Book Reviews

Marketing Books Great News - I will be library stock! Not me exactly, but my work. I was delighted to hear from my local library this week that they were happy to purchase stock of my memoir Hurry up Nurse. I have to say that since publishing the kindle version last August, followed by the paperback in September I have been on a very steep learning curve. I don't know quite what I imagined would happen when I published the book - immediate best seller...............? I soon learned I knew nothing about marketing books. Marketing - a new lesson Suffice it to say that I hadn't anticipated the amount of work that goes into marketing a book once it's published. It is definitely like learning to drive - it all starts after you pass your test! Many reading this I am sure will relate to this, particularly if you have begun a self publishing journey. After the initial flurry of sales from friends and family died down, it was learn, learn, learn. I think my poor Facebook friends must have got sick to death of the sight of my book cover and I hope that they have forgiven me for going into overdrive! I know this article is about being stocked in a library but I just wanted to write down all of the ploys for marketing books I have had to learn along the way. Social Media - What's that? First of all there was social media! What? I need to create a separate Facebook page, twitter account, Pinterest, Google +, YouTube, blog, website! Are you kidding me? The reality is - yes to most of these but it doesn't have to happen all in one day. I think the first priority for me was to create a separate FB page…

Traditional Versus Self Publishing Most authors dream of being the next J.K. Rowling or even the modern day Jane Austen or Charles Dickens. However we look at it, life for the average author is tough to start with. I am speaking as if I have loads of experience........ Although I am a relatively new self published author, I do have the experience of being both traditionally and self published and so for this reason, I wanted to write this blog post. I also wanted to get it all down in writing while the whole self publishing thing is still fresh in my memory - it is important to capture the moment at my age! I didn't realise that there was a traditional versus self publishing argumentuntil I self published my own book. My traditionally published bookwas one I co-edited with a colleague and is a textbook. There was one shortcut I made during that route and that was that I didn't have to approach an agent as textbook editors still allow direct contact from would-be authors. I was able to ring the editor, talk through my proposal, get a go ahead and then jump through all the other hoops required, knowing that the book was highly likely to be accepted for publishing. In this article I thought I would like to consider the advantages and disadvantages to both forms of publishing as the publishing world has been taken by storm over the past few years by the whole Indie scene, mainly due to that ever growing phenomena called Amazon! Traditional Publishing Advantages Kudos - The first thing my friends asked me last year when I published my nurse memoir was who is the publisher? Even my oldest friends were less than encouraging (note I said oldest not best!)Agent - if you have an agent (and you have…