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Advice / help and tutorials / Quick Guides / self publishing / Self Publishing Step by Step / writing / Writing tips and tricks
by Valerie Douglas · Published January 15, 2016 · Last modified April 18, 2018
Write a good book and finish it. Do not even consider self-publishing until it’s finished, with good cover art and editing. Write at least two and up to five more books before releasing Book One, even if it’s in another genre – nothing sells Book One like Book Two, Three, etc. Give the first book to beta readers for evaluation – give them a time to return it to you with their critiques/evaluation. Hire an...
by Valerie Douglas · Published December 23, 2015 · Last modified April 18, 2018
When you first met one of your best friends, did you know everything there was to know about them? Of course not. Sometimes becoming friends is instantaneous, something about them tells you that you just know somehow that you’ll like them. Maybe it’s the easy way they have about them, or the direct way they look at you, the way they’re comfortable in their own skin – or not. Sometimes you’re wrong, or the gears...
Advice / help and tutorials / Promotion / social media
by Valerie Douglas · Published December 23, 2015
First, remember that Pinterest is not a promotion or sale site, it’s simply another social media site except that it’s geared around pictures. For a writer, a Pinterest page allows readers to get to know the writer as a person, as well as your work. Your goal with Pinterest is to engage readers. So, with that in mind: Create a Pinterest page for you as a writer. Not your book or books, but something like John...
Advice / help and tutorials / News and views / self publishing / Self Publishing Step by Step
by Valerie Douglas · Published August 7, 2015
First, read. Read a lot. (Stephen King, paraphrased – “if you don’t have time to read, you can’t write.”) Reading will teach you how to write, how to write well, and how to write compelling characters. Corollary – read the genre you’re writing in, that will teach you the ins and outs of that genre, and it may inspire a story. Second, are you a pantser or a plotter? If you’ve tried to write several books but...
Advice / Community / Featured / help and tutorials / Promotion / self publishing / Self Publishing Step by Step / Uncategorized / writing / Writing tips and tricks
by Valerie Douglas · Published July 3, 2015
I n all honesty I suspect that Scribd found the path of least resistance in their romance/erotica decision. (Witness the petitions to Jeff Bezos/Amazon asking him to change the review policy.) The truth of the matter is likely to be a more harsh reality – a lot of romance/erotica readers were downloading books, finding them to be dreck and so they didn’t finish them, they just deleted them off their e-readers and went onto the next....
Advice / help and tutorials / News and views / Quick Guides / self publishing / Two Midlist Indies / writing / Writing tips and tricks
by Valerie Douglas · Published April 13, 2015 · Last modified July 31, 2019
First, readers love series/sequels. However, the next book in any series should always be a standalone book, that is unless you really want to annoy your readers. And you should only write it because you have more to say, because you like the world in which you wrote it, or because you love the characters so much that you want to spend more time with them. Because if you did, your readers probably will, too. If...
Advice / help and tutorials / op-eds
by Valerie Douglas · Published March 26, 2015 · Last modified March 28, 2015
“If you don’t have the time to read you don’t have the time (or tools) to write, it’s as simple as that” – Stephen King “You can’t write well what you don’t read for pleasure. If it doesn’t entertain you, it’s not going to entertain anyone else” – Nora Roberts I was reading a blog the other day and I was appalled at the errors. The writer didn’t seem to know the difference between ‘steal’...
Advice / op-eds / self publishing / writing
by Valerie Douglas · Published March 26, 2015 · Last modified March 27, 2015
Lately, there have been a lot of writers crying the blues about their books – “I’m promoting like mad, but no one is downloading my book,” or “I can’t get any reviews,” or “Someone gave me a bad one-star review.” Oh, gee, I say as I search for it on the interwebz, I’m so sorry. My books are selling, but 1. I promote judiciously and 2. I follow the standard maxim – Nothing sells Book One like...
Advice / Articles of note / Community / Featured / Features and interviews / Two Midlist Indies / writing
by Valerie Douglas · Published February 9, 2015 · Last modified January 5, 2021
EXTRA, EXTRA! The Indie Author Group has won a Preditors and Editors award! We were voted BEST DISCUSSION FORUM, 2014! (we’ve since gone on to win, or place in the top three every year). And while we’re here – would you like to join some new writer’s groups? Our main writers groups are our closed one – Indie Author Group Our open group is smaller, but just as friendly – Indie Author Writing Group On...
Advice / Featured / help and tutorials / News and views / op-eds / Promotion / self publishing / Self Publishing Step by Step / social media / Uncategorized / Writing tips and tricks
by Valerie Douglas · Published September 10, 2014 · Last modified May 7, 2017
Yes, it really did need two posts! There was a LOT of information! I was getting overwhelmed, so if I misrepresent things, forgive me! Hunter Boyle spoke about using e-mail to keep in contact with your fans and to build your fan base. He also advocated setting higher expectations, creating e-mail connections with the offer of a freebie. Create a compelling call to action – i.e. Sign up now to receive a free excerpt or...
Pen names are an effective way to separate out your different genres and your writings. It is also a good way to build up different fan bases for different genres of writing (but only if you need to separate them). … Continued
Kindle Unlimited, if you are a reader or writer is a scheme that has been designed to give another way to enjoy books as a reader, and as an author, another possible stream of income.If you’d like to sign up … Continued
The KENP is the pool available and the worth of each page read on any books registered AND read in the Kindle Unlimited pool of reads.Reads can make up a substantial amount of your income or it can be nothing. … Continued
An ASIN is an Amazon Standard Identification Number and in many cases, it’s what most people use to publish their books, rather than an ISBN, as it’s free. The ASIN is the main way Ebooks are catalogued on Amazon. A … Continued
An ISBN is a unique identifier attached to your books, which you purchase from Bowker. This unique identifier is most often seen on print books and is how your barcode is formed, though it also allows listing, purchase in shops … Continued
DRM or Digital Rights Management is an item that many platforms might offer to ‘protect’ your eBooks. In reality, DRM often only frustrates readers, and is easy to break by pirates. DRM is not recommended as it’s not a good … Continued
KDP Select is Amazon’s exclusive publishing platform. In exchange for making your book exclusively available to only Amazon in Ebook format, you get the right to promote and use other exclusive tools – it is the only way to access … Continued
CreateSpace has been discontinued and rolled into the same dashboard as your ebooks, and is now called KDP Print.CreateSpace used to distribute Amazon-printed books, so that’s now been integrated into the same board as Kindle Direct Publishing, which you can … Continued
Amazon’s X-Ray uses the power of the net, and crowdsources (usually from Wikipedia or you can write your own custom descriptions) the answers to terms and difficult points in your book. X-Ray can be found in the KDP dashboard, and … Continued
One of the last prep things that most people ask to do is how they should remove two spaces and have only one between sentences. While people will sometimes say it doesn’t matter, if you want to, in Word, you use … Continued
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Valerie Douglas's novels reflect her eclectic tastes. A fan of almost every genre, she writes high, classic and historical fantasy, thrillers, and romance and, as V.J. Devereaux, erotic romance. Happily married to the best husband in the world (she says), she's companion to two coonhounds, four beloved cats and an African clawed frog who delights in tormenting Pi and Tango from the safety of his tank.
Hi guys! It’s a whole new year, and we’re planning all sorts of good things for you, but today, I wanted to touch on goals. Back to… Today seems to be the day for us to all be back at ‘work/writing/life’. The holidays, however, they were, are over and I’m on the fence about whether to goal or not to goal. I do, but I know others on the team don’t, so I thought I’d...
Well, the team have spoken, we’re updating the site, and there’s a lot of fun changes coming up.I thought today though, I’d share some of our best bits on the site. Resources for miles At the core of things at the Indie Author Group is our mission statement. Both Valerie Douglas and I felt, early on, supported by the rest of the team, that a safe space to get advice as an indie author. We...
I’m not sure if many of you know, but one of our driving forces, a founder, and an amazing indie writer, is celebrating her birthday, during lockdown. She’s not able to be with the people that care for her, so I thought, well, we’re a community that wouldn’t exist without her, so why don’t we stand in for her family.Please join me in wishing the AMAZING Valerie Douglas a very happy birthday. If you like,...
Happy birthday to the Indie Author Group. Founded just as the trend of self-publishing took off by Valerie Douglas, and her co-founder Kai Viola, we are a vibrant team of writers and artists that look after one of the oldest communities for self-publishing and hybrid publishing on the Facebook.It’s our birthday today! We’ll be celebrating next week though, so watch the blog, group and page! (or the blog page!)To celebrate our 9th birthday, we’ll be...
Today is National Sci-Fi day, and while we’re not on Sci-fi this month (that’s later in the year) as our featured support genre, for advice Mondays, I thought I’d share a bit of a thought experiment. First though… We’re a nation – or half of one – proud of our ignorance https://t.co/3I5AMHu7Ia — Valerie Douglas #fantasy #thriller #romance (@ValerieDouglasA) January 2, 2020 Today would be Issac’s 100th birthday, and there’s little denying the impact he...
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Valerie Douglas