you need it to be but it will take some effort on the part of the user/developer.

You can try it for free here Demo Joomla and if you wanted to take the plunge you would can setup your site on your own hosting service.

With a joomla site you don't really need to delve to deep into the Cpanel aspect after things are setup. You can check out Cpanel here DEMO you need the domain owner demo. Don't let all the options put you off there are only really a few aspects that need to be dealt with. Such as setting up your email and file management etc. With a joomla site most things can be achieved within joomla itself either in the admin area or from the frontend of the web site.

There are youtube clips which will show you how both systems work if you want to dig a little deeper. It's a bit daunting when you start out but it really isn't as bad as it looks once you grasp the basics. You just need to approach it in the right way and with a positive attitude. If you can read and have at least one functional finger you can become self sufficient - oh and some patience goes a long way.

You can get a .co.uk domain for about £5 PA at freeparking.co.uk there are plenty of other companies out there offering similar prices. If you do go for a freeparking one don't signup for the trial server offer.

You wouldn't run your website from your Sanctum Zone account you would have your own independent hosting account on our server.

Canty woman

Become corby's new MP, after a few weeks you can jack it in, and move abroad.

Then you'll need a soft-porno web-site linking to your books.

Pictures of you beating princess anne at dressage would be helpful, but with sussies on...etc

And, if you can get a shot of you holding a BIG_GUN, with an explosion behind you, obviously with you in your scanties again.

That's the way to fame !

@ Frog - that's great stuff. I won't even pretend to know enough about it, but there seems to be plenty of instruction and guidance available. Thank you.

Can I just ask: on the freeparking link, when I try out my new domain name (and check out the old one I haven't used or paid for for over 3 years) I get "invalid characters used". What does that mean?

@jahdo - lol. there's an easier and quicker way than that.... I could just go out and kill people et voila! Instant publication and as much publicity as I can take.

@ Frog - my old domain name is available when I do the Advanced Search - at the price you said for .co.uk., about $17 for 2 years on .com. I'd prefer the .com - or is that just a waste of money?

Thank you (and sorry to unleash all these questions on you).

cantata wrote:
A bit drastic, but then you are the talent, whatever.

cantata wrote:
The only valid characters in a domain name are 0-9 q-z and - minimum length 3 characters maximum 63 and the name may not start or end with a - . Have you entered a character that is outside those I have mentioned?

The .co.uk is good for geolocations specific so it is good for sites doing business in the UK market although it will still be indexed globally it may get less weight in results outside the UK.

The .com is widely recognised as an international domain and will be indexed as such, unless you provide a geolocation preference within a search engines webmaster administrator settings.

If you have a .com domain it falls under the jurisdiction of US law regardless of the country hosting the site or the market you serve. Things have been changing with respect to legal authority over domain/website ownership and as we all know the Americans make shit up as they go along so it's your call. We opted for a .co.uk domain for the SZ site, purely because of the insanity of the American legal system and their total disregard for international borders. That's also why we secured UK hosting. As it stands now if any aspect of the domain or site is managed or controlled by a business in America you are subject to their laws.

You will need to determine whether you would rather avoid American involvement or not.

The only characters I entered were normal English ones (three words - a flower and its colour and "Books") It came up and "invalid" on the quick search, but was available under the Advanced search.

I'll stick with .co.uk I don't want to be boarding in America. (No offence, dear American members!).

Thanks Frog.

YW,

You can actually build a site on the joomla demo which is cloud based and is accessible for upto 30 days. At the end of the term you have three options one let it drop, two pay for their service or three back up your site and move it elsewhere. If 30 days isn't long enough I think you can start a new trial although you may need to check their TOC for that. Provided you can start a new account you can restore a backup of the previous account. You can't break anything so you may as well just get stuck in and have a play with it. If you make a mess of things you can just rebuild the site and if you keep backups you can roll back to an earlier point.

If you decide to have a go send me a PM and I can send you some links to some extensions which will make things a little easier. There are also some free templates which you can take a look at.

If you follow any online examples and demos make sure that the information relates to Joomla 2.5 because it has some fundamental differences over previous versions and is actually much easier to use.

You may find this useful J2.5 Beginners Guide > PDF file 28Mb > HTML online version.

More information can be found here https://magazine.joomla.org/ > Forum > Community Site.

Enjoy

Hi, cantata! I know next to nothing about the technological side of things (I too regard my computer as a sort of super-typewriter !), but I was just wondering if it might be worth promoting your books via Twitter? Loads of authors do - I'm "following" quite a few of them at the mo and I even bought one of their books because it looked interesting!

I don't have a Kindle or e-reader yet, but I'm saving up for one. The romantic, old-fashioned side of me much prefers "proper" books - but I can see the advantages of a Kindle - one Regency romance author I want to try is currently only published on Kindle; plus, it has a "text to speech" facility which I think could be really useful.

Mandy

cantata wrote:
G'day Cantata.

I'm with you sunshine, "other related genres" doesn't 'cut the mustard'.

Wordsmith would be an appropriate title.

And it's awesome that you finished writing a manuscript, let alone having simply started out on such a project. Well done.

In tribute, here's something that I prepared earlier (around 13 years earlier ) ...

All the best in achieving your desires with your writing.

If you come up with a promo blurb for yourself and any of your work, please let me know and I will post it over in The Artist Within sub-forum at Infy. It mightn't be much traffic, though any is better than none.

@ Frog - thank you, again! Gawd, my brain is addled and I haven't even started yet. But what I'm thinking is that I'll register my domain name with freeparking (do I do thaty first?) then go with SZ, if novum and DG say okay. then I can plague you all with aquestions ad infinitum! Froggles.... er.... could you give me a list of TOTALLY mega baby-steps as to what I do, when you get the chance? Bearing in mind that I didn't know what "cpanel" meant and have only just learned what hmtl stood for. In pm or here - to suit yourself, when you get the chance - just in case anyone else wants to know about it.

Really, Many Thanks.

@Mandy, well, you should be getting your own work up and out there too, Missy. Like Starchildren and I were saying, now is the greatest time of freedom for every writer. Armoured amazon and Wake Up Bomb are also well published out there.

Did you know too that you can get loads of free romantic novels online:

www.free-online-novels.com/romance.html

www.publicbookshelf.com/

and the free mobipocket ebook reader to collect them in an ebook library:

www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/ProductDetailsReader.asp



@ IAAIM - thank you! What a lovely poem. Another talented writer. We're crawling out from under those reams of paper and taking over the world, hahahahaha... Well, SZ anyway! When I know my a from my e, I'll be back to take up your very kind offer. thank you. ANY publicity is good None bad or too small. Many thanks.