September 3rd, 2010 | By Ovi Demetrian Jr | Posted in DistributionProjectPromotion
We’ve gone over the focus on the narrative and the forms stories come in, now let’s talk about sharing stories on Indie Aisle. One of the things that makes the internet so great is how we are able to communicate in a variety of ways and quickly share ideas with other people. Indie Aisle has been designed with this in mind, by offering two ways to connect with people:
Find and follow
Authors can keep their fans updated, and everyone can find and keep track of great indie authors on Indie Aisle. This is done by posting short updates and choosing to follow other people’s updates. Additionally, you can keep a personalized library of stories and let people get an idea of the kinds of stories you enjoy as well as see what other people are reading.
Share with the web
To take the experience even further, Indie Aisle integrates with the openness of the web by allowing you to share with other web services that you’re already familiar with by connecting them with Indie Aisle. Starting with Twitter and Facebook, in the future they’ll be many different services to pick from with different options for how to integrate each into your Indie Aisle profile.
The combination of the people you connect with, the stories you share, and how you customize your settings, makes your Indie Aisle profile unique to your personality. And how you interact with the tool allows you to connect with people from across the web and across the world!
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June 9th, 2010 | By Ovi Demetrian Jr | Posted in DistributionPromotionPublishingWriting
As we all know being a successful writer means more than just writing. People have to also be made aware of your work. There are many factors typically involved in publishing a successful book, including:
- Writing Process – Write and revise, work with an editor for polish and get feedback from people you know
- Illustration – Work with a graphic designer for a good cover and/or a more stylized layout, and/or an illustrator for accompanying visuals
- Publishing – Work with someone to meet certain technical preparations required for printing and digital output
- Sales and Distribution – Work with brick and mortar book shops for print, and online marketplaces for eBooks
- Promotion – Work with someone knowledgeable of marketing, get reviewed by professional critics and get interviewed in various publications
Besides the writing part, it’s everything else that can make going with a traditional publisher still a viable choice. However, technology and the internet have given us tools that change the entire process. It’s paved the way for the independent self-published writer. But going the indie route isn’t necessarily about doing it all yourself. Even though you could, collaborating with other people can give you an edge to compete with books still published by big companies. In fact there are services available that offer different approaches to doing this.
But beyond all the tools, the one greatest asset, the internet, allows you to choose how you want to do things every step of the way. As companies try to reinvent the publishing model, ultimately it’ll be the writers that will be in control of the process. Because that’s the best part of being indie, doing things your own way!
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May 31st, 2010 | By Ovi Demetrian Jr | Posted in PromotionSales
Photo by JohnKit on Flickr
I went to this year’s Phoenix Comicon which was much bigger compared to last year’s and better organized. Besides having a great time talking about comics and stories, I noticed that for indie comic creators and book authors being part of the Con was a great way to promote themselves.
Even from all the panels I went to, the common advice successful comic creators and authors had for promotion was to go to various conventions and talk to people in person. From getting a booth to participating in panels, being active at various events is one of the best ways to interact with fans.
It’s all part of the community-building process. It’s the same reason using various tools like Blogs, Twitter and Facebook, works well. Simply put, to let people know about what you do, interact with them.
Here some other tips I kept hearing discussed during panels:
- To get your work talked about, put effort into getting reviews, even if it means tracking down bloggers who might be interested in your work and sending them review copies
- Making your work a series released on a shorter-term basis could be an easier investment with some quicker results versus spending years on the perfect novel
- Think of ways to create merchandise around your work since that’s what can sometimes make you more money than the story itself
Comicons and other conventions revolving around stories and the worlds they create are everywhere now and there’s more of them starting up than ever before. If you haven’t been to one, you’re missing out on some great fun!
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March 25th, 2010 | By Ovi Demetrian Jr | Posted in PromotionPublishing
I attended this year’s South by Southwest Interactive and was surprised to find quite a few panels about publishing content online from people who have done it successfully. To me this shows that one, there are more and more people that are figuring out how to be successful and make a living from publishing and promoting themselves and two, the online market for publishing is gaining ground and getting more attention from traditional publishers.
Below are my notes from three panels that offered some good insights on publishing and promoting independently.
Publishing online
- A new approach to publishing should combine collaborative social media tools
- The web is about talking to people and giving them what they’re looking for, it should be a discussion with readers
Independent content creation
- There’s a low barrior to entry for expressing yourself through blogs or writing a book or even making music or videogames
- It’s still expensive to market content, even though there are sometimes exceptions to the rule with the viral aspect of certain content
- Content now requires thinking about building a community around it
- Make great content, gather a community, curate great content for community, repeat
Promoting yourself
- Fans help spread your work, live events help them gather and talk about it
- Go where your audience is by partnering with related organizations, guest blog/write to similar audiences
- Make sure to get links to your website on related websites
- Ask for reviews
- Make it easy to share content
- Start promoting early, even during development of project
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