I assume, as you are reading this because of the title, that you’re a writer, a wannabe or already a self-published author and you think I might have some valuable information you can use to market your book(s). I’m told that is true because I have learned an immense amount of info over the past 13 years. In that time, I became the publisher of my husband’s bestselling and popular novels and, as time allows, I would love to share some of the things I learned, with you.

No, self-publishing is definitely not complicated, as a matter of fact, it’s a whole lot easier than when I began, but it is VERY TIME CONSUMING if you care enough to get it right. And you should care … I am shouting this out so you get the message. You will learn from this blog and our website just how we do our (successful) marketing and any self-published, or otherwise, author can do it … I don’t want to appear crass, but in a nutshell … you get in their face and promote, promote, promote.  If you’re not prepared to do that, don’t expect that allowing your book to sit on a shelf in a bookstore or at Amazon.com is going to sell it for you. And when this promo thing gets so tiring for you that you begin to hate your job, it’s probably time to quit!  Yes, I even reached that point for a while, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

To clarify that bit about why it’s called self-publishing, and don’t listen to those negative people who might say to you, ‘you couldn’t find a publisher so you decided to do it yourself eh!’ They are merely ignorant and we don’t have to pay any attention to their negativity.

What is self-publishing anyway? If a person or persons fund and publish their own book, it’s called self-publishing. Even if a wife publishes her husband’s book and it becomes a bestseller, yup … it’s still classed as self-publishing by all those high and mighty people (read publishers who want an exclusive on the term) who want to give out awards only to their ‘class’. Why? because they are still in the dark ages and figure a wife is dependent financially on her husband.  I know I could do a post about this subject but enough said for now … google it and you’ll find thousands of entries I’m sure. Just to think about it frustrated me too death in the early days as we were told (by the staff of publishing houses and published authors) that we had sold more books than most Canadian published authors. Fans have told us for years that our books are the best and that’s good enough for us!

I have probably spent a hundred hours or more working on my/our webpages over the years … do you have one yet? That’s a must to start with and one way to start is with a WordPress blog or a website from Author’s Den. Let me tell you about the latter as it is slightly different from a blog (which you are on right now): At Author’s Den you can add your stories, poems, books, blog, newsletter, etc. It has stats so you can see how many people are visiting; you can entice people to request your newsletter and you can sell your books there as well (it hasn’t helped us but you never know!

It’s an invaluable site and thousands of people visit it every day. You’ll find Robert’s site at Author’s Den here.

You should also check out my links page  … look in the category list to the right.

Have a great day!