Next Tuesday, 29 March is a new milestone in my budding author career – I will be presenting to Melbourne Writer’s Group on the basics of self-publishing. If you happen to be in Melbourne, please feel free to come to Cafe Republic at 160 Toorak Rd, South Yarra at 6pm.
If you can’t make it due to the late notice and prohibitive costs of international travel, I’d love for you to have a look at my draft Prezi.
I would also love to get your comments and suggestions – it was really hard to come up with just the right amount of “how to self-publish” content for 30 minutes. The Prezi is meant to be a prompt, rather than a comprehensive guide, as I will be talking and showing live applications as people ask questions. I have plugged my blog several times, which I hope is ok, since I am speaking strictly from my experience. If you know of any other online “self-publishing in 30 minutes” guide, please let me know!
The workshop is aimed at people who have never published, but it would be great to hear from both not yet published and self-published writers. If you’ve self-published already – what were your main lessons learned? If you’ve never published – what scares you the most?
Wish me luck!
Ana Spoke, author 
Beautifully done! The graphics are great, the content is smooth and has a logical flow! Your personal blog links and examples are spot on and not self promoting… After all you’re giving a talk about how you did this!! On topic and informative. The graphics help give the interest to what could be lackluster information, and this sets you apart from others giving the same information! Great job!
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Thank you, Tamara 🙂 I will report on the feedback I get from the actual presentation. I hope it’s valuable, as it is 100% based on my experience and not rehashing of Internet posts. I had a weird experience not long ago, when I commented on somebody’s blog, where I thought there was a mistake on Kindle formatting suggestion – and the person said they didn’t know, cause they have actually never published themselves, just copied info from the web. Whaaa?
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Your presentation for the writer’s group was fantastic! Polished, informative and some really good tips were noted by us all. I hope you’ll take a tip from me and put together a booklet – or book! .. with marketing and promoting tips, links and how to be an effective Twit! (twitter use and promotions) ; )
Best regards – Amanda Burchell
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Thank you, Amanda! I definitely will do that in the future – the blog and any presentations I do are basically raw material for it. For now I really need to concentrate on the second book, which I plan to launch “properly” and blog about it and present to the group.
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What scares me the most is what people will think of my personal thoughts. I always try to write sincerely, and that is challenging because by publicising personal thoughts, one is opening themselves up to a lot of criticism which may be hurtful.
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Are you writing under your real name? Try writing under a pseudonym – I will confess, Ana Spoke is not my real name…not that my book is that controversial, it’s more so that I can keep my silly comedy writing separate from my very serious “official” day job. I’d hate for people to think that I’m as dumb as my protagonist…
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Very nice. Good luck.
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Thank you, Bryan 🙂
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Main lesson learned? You can edit a million times, and get someone else to edit a million times, or get 10 different people to edit a million times… there will still be at least one mistake, which a reader will spot. Don’t stress it, just change it,
Good luck!
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Thank you 🙂 Yeah, I had three editors and I can confirm this statement…
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Have you considered YouTube or Periscope to allow a wider audience for your talk?
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Never heard of Periscope, thank you! I thought about YouTube – i do have a channel where I post funny ads. Will look into turning this into a movie, thanks again 🙂
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Looks like a brilliant presentation. Well done!
Two comments:
1. Why bother with the agents first? This could lead to literally years of disappointment and frustration. You could start the self-publishing at the same time and then, IF you get a tempting deal from an agent, unpublish. Also the fact that you are confident enough to go it on your own might persuade an agent that you are serious.
2. Add a box about the huge advantage of seeing your own sales (and or lack of) on a daily or even hourly basis. If you get a publisher’s deal you will be lucky to see your sales figures once a year, if at all.
Good luck! I love the angry birds theme!
Tim
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Thank you, Tim! I could not agree with you more on the agents – perhaps I will put a very last box with the main theme or something. The reason I’d put it up front is that I think most newbies think you need an agent and that’s exactly what I did – wasted 6 months on 70 applications to agents and directly to publishers. If nothing else, I want to convey to people that for a new author, self-publishing is the most viable way these days.
Oh, and how do I love the sales graphs! I will put a snapshot it 🙂
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This is brilliant. Inventive and well-structured with excellent content (but not too much so everyone is reading the slides rather than listening to you!).
Good luck for your presentation. I’m sure it’ll be a great success 🙂
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Oh, thank you, Claire – I’m strangely worried about it. I’ve presented bazillion times for work and study, yet each time it’s a new flush of adrenaline…this will be my first presentation ever on self-publishing, so it’s like going to the woods for the first time. Hope the bears are friendly.
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Well-rounded overview
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Thank you, Michael 🙂
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I think this presentation is really, really good. You might want to mention booklinker (mybook.to), since as you know, getting people to the right store for your Kindle edition is a nightmare without it.
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Good idea, thank you!
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Great presentation!
I have self-published two novels. I wish I had create a comprehensive marketing plan. I thought social media and blogging would be a big part of promoting my books and I’d figure out the rest as I went along. If I had created a marketing plan, I think I would have been more focused, especially when life happened (full time job, family and the just unexpected).
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Thank you 🙂 congratulations on learning from experience – I’m about to publish my second book, and I will be doing a lot of things differently this time, too!
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This is fantastic. I love it. Definitely put special emphasis on no Twitter DMs. I am so, so sick and tired of them!
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Thank you! I will. I don’t know why people still do that – has to be an evil guide out there somewhere 🙂
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I wish I could go. I used to have a good friend who lived in Menniyen on the Gippsland hwy. I lost contact 15 years ago. It would be nice to go see your presentation. You are a natural. You will be ready to jump up there and start presenting. It would be nice if you could record some on a phone and let us hear your voice and see a little of the speech.
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Thank you for the suggestion! I will tape it and post on Youtube. Good exercise for me too – to see how I come across.
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Looks great you’ll do fine. How do you wish author’s luck…break a pen?
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Haha! Awesome, thank you 🙂
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Good luck with your presentation – I’d come, but it’s a bit far for me to travel these days (though I used to live on Toorak Rd a long long time ago) 🙂
Hope it goes really well, and I think you’ve covered everything nicely.
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Thank you, Helen – I’m now thinking of taping the presentation and posting it on YouTube
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Sounds like a great idea – I’m sure there’d be plenty of us keen to watch 🙂
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Great graphic! Good luck. I’d come but it’s way too far for me 🙂 I can’t wait to hear how it goes.
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Thank you 🙂 I’m thinking about taping it…
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You’re welcome. Awesome! I’d love to see that 🙂
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This looks great, Ana. I’m so sorry to be missing your actual presentation. Hope it all goes well.
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That’s a great visual aid to go with your presentation (and some solid content as well). Knock em dead…er…no… continue to be incredibly open with your process and supportive of others chasing the dream and good luck!
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Thank you so much, Allie 🙂
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You’ve already done your presentation, and I know it went well, how could it not??? Thanks for sharing it, it was really well-done. Best wishes, from Texas, for your continued success with Shizzle. You rock!! XO
Donna O’Klock donnaoklock@gmail.com cell: 512.825.9088 http://www.sexypast60.com
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Thank you so much, Dinna! It went great, even better than I expected – but in my nervous state, I forgot to video it! The good news is that it was booked out, so I will be doing another one in 4 weeks and will make sure to tape that one!
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Hi Zhanna, Matthew here. I really enjoyed your presentation. Thanks for sharing your ongoing journey with us.
Really loved your energy and passion for the whole process including the marketing! I especially found your advice when we were chatting about creating buzz before launching very pertinent.
Cheers and good luck with current & future projects, would love to stay in touch!
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Thank you so much, Matthew! I really enjoyed doing the presentation – talk about a buzz! I was practically flying high for hours later. So glad you’ve found my blog – I’m about to start the whole launch process for my sequel, so will blog about it and hopefully present again.
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This is great. Glad the presentation went well. I am hoping to self publish by the end of the year…so your blog is a minefield of information.
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Great to hear that, Deb! I’m gearing up to pre-release my second, hope it goes even better – you will be able to see if pre-releasing is worth it.
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Great! If you want to raise awareness and sell more copies of any books created through smaller publishers, go to http://www.storytelleralley.com/users/emilyw to send it in for us to review! If we like it, we’ll sell it for you! 🙂
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It is amazing how many people are interested in self publishing. I’ve done two presentations this year with one more early next year. I was expecting only a few people to turn up, but we filled the room on the first one (just under 50 souls). I’ve self published 9 books so far and I have the scars to prove it. Great to see so many people wanting to give it a go. Terry.
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Yes, I was amazed too – I did mine through a local writer’s group and had to do two, because the room would only hold 20, and I’ve only published 2 books. Most were at the level of wishing and not knowing where to start, and the other category was “published but not selling”.
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