WHICH WAY NOW?

I am struggling with a dilemma about my future as an author.

Basically there are two ways of being published.

THE OLD WAY

1. You write a book.
2. You find an agent to represent you.
3. The agent persuades a publishing house to publish you.
4. You get an advance. Your agent takes a cut.
5. After much rewriting/ time your book is published for you.
6. You may or may not receive any more money depending on sales. Your agent gets a cut.
7. You get the might of the Marketing Department at the publishers for about a week.
8. You market your book yourself.
9. You may or may not get another deal.

THE NEW WAY

1. You write a book.
2. You pay to get it edited, to get a book cover done etc. You make all the decisions.
3. You publish it.
4. You set your own price and can change it to suit your purposes.
5. You are in charge of how it is marketed.
6. You can change anything about it at any time.
7. You can publish another book whenever you like.

Gone are the days the vanity self-publisher. Buying from an Indie Author is like going to a Farmer's market, drinking craft ale, enjoying artisan bread, picking up presents from Not on the High Street. You are dealing direct with the craftsperson. The Indie Author world is massive, complicated and potentially worth a fortune. Indie authors with back catalogues of a handful of books in a popular genre are making a decent living. The Author Earnings Report is hot off the press and makes very interesting reading.

It looks like a no brainer, doesn't it? Publish digitally across the globe, make royalties of 70% on everything you sell and retain complete control.

But today I heard best selling Author Entrepreneur Mark Dawson in a podcast. He was talking about his much hailed course on Facebook advertising. (You may have seen all the publicity about his protege Adam Croft who will clear £1,000,000 this year.) The key, he said, is to keep 'churning out the books'.

And with that sentence he summed up my dilemma. I have read a lot of these highly popular and successful books. Undoubtedly people like to read them and they sell. But they're not very good. They are, as the man said, 'churned out'.

I can do that ( although I'm not saying they would sell). I can write fast and turn things around quickly but do I want to? Deep sigh.

What about a hybrid? Really good books published the new way with author control. Maybe there are some and I just haven't found them yet.

Or maybe I could do both.....

What do you think? All advice gratefully received.

Imogen.

PINNING DOWN NEW BEHAVIOURS

I'm ONE WEEK into my new life as a writer.

Of course, in the way of these things, week one was school half term so establishing a pattern of behaviour proved to be even more challenging than usual. I did my best - although I do have to accept that my best wasn't fab.

Starting new stuff and getting it to stick is hard so I decided I needed some help. I could happily spend several months reading and listening to all the great stuff that is out there on the subject but that's time that I should be spending writing/ learning about publishing so I've tried to sidestep that avenue.

So I've gone back to my comfort zone - paper diaries. I bought one. In fact, I've bought several over the last few months trying to find one that did what I needed it to do. In fact I now have a whole shelf of diaries/journals that just didn't quite work for me!

But this one that does - so far. It has space to fill in what you should be doing all day long with sections for goals, wins, stuff that went really badly and what you've learned that day. I can also tick off all the daily challenges that I have going as well which is great. I like a tick!

And so far so good. If nothing else, I'm learning what works for me, what is slowing me down and what is so excruciating unrealistic that I'm slightly embarrassed to have ever written it down in the first place. Consequently, the picture beneath shows a blank page. I'm not ready to revel the contents to the world just yet. But hey...I have to start somewhere.

This is WEEK TWO, the children are back at school, the house is quiet, I have the full broadband width to myself and the sun is shining. It's looking good.

Imogen.

BOOK LAUNCHES FOR BEGINNERS

So I've been a full time author for less than a week and already I have a book ready to go! Quick work huh?

Actually, that's not true. The second Lucinda Fox book has been written for a couple of months now and I've just been waiting to have the time to spend on promoting it. And now that time is here so I've been doing some research.

Have you ever tried putting 'How to launch your novel?' into google? I wouldn't recommend it. You get 5,200,000 results in 0.51 seconds. It's a little bit overwhelming to be perfectly frank. But fear not. It's not all that complicated. A successful book launch boils down to a few simple principles.

1. Tell your target audience about your great new book.

2. Encourage them to buy it.

There! How hard can that be?

Well, if the sales figures for the first one are anything to go by then it is actually quite tricky. People seem to like the book - the reviews are great and almost all the feedback has been really positive. So it seems that if I can get girls between about 11 and 14 and their purse-wielding parents to find the book then I'm on to a winner.

So for book two, Reality Bites, I'm going to try a bit harder. I'll not tell you all my ideas yet but there are lots of them. It's all very exciting/scary depending on which way out I'm feeling.

I think what I really need to do is a soft launch so that I can get some reviews under my belt before I start pushing it properly. This should ensure that I get Amazon's algorithms on my side -this is important I gather.

Here's where it starts to get tricky. To achieve this, I'm going to need some volunteers from amongst my loyal supporters. (That's you!)  Here's what you'd need to do as part of Team Fox. (Insert cool fox logo as designed by Claire Pickles.)

1. On a prompt from me, download the kindle version of Reality Bites for 99p on the QT. You have to do this so Amazon knows you're a real person and not me just pretending. ( I know that this means that you are basically paying to do me a favour but I'll give it you £1 back when I see you so really you'll be quids in!)

2. Read it - it's less than 300 pages and it's really not hard going at all. You could read it on your phone whilst you queue for your morning latte or on the train on the way to work.

3. Leave a review on Amazon - preferably a nice one but any reviews are better than none and honest criticism is the most valuable.

4. Get that lovely warm feeling that comes from helping someone out.
(Ok that last one is a bit much but you get the idea.)

I'm hoping to launch the book at the start of the summer holidays so I'm looking for reasonably speedy volunteer readers who might have the time at the beginning of July.

So if you think this sounds fun and you fancy helping out then either comment below or send a message on the Facebook page and I'll add your name to my list.

I'm beginning to think that this book launch business might be quite good fun!

Imogen.