Today’s blog post is a part of Dianna Gunn’s Writers Debunking Writing Myths collab. A few of us AuthorTubers banded together to talk about some of the myths that have popped up over the years when it comes to writing, so after you watch my video, be sure to check out the whole playlist on YouTube!
Today’s myth: Writing is easy. Simple Enough, right? I’m sad to say, writing is not easy. Writing is a craft, which means it’s not only a very subjective field, but it’s a field where you never stop learning. No matter how good you are as a writer, there will always be room for improvement. With that said, today I’m spending my time talking you, explaining why writing is not and should not be easy.
Surprise! I’m teaming up with Brooke Passmore, Natalia Leigh and Caitlin Lambert to do the AuthorTube Book Club! Every month we’ll be reading a book written by an AuthorTuber so we can review it and chat about it later in a live stream. The book for March is Keeper by Kim Chance, so be sure to get a copy so you can read along and chat with us during our live stream on March 30th, 7:30 CST!
In the past month or so I’ve been doing a lot of different videos on things you can do to help promote your book when it first launches. I’ve talked about how to host a book signing and how to arrange a blog tour for your novel. Those are two different options for a book launch and today I wanted to talk about a third option: virtual book launch.
Every time one of my novels come out, I create a book trailer that releases about a week or so before the book comes out. The book trailer helps create a ton of hype for the novels and also tells people where to go to buy the book. I have a YouTube video that I’ve made in the past that goes into detail about how I create my book trailers, but today I want to talk about how anyone can create a book trailer. No experience in video editing or filming necessary.
Today I’m teaming up with Mari Suggs, fellow author and YouTuber, to talk about some things we regret about our debut novels. Mari is the author of two novels and one non-fiction novel, so once you read my blog post or watch my video, be sure to check out her video as well! Our goal today is to be completely raw and open with you to know what we feel we could have done better so you can learn from our mistakes. Debut novels are tough. It’s our first novel! We didn’t know what we were doing! I think it’s safe to say almost all authors see things they could have fixed about their debut novel, so today we’re going to sit down and talk about it.
Regret #1: Writing So Young
This first regret isn’t so much a regret as something I question a lot. For those who didn’t know, my debut novel, Essence, was published when I was seventeen. For a novel I wrote when I was so young, I think it’s really good. Essence is a novel that’s full of a lot of emotion and sometimes that can be something that’s hard to write when you’re young. While I think I did a good job, there are times I question if maybe I should have waited. I question if maybe I had spent another year editing that maybe some things could have been better. But then again, every writer is their own worst critique and it’s hard to say if our novel is good or not.
Regret #2: Publishing So Young
I also question that even was Essence is amazing, if I should have waited to publish until I was better prepared for the publishing process. There were a lot of things I could have done better to publish my book to help boost sales, but I wasn’t in that mindset when I published Essence. I just wanted to publish it. I didn’t have long terms goals in mind. I work in marketing, so looking back on how I published Essence, part of me is really proud of how much I accomplished at such a young age and the other part of me cringes because I know I could have done so much more.
At the same time, while these are things I think about, I still don’t think I would change publishing Essence when I did, because I fear I may have missed some lessons that I needed to learn if I hadn’t published so young.
Regret #3: Not Cutting Some “Stuff”
This last regret is really my biggest regret. While the first two were things that just pop into my mind, this last one really bothers me. It shouldn’t bother me because it’s just something that someone wrote in one of the reviews of Essence, but it stuck with me. There is one scene in my book where I say “this box is labeled” this and “this box is label” that. It’s a stupid scene and it’s a short scene, but it’s a scene that someone pointed out in a review and ever since I’ve read that review it’s a scene that I really wish I didn’t include in the book. So yes, authors do take your criticism when they read reviews.
And those are my three biggest regrets. If you’ve published a novel, let me know in the comments below what your biggest regret is.
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So you wanna be an AuthorTuber. If you saw last week’s blog post, then you know I talked about why you should join AuthorTube. Since you now know why you should join the AuthorTube Community, it’s time to talk about what you need to do to grow a following. Being an author on YouTube is really fun, not to mention it’s a great way to find a community of people who will support you and your books, and inspire you to keep writing. Let’s jump into it!
So what’s up with all these authors that are on YouTube? As one of these crazy authors, I thought I would take the time today to talk about why YouTube now has a community called AuthorTube. This community is what allowed me to create the author platform I have today and to continue growing my platform while selling my novels. In this blog post I’m going to explain what AuthorTube is, why you should join in on the fun and maybe give you a few ideas as to what types of video you could make as an AuthorTuber.
We’ve all been new writers at some point. Or maybe you’re a new writer now. If that’s the case then start taking notes, because today I’m going to talk about the things you shouldn’t be doing and what you’re going to do to avoid making that mistake again. Even if you’re a writing pro, there’s always more to learn. And if you’ve already learned your lessons, well then today you’re just going to look back and cringe at all the mistakes you may have made when you were a budding writer.
I’ve been making videos and blog posts about writing and self-publishing for a long time now, yet I’ve never made a video to address how to self-publish a book on Amazon. For today’s blog post and video, I’m going to teach you how to publish a paperback novel using Createspace, upload your manuscript, format your manuscript and make your novel available for purchase on Amazon. As a bonus to those who stick around until the end, I’ll also show you how to make your novel available on Kindle! Let’s keep in mind that before you do any of these steps your novel should be completed, edited and good to go. While you can make changes and to your manuscript after it’s uploaded to Createspace, it’s more of a hassle.
As promised, today we’re going to be talking about all things social media marketing. I’m going to be going through all the major social media networks and how you can use them as an author to help market your book and hopefully get a few sales out of it as well. Keep in mind, with all social media networks, you don’t want to push your books onto people. You want to interact and grow followers who look up to you as someone they can trust. As you establish yourself as someone who creates valuable content, even if it’s just tweets or Instagram posts, then your followers will see you as someone who would create a book good enough to buy and hopefully fall in love with.
