Insecure about Indie Publishing?

Insecure Writer's Support Group is hosted by Alex Cavanaugh. It's a great idea, once a month we post about things that make writers insecure and offer advice and tips for overcoming those issues. 

Here's my insecurity. Sometimes I still feel awkward saying I'm an indie author. Not online, because here, we rock! But around the book shop circles and when I'm in writing workshops. At one seminar a speaker said don't bother self-publishing or no one will ever hear of your book. When you chat to people at workshops they almost always ask who you got to publish your book. There also seems to be an attitude that you only produce your own work if you can't land a publisher.

I didn't go lightly into indie publishing, I registered my business (Hot Doggy Digital Press), got my ABN and an EIN to avoid any tax problems (you need an EIN to get paid from Amazon if you're a non-US author here's a site with all the instructions). I put a lot of effort into my cover, studying popular releases, then I hired a professional to help pull it all together (Book Cover Cafe helped me produce the book). Read DIY Book Covers for some hints and tips. I accepted a lot of feedback on my story and worked on it until it felt right.

I'm fighting these feelings of insecurity. I'm proud of my debut novel, My Zombie Dog, and I'll be proud of the next few I publish too. One thing I've learned is readers don't care about the publisher, mostly it's just other writers who care.

There are steps I'm taking to lift the stigma of indie or self-published books. Let's face it, the standard needs to be lifted before the public's expectations will be lifted. I need to improve. I've made mistakes, but I'll be darned if I repeat those mistakes.

When I first uploaded my book to Kindle I was in too much of a hurry. The work had many errors. Lot of tense errors, typos. Took another three goes and a professional editor (again, Book Cover Cafe) to get it into the shape it's in now. 

I aim to be a darn good indie published author. 2013 will see me spending a lot more time reading and promoting other indie published writers as well. 

To start, here are some new releases from awesome blogger authors. I'll post some reviews soon, for now, just click on the cover to visit the Amazon site:

Fun kids book for Christmas

Amazing fantasy novel

Anthology of stories by awesome writers including Lynda Young

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Bookmarks as Promotional Tools

Designing bookmarks for the book - will have rounded corners when I'm done.

What a busy time it's been! My Zombie Dog ebook has been selling well on Amazon, and I'm now producing a paperback for the Australian market with help from The Book Cover Cafe. Exciting times. So, I've started thinking of different ways to promote the physical book. One popular idea is bookmarks.

Like most booky people, we love bookmarks in our house. Instead of giving birthday cards to their friends, my girls create bookmarks on the computer, print and laminate and usually finish off with a bit of ribbon through a hole in the top. These are usually treasured by the receiver. So, how do you do up bookmarks for your novel?

I had to play around with design. At first I tried putting the book cover at the top of the bookmark. I've seen this done before, but it didn't work well for me, the book looks too small. So instead, I put the title of the book on the front of the bookmark, and you don't have to stick to the traditional portrait direction (vertical), I went with a landscape (horizontal) look. I stuck with the same font as my ebook, because that's what will appear on the paperback book cover, plus I just love it. You can find out more about using fonts in this post: How to Font your Cover. I went with a bright purple background because it makes the font colour pop and... well, purple is magic.

You can design your bookmark in Photoshop, Word, almost any design program. I like to use InDesign and Photoshop. Before you start, you'll need to know what size your bookmark is. I've been a long time fan of Vistaprint, but sadly they don't do bookmarks (but if we all keep tweeting them about it, they might give in). I found this printer: Overnight Printing they print bookmarks and even provide a template for you to download.

If you go through a regular printer, you can choose your size. If you have a business that gets a lot of things printed up, you might be able to get them printed cheaply at the same time, because they are long and thin, they can be printed in the 'off cut' area.

If you only need a few to start with, you could always design them on your computer, print them yourself (you should be able to fit 4-5 to a page) cut them out and laminate. Home laminating machines are easy to get and quite cheap now, ours was under $20.

Back to the design; I also found too much text cluttered my bookmark. Now my novel is aimed at kids 8-13yrs (even though my readership seems to include a lot of grandparents), so that's another reason for me to keep it short and snappy. You want to make sure the design suits your genre. Mine is humour/horror, so I wanted a funny tagline. 

Some authors prefer to keep the back of their bookmark plain, so it gives them something to sign. It's a good idea, but I've decided to put the important details on the back. Here's some things you could include:

• Very short blurb, what's the book about?
• Testimonial from happy reader, or another author if you can get it.
• Who would like your book?
• Where can they buy your book? This is the most important.
• Where to find out more about the author and other books they may have, so a link to your website or blog. I chose my website, because my blog is aimed at writers, not really kids. I also have a QR code for my website, so if the kids scan it with a smart phone, it goes straight there.

Have fun with the design, something quirky is more likely to peak the interest of potential readers. You could play with shape, or try folded bookmarks with magnets... the only limit is your imagination! These will be great to hand out when you have book launches, or host a stall at a market/expo, or just when you meet people. And if you want to generate a QR code for your site, try: QR Stuff, it's easy, here' mine:

Do you have any other bookmark suggestions?

And it's that time again! Insecure Writer's Support Group - hope this post was supportive for you! You can find a lot more great posts by clicking on the picture and heading to Alex J Cavanaugh's site.

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