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I've noticed that there are a few posts by people about to publish their work and thought it would be nice to have a thread dedicated to promoting that work or just sharing tips about how they've done it.

 

So has anyone got a book out there? Post details here for other forummers to check it out.

 

I'm self-publishing in a few months too so will be back to promote it.

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Good evening Sarah, I have an ebook that is currently available for download. The site that it is on is FREE to join and they take a percentage of the royalties for the book. At £1.99 per download and paid securely through paypal, I would recommend this site to anyone.

 

My book is called 'Herald of Freedom' and is a humour novel set aboard a 16th Century Galleon owned by the King of England. The Herald of Freedom is the name of the ship and she sits proud in the Southern dock of England. Her Captain, Cecil Carter turns up and instructs the crew to board up. As they pass him one by one, he quickly realises that the crew are not really the most appropriate to be aboard His Majesties ship. A cross eyed lookout called 'Chipper' is on board, Captains first mate Blaze, who set fire to his last ship after smoking a cigarette also joins the crew. Then we meet Chopper Harris, the fastest and most dangerous swordsman in all England, but even he is a little out of sorts. I hope that you get the idea, things go from bad to worse as soon as the ship sets sail. Here is the link for all those who wish to take a look. You can either download a trial chapter for FREE or download the whole manuscript for £1.99.

 

http://www.iwritereadrate.com/books/view/156

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Sarah,

We've been in touch before. My first attempt at a book is about to be printed. I'm taking pre-orders now to try and get an idea of how many to order.

 

http://www.deathoftheregular.com

 

will let you know how I get on.

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Good work guys! Good luck with it.

 

I'm still proof-reading mine and getting really fed up with it!!

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Hello all

 

I've not been around here much lately and that's because I've been both typing up my novella for publication as a blog and preparing some short stories for publication on Amazon.

 

Both are up and running now: here's the links:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seven-Stories-Hills-ebook/dp/B008FIBX82/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1340925132&sr=1-1

 

http://dearmrbetjeman.blogspot.co.uk/

 

I was interested to see this thread as now I'm wondering what to do regarding publicising these. I have another blog - The History Usherette - which seems quite popular as I get around 50 hits a day on it - mainly from the US. I've publicised the short story book on this blog but no takers from there so far. The only sales I've made have been through my Twitter followers - I now have about 290 followers so it has been worth spending time building that up and making contact with people on there. But its early days yet - I only published last week.

 

So I'd welcome a discussion on how to publicise your work. Obviously social media is the big thing - has anyone tried anything else other than Twitter? Has anyone printed advertising flyers or taken out ads anywhere? Ideas and good/bad experiences welcome!

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I use Twitter, Facebook and have a blog, but I'm not super popular like some of the writers out there who seem to attract lots of people to their blog.

 

What I'm doing at the moment is sending advanced review copies of my book to blog reviewers in the hope that they'll write a decent review around the time of my release and link it back to my book. Many of these reviewers post their reviews on your Goodreads page, amazon, barnes and noble etc.

 

Oh, yeah, that's another good one. I would set up a Goodreads page for your book and you as an author. You can add people as friends and then try and get people to put your book on their shelf, write a review etc.

 

Other things people do are blog tours. I've not done this so I'm not sure how it works or how effective it is but it involves a group of bloggers agreeing to host your book and then moving on to the next blog and so on. Most of these seem to be guest posts where you write them a post about your book and they put it on the blog. There are ARC tours too, where the bloggers will review your advanced review copy and then move it onto the next blogger.

 

There's also something called a blogroll - not entirely sure what that is but they talk about it a lot on absolute write and kindleboards!

 

With blog reviewers I've found it quite hard to find people who will review a self-published e-book. If you google book bloggers directory you should find a list and then it's a matter of going through them and reading the review policies which is really time-consuming.

 

As for advertising - I've not tried this yet. Some blogs sell advertising space. Then there's facebook but I've heard it's not great and very expensive.

 

Oh, and whilst on the subject of blogs - a lot of review sites do book giveaways. So you could provide them with say a signed copy and a bookmark and they hold a competition - a great way to drum up a bit of interest.

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I'd never heard of Goodreads before - so thanks Sarah for introducing me to that. There also seems to be a creative writing forum on there where you can post examples of your work and link to websites. I'm still finding my way around - there's a lot to do on there - but it looks like a good site.

 

Update: I've put an extract from my Seven Stories from the Seven Hills book on my page. Here it is:

http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/307208-seven-stories-from-the-seven-hills

Edited by Lady Agatha
Update

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Lady Agatha - what's your username? I'll add you as my friend!

 

I'm just Sarah Dalton.

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We're already friends on there Sarah! I'm the other Sarah - I think we connected via Twitter.

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I have self published a couple of books, Blades' Days Out and Blades on Tour, surprisingly they are both about Sheffield United.

 

My books are aimed at a different market to the type of books being discussed on this thread but hopefully some of the selling ideas I've used might be helpful.

 

My current book, Blades on Tour, is available on the internet on my own website http://www.bladesbooks.com (any future books, by me or other authors relating to United, I'm hoping to have available on here), ebay and amazon.

 

The book is also available at shops around Sheffield - HMV and Waterstones are stocking them, and are very good with local self published books. With Waterstones it's best to have an ISBN. I also have them available at a newsagent in Crystal Peaks. I've initially aimed for all the big shopping areas in the city. I'm hoping to get them in book shops slightly further afield (Rotherham, Retford, Bakewell, Matlock) in the near future.

 

I have tried the major super markets but have found it quite difficult to speak to the appropriate person. WH Smiths were simply not interested in taking it. One person has the final say over all stores in the region and she didn't want to take it.

 

My first book, Blades' Days Out, I got publicity via the club programme, Green Un, Sheffield Telegraph, Image magazine, Flashing Blade (fanzine) and on the internet through posting threads on fans' forums and feature-competitions on United (fan) websites.

 

I've tried plugging the books on Facebook and Twitter but probably haven't fully utilised this area.

 

Hope some of the above is helpful.

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Thanks Andy.

 

I'd wondered about approaching local shops as well but because I'm using a print on demand service I'm not sure how I can do it and still see the profits.

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