Angela Booth's Writing Blog

Writing Fiction And Story Length: How Many Words?

In today’s world, length doesn’t matter

How long or short your fiction happens to be doesn’t matter in today’s world. No one’s chopping down forests of trees for your Kindle ebooks, after all. KENPC may or may not matter to you, again, depending on the genre in which you write.

That said, readers have expectations. So let’s say that you’re writing in a genre which is new to you. How do you know how many words to write?

via www.justwriteabook.com

Writing Fiction: 5 Tips To Develop A Profitable Writing Income

Four authors in our writers’ group have recently made the switch to writing fiction full-time, and we were all curious about how they did it.

Writing fiction for money: set your income goals

All four authors focused on their income goals. Three waited to quit their day jobs until their income from writing fiction surpassed their work income.

Not only did they set an income goal that they had to achieve before they quit full-time employment, they’ve also got strict income goals for this year, and for the next two years.

via peneloperedmont.com

Writing Fiction: 5 Tips To Develop A Profitable Writing Income

Four authors in our writers’ group have recently made the switch to writing fiction full-time, and we were all curious about how they did it.

Writing fiction for money: set your income goals

All four authors focused on their income goals. Three waited to quit their day jobs until their income from writing fiction surpassed their work income.

Not only did they set an income goal that they had to achieve before they quit full-time employment, they’ve also got strict income goals for this year, and for the next two years.

via peneloperedmont.com

Self-Publishing: How To Cope With Indie Author Stress

Until 2012, ebooks were new. Indie authors sold because in many popular categories and genres, the cupboard was bare, so to speak. Readers had few choices, so indies made sales by pricing low, and publishing frequently in those popular categories/ genres. Some authors scored enormous paydays; millions of dollars annually.

That got the attention of mainstream publishers, naturally enough.

Those mainstream publishers have now had over three years to take indie authors’ strategies and make them their own. Many indies have left self-publishing because they can’t cope. Simple marketing strategies like “free” and 99 cent ebooks stopped working years ago.

Today, the challenges for indie authors are enormous.

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

Self-Publishing And Selling Your Books From Your Website

Authors who are self-publishing have many challenges. The biggest challenge is visibility.

Advertising is expensive. Using Google AdWords is very expensive, and Facebook advertising is heading in the same direction. Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) ads are less expensive in money terms, but more expensive time-wise.

I don’t have hours each week to monitor advertising; few authors do. At our author meet ups, we’ve been chatting about selling books from our websites.

via peneloperedmont.com

Danger: 3 Horrid Mistakes To Avoid When Writing Fiction

Writing fiction: entertain yourself; entertain readers

Vital: when you’re writing fiction, you’re writing entertainment. You’re telling lies to amuse people. So above all things, you MUST be entertaining. When readers get bored, they stop reading.

Avoiding readers’ boredom is easily done. You’ll usually recognize boring scenes and chapters. If you feel bored, fix it immediately: make something happen, on the page.

Your beta readers will catch other instances of boring fiction — maybe you larded in too much of your research materials, or kept repeating facts, or used the “As you know, Jim…” strategy to shove info-dumps into dialogue.

Here’s an example of “As you know, Jim…”:

As you know Jim, Emily is my sister. Her husband’s Max. His business went bankrupt three months ago, and… yada, yada…

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com