My Blog
My musings about the world, self publishing, living abroad, and my author career.
Self publishing 22: timing & rapid release
Once you have a plan to release a book, or a book series, you then need to think about the timing of those releases. Both in terms of when during the year you publish it, and also how quickly after each other you can publish the other books in your series.Best months...
2020 effort analysis
This post is probably more for me than anyone else, but this is a follow up to last year's post looking at what I achieved in 2019. Now looking at 2020!In 2020 I wrote more words than in the previous three years combined. I also logged three times more hours worked...
Dragon Shift & Dragon’s Heir
I did it! I published Dragon Shift! I am now a novelist! I have been talking about writing stories and jotting down notes of ideas for stories for so long that there is a sense if relief now that my first novel is published. And people have bought it! That is also...
Self-publishing 21: pricing
For the next post in my series on self-publishing I am talking about pricing. I will be looking solely at purchase price and will not be considering Kindle Unlimited or methods for maximising page reads. I am a wide author and so page reads are not something I'm...
deja vu
A new year, a new start, and a new lockdown? It feels like we've already done this.Shouldn't we be further on? And yet we are back home schooling, with limited chances to see anyone beyond the four of us, and most shops shut. Now, while I understand and completely...
Annual review 2020
A year ago I set myself the target to publish at least my dragon shifter book this year. I also choose Focus as my word of the year, and wanted especially to apply that to routines, words, clearing, and togetherness. Well, this year was not the year that most of us...
Dragon Shift – about to publish!
Dragon Shift - the first book in my epic fantasy series about shifters, magic and finding yourself - is about to publish. So as an exclusive for my blog readers, here is the first chapter. Chapter One Music chased itself through the trees. Sounds of a flute and a...
Self-publishing 20: copyright
Copyright is a complicated subject, and this shouldn't be taken as legal advice. There have been a few high shock stories making the rounds of indie authors where books have been plagiarised and put for sale by someone else. For many the idea of their work being...
More thoughts from abroad
The year is coming to a close and on a day to day basis the coronavirus isn't affecting us much anymore (touch wood). We have learnt to live with the restrictions and mostly remember to wear masks when we go shopping. Schools are still open and the amazing technology...
self-publishing 19: front & back matter
Your front and back matter are all the pages you put in your book that aren't the text of the book itself. These are different for ebooks and printed books, so you need different versions of them for each type of format you are creating. At the front of the book you...
A new look!
If you are a regular reader then you will no doubt have noticed that I have updated the theme on my blog, so that it is a bit sleeker. It is the latest in a series of steps to make my blog more of a website with a blog attached, as I have more static content and as I...
Self publishing 18: formatting
For my next instalment of this series on self-publishing I am going to look at formatting. Once you have your manuscript finished, edited, proof-read and polished to perfection you then need to make it look as good as it can for publishing. And you need to choose if...