Blogging for Self-Published Authors
By: Peter Lancellotti
Posted on: September 14, 2022
The fourth speaker gave me hope. Here’s the important message for newbie self-published authors. The gentleman said, “Hire a good developmental editor. It may be costly, but if you want to write a successful memoir, that is what you need to do because as much as you think you can, none of us can be objective about ourselves.” That made so much sense. Granted there are writers I’ve met who simply want to write because it’s their calling and could care less about selling it. Some people write to sell. I fall in the middle having a marketing background. While I do have a message I’d like to share, I’d also like to share it with maximum reach to my target audience.
I had so many flashbacks and realized after twelve drafts, my first chapter was the end of the story. The reader would have been befuddled by why I would spoil the ending by writing about it in chapter one. So, I hired a developmental editor. And my advice to you would be to think about your subject and interview a few until you feel like you’re on the same page with them and your story. My subject was complex because I thought I was biting off more than I could chew with growing up gay, spiritual dilemmas involving a church, paranormal elements, a dysfunctional family (as if I’m the only one who has one of those), and my unusual relationship with my mother. Isn’t that precious? Imagine! A gay man having an unusual relationship with his mother! Can’t you hear the tiny violin in the distance playing my song?
A friend, Randi Maggid, who is also a published author introduced me to a brilliant woman who worked with the renowned Carlos Castaneda. He was an anthropologist with a Ph.D. who broke through the tapestries of what holds back the mind to higher consciousness using peyote to bring the teachings of the possibly mythical master, Don Juan, into prominence. Castaneda stuck to his subject, targeted his audience, and had many people working on his behalf to spread the word. They didn’t call it blogging back in the 1960s and ‘70s, and then one day, voila! He was a bestseller.
This interesting developmental editor (who didn’t want to be named) inadvertently took me on a dream quest after reading my story, told me where all the holes were, asked me all the right questions, and gave me confidence that I could make this memoir an exciting tale. I was then able to rewrite drafts thirteen through sixteen, however, we parted ways because she had a difficult time with the spiritual content and context of where I was headed with my journey. She also hadn’t explained the editing process to me. We both took responsibilities for our actions. Spiritual journeys are a personal matter, and the last thing you want to do is have an argument with an editor who’s too subjective about your knowledge verses theirs on any given subject. I was relatively happy for the costly help and fortunately had been able to get the story into a chronology the reader would understand. Then came the seventeenth draft and I worked with a team of copy and line editors with the company Elite Authors. They were meticulous in helping me choose the correct words to convey the complex message of the overarching theme, a spiritual journey with subplots for understanding my evolution as a gay man and my fallout with the Catholic Church. They were very affordable for my budget. I was able to also hire one of their proofreaders after we completed the manuscript. Now I needed a formatting company to make it look like a traditional publisher had done the work. I decided to release it through KDP, which is Kindle Direct Publishing unitizing Kindle and paperback formats, and will eventually release an audible download for your listening pleasure as well.
I also needed a website and a professional book cover designer. Total production costs were approximately $7,300.00, more than I expected to spend. I hadn’t planned on spending some of a mutual fund until a bit later in life. Writing a good book is costly; however, I wanted the message out there. I also needed to learn how to blog correctly to do exactly that. I’m sure your message, whether fiction or nonfiction, is extremely important to you when you release it into the world. And when you do, you want it to be your best self. It amazed me how the editors I worked with allowed me to keep my voice in the story. As I read the final manuscript after they had done their work, when it was ready to upload, it flowed like a river going in one direction as opposed to when I started it moving like Niagra Falls in reverse motion.
Blogging on LinkedIn tied to Twitter, with a contact page to your website, a form to sign up for a newsletter, and a dedicated Facebook author page linked to Instagram is a great way to start getting your message out there, along with sending everybody on your smartphone contact list a personalized short text with a link to where they can purchase your book and to your website. Word of mouth is also great, but make sure it’s an elevator pitch that you can encapsulate verbally in 60 seconds or less. As proud as you are of your finished masterpiece, I’ve found that nobody wants to hear you tell them the story, if you’ve been speaking for 3 minutes.
Another method I’ve found that’s beginning to work well is finding groups with interests aligned with yours. These are content providers or bloggers with a large number of followers, perhaps twenty-thousand to one-hundred-thousand. Join those groups and involve yourself in posts that interest you. Don’t be disingenuous and post on everything because you know you’ll be discovered, and nobody likes a brown noser. Schedule time to interact daily or every other day. When you feel the time is right after saying something brilliant when resonating with a topic (bonus points if the content marketer or blog owner recognizes your sincere contribution), politely ask if you can post a link to your website and purchasing page on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Draft to Digital, and the myriad of websites out there where you can self-published.
I chose to publish through KDP, which is Amazon’s self-publishing platform. I know other authors who’ve gone directly to Barnes and Noble or Draft-to-Digital, Kobo, Apple Books, Ingramspark, Book Baby, etc. There are a lot of them. I researched which one was the most visited and KDP was shown on a pie chart to capture 85% of buyers.
So now you’re interacting and becoming part of a community of groups and blogs who have similar interests that your book fits into and you’re commenting. It’s a rewarding experience to meet people with similar interests in blogs because it sparks more creativity for you and them in future works. And you’ll also make some new friends.
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