Catmachine

After a while the novelty of there being an Amazon page for my book began to wear off. It was no longer enough for me to browse to it and look adoringly at a page on which the spaces in the dynamic web template were filled by my own creation's meta-data. So I had self-published. How was I going to promote it? Even though it was now available in paperback and ebook, the thing wasn't going to sell itself. True, I had already been bothering all my online contacts via the social networks on a regular basis. Every few days or so I'd tweet a link and a plug at the alleged optimum time of 5pm - when Europe was clocking off, New York eating lunch and Los Angeles sipping their coffee as they prepared to face the day ahead. I'd set up a Facebook page for the book on which I posted rare photos and other goodies in an attempt to engage with my audience and hopefully encourage some of them to leave reviews on Amazon. I'd taken part in a Goodreads Giveaway which incre...

Self publishing has come a long way in a very short time. In the not too distant past it still bore the stigma of Vanity Publishing , a disparaging label casting aspersions on the motives and character of the author. But now? Now it's Print-On-Demand , the unspoken implication being that there is a demand out there for what you've written. These labels make all the difference to how the process is perceived and how seriously it is taken. But the major distinction is the way that the modern process works. You no longer have to shell out for hundreds of hard copies of a book that run the risk of ending up under the bed in ten years' time - in fact you no longer have to shell out for anything . All you need to make a book available is the ability to write one and the willingness to spend some time negotiating the twists and turns of an online administration process. As some of you may know (chiefly because I haven't shut up about it for the past six months) I have r...