Wednesday 30 July 2014

Act Like a Publisher

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles, FreeDigitalPhotos.net
The world of publishing has changed, especially for self published authors.

Gone are the days when you could leave all the publishing details up to your publisher (if you were lucky enough to have one).

Now writers not only write their own books but publish them as well. And if there's one thing that I've learnt over the years, it's that if you want to be a successful writer you need to act like a publisher.
Everything you write is published. Whether you write articles for the internet, write PDF ebooks or publish books or ebooks on Amazon. Your writing is always published.

So to make it work and earn money from your writing you need to not only act like a professional writer, you also need to act like a publisher.

All publishing companies have an editorial calendar. This means they know what they'll be publishing one, two, three or more years in advance. And their publishing calendar is a schedule that they rigidly stick to.

So you also need to have an editorial calendar, even if it's only 6 to 12 months in advance. You need to have a goal and a timeline of how and when it will all transpire.

But first you need to know how long it will take you to write and publish a book. It's no good saying that you want to write a book a month if you've never written a book before or you it usually takes you longer.

I find that because I've written so many books before and completed so many writing courses that I'm very aware of how long it takes me to write things. I even know how long it takes me to write articles and short reports. And once you've been writing for a long time you'll also have a good idea of how long it takes you to write.

And lastly, you must treat your writing and publishing as a business. In other words, be professional in all your dealings. Don't waste time on FaceBook having a virtual bitch-slap fight with some idiot or other. Instead use social media to grow your business an nothing more. Leave the idiots to fight it out amongst themselves.

So start with how long it takes you to complete tasks (all writing and writing related tasks) and then work out your editorial calendar and go ahead and act like a publisher and grow your publishing business.


E-Publish and Be Damned!
How You Can Make a Million Writing Your Own Ebooks


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