Resources

Books on Writing, Publishing, and Marketing - Your Own Books

Writing, Publishing, and Marketing your own book can be accomplished simply.

"My muse made me do it."

Famous last words.

However, this is the recurring theme - not just with my own writing - but with a continuing stream of authors, both great and small, who are able to simply and regularly trot out new works and/or revisions.

That's my conclusion after researching how writers write.

On this page I've collected up all the books I have written, edited, published, and generally made available for you and anyone you know who is remotely interested in writing up that story inside them (and finally shutting up that yapping, nagging muse.)

There are a few tools I have yet to float up from my research files, as well as old classics which need to be revived into these new-fangled ebook formats.

Here's the list of what I have on offer currently:

How to Become an Instant Author in 30 Seconds

Learn these two statements:

“Act as though it were impossible to fail.”
Dorothea Brande

“We become what we think about.”
Earl Nightingale

Once you've internalized those two statements, you have just become as successful author and writer as you want to be.

It might take you 30 seconds, a few days, a week, month, or a lifetime. However, from here on out, you are a writer. The rest of it is just SBIC – Sit Butt in Chair.

Because that is the life of inspired writing, and also the hard-earned craft of writing.

In this book, I lay out approaches to all the various genres you can write in. The excerpts here are interviews I've done and parts of books which were published otherwise.

ebook:

Also now available as a trade paperback.

Just Publish! Ebook Creation for Indie Authors

You probably have a story inside you that's just busting to get out. Most people do.

And the premise for here is that you don't have to buy or pay for anything in order to get your story written, published, and selling online.

Learn the 3 Parts to eBook Publishing

1. How to write a book - painlessly, effortlessly, earning the satisfaction and pride you deserve.
2. How to publish your book - without the costs and delays recommended by the current "experts".
3. How to sell a book online - make your book discoverable and sell, not only on Amazon, but on iBookstore, B&N, Kobo, and everywhere else.

And all for no more than you already have at hand.

ebook:

J'APE – Just Another Publicity Excuse

The Problem With Self Publishing on Amazon is You Need to Know the “Secret”

And that secret is: "You Need to Be A Celebrity To Succeed At Anything".

This parody is a sarcastic look at how you can be an "overnight" success - by making it impossible for anyone else to succeed as you set the bar astronomically high.

Learn the 3 Parts to *Real* eBook Publishing
1. How to write a book - real quick, shallow, ghost-written.
2. How to publish your book - hire someone to do it for cheap, like putting their name on the cover.
3. How to sell a book online - using your devoted, Kool-Aid-drinking fan-base to suck-up and give you fake 5-star reviews without having read the book.

Obviously, this is a work of satire and has nothing to do with the real world. And any resemblance to a currently successful bestseller is just a happy coincidence. (Right.)

free ebook - instant download:

Becoming the Fiction Storyteller ofYour Dreams

Learn to write and tell stories that keep your readers begging for more.

This new version combines the classic works of Dorothea Brande (Becoming A Writer) with Marie Shedlock (The Art of the Story-Teller).

Together, they address the underlying issues all fiction writers have - how to routinely write stories which are riveting to the reader and keep them coming back for the next installment.

ebook:

Also available as a Trade Paperback.

Mystery Story Technique for Writers

Do you love mystery stories, such as the Sherlock Holmes stories and those of Edgar Allan Poe and Agatha Christie? Do you ever yearn to be a good writer of mysteries?

This is virtually a miniature course in creative writing of the mystery story.

Originally published in 1913, this was the first full-length book in English about mystery and detective fiction. Still valuable as an instruction manual after almost a century, its historical interest is as immense.

Wells' wisdom and critical acumen brought to this volume has enabled millions of mystery writers world-wide to discover and dissect what makes a successful mystery story.

Carolyn Wells wrote a total of more than 170 books. Among the most famous of her mystery novels were the Fleming Stone Detective Stories

ebook:

More Resources for Authors:

Additional References:

Cover sizes article - Mark Coker, Smashwords
Key tip:

"Regardless of how they appear on the cover, title and subtitle must be correctly capitalized. The first letter of all words in the title and subtitle should be capitalized, except for the following words: a, an, and, for, from, of, or, the, to. The first and last word of the title and subtitle should always be capitalized."

Book Industry Study Group (BISG) Categories List
"Character Entity References" (Amazon html code in descriptions.)
Improve Your English - Oxford Dictionaries
Share Buttons for inside your ebook...

Online Tools and Useful Sites:

Google's Adwords Keyword Discovery Tool
Market Samurai
Market Samurai Training "Dojo"
Perry Marshall (site)
Copyblogger (site)
Problogger (site)

Videos:

How to use 4 free tools (LibreOffice, GIMP, Sigil, Calibre) to create your ebooks from a text document:

Those described tools (with download links):

LibreOffice (a version of Openoffice) - reads and can save as Word documents.
a plug-in for this called "Writer2Epub" to make epubs directly
Sigil – tweaks and checks your epubs
Calibre – builds a library for your ebooks and holds metadata
and GIMP to make covers.

Resources

Books on Writing, Publishing, and Marketing - Your Own Books

How to Become an Instant Author in 30 Seconds