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BOOK WRITING LESSONS PICKED ALONG THE WAY

Once you embark on writing a book your brains are buried deep into thinking about how it will look as a finished product. At no point do you think about how complex book writing is until we get there. Then finally, the book is published and you wake up thinking “oh my, my achievement is accomplished…so what next?”

Stage two comprises of learning the little, gritty, nitty things which are part of publishing your own book, marketing and promoting. You spend a lot of time on the internet researching how to market, promote books and get exposure for your product which you believe is great. You find the quantity of available information to be very overwhelming and eventually settle down and work out which way will work best for you.

From my own experience and research, I have come to learn that every author wants to become a best-selling author. Well, it does happen but it does not occur over night. It takes a lot of effort and hard work to become the best-selling author just like any other talent or art. Nothing comes easy, there is a lot behind the scenes activities which are undertaken to accomplish the achievement. For example, a marathon runner does not just run once and win, there is a lot of practice involved in improving the running time.

Marketing of any business is hard and books would not be any different. The marketing organisations are also in business making their own money and do not guarantee success if you advertise with them. Therefore, as an author you have to gamble and play around with different marketing options, see the outcome and decide what works well for you. I find running one advertisement at a time a good way to gauge whether that marketing strategy has worked or failed in selling my book.

The fourth stage is the realisation that there are different marketing strategies for your book. Currently online marketing is what is favoured by most people. However, there are other marketing practices which can be utilised to put your book out.  Such as I carry my books with me all the time and when interacting with people and get to know their interests, I talk about my writing and the published book. (of course, it has to be the right time to talk about the book not ram down people’s throat).

Some people get interested in looking at the book and I happily produce it in which sometimes end up with a sale or a promise for one. I might sell one or two but I’m exposing myself to different audience of people and probably the word of mouth in case the buyer finds the book interesting. I also take this opportunity to request for email contact and whether they would be interested in getting emails from me.

I’m still new on this journey and I’m learning heaps as I go. I have not sold a lot of books just one here and one there.  I have embarked on writing my second book and passing the message to my new audience. Trying to be active on social media and build an audience. Time will tell as I continue to discover this writing and publishing world.

Lastly, I have come to realise that I enjoy writing and that is what I will continue doing, promote my book as much as I can and whatever I make out of it in terms of money I’m content with it. What is your take?

MORE LEARNING ON SIGIL ON EBOOK

Two months ago, I really struggled to put my book into e-book using Sigil. The software was not easy to understand, it took me many trials and errors to get it right. At one time I thought I had gotten the game right just to realise that the outcome of the book wasn’t what was expected. In actual fact I had given up and I was almost to pay somebody to undertake this project for me. Then one morning I woke up and I thought why can’t I do it myself, I am good in computers even though I am not a guru. I had made a booking for somebody to turn my book into ebook but cancelled that project and determined to get it done. I spent almost ten hours playing around with the software till I got it right.

Sigil does not accpet any file document, it accepts html coded documents making it harder to grasp it. I found the latest model of Sigil very complicated for me to use and therefore I went to the older version 0.7.4 I downloaded the software. Once on my computer, I went to my folder to find my word document book. I opened it and saved it as plaint text. Then I opened Sigil software and double clicked it, opened my plaint text document and Sigil recognises plain texts very easily. Once on Sigil I organised and played with the book until it became the e-book I wanted.

Sigil software has different features just like word document the only thing this software does not have is font. Therefore, you cannot put any font into your document on Sigil. However, one can organise their documents into a beautiful ebook or mobi book without to pay somebody to do it for them.

Sigil working sheet looks like this photo below. On the top bar you will find file, edit, insert, format, search, tools, view, Window plugins, help

On the bar below that there are many different tools to use such as open, add existing files, save, undo, redo, copy, paste file and replace, metadata and so forth.

On the third bar there is H1, H2, H3, H4 and so forth then P which stands for paragraph and A which stands for Bold. There are other characters on this bar used in different things.

Under this third bar the next is the open book icon which is highlighted indicating that you are working on your book or the space is ready for the book to be opened.  Next to it is html icons which can be used to ensure that the book is having proper meta readings.  (I’m not an expert of html).

On the left side of Sigil is the library of your book and you can import videos and images. The middle field is where editing takes place and on the right side you can see how your book will look like once finished (preview). Even though Sigil is not an easy software to understand, I fell in love with it and now I only look forward to editing my books and save that money which I could have used to pay someone else for the same job. What software do you use to make your ebook if any?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WRITING AND COMMUNICATION

We all communicate in different ways some of us are good at talking and easy communicators. Others pass their messages through writing and while the two are important there are other ways of communication which is through use of graphs, pictures or even art. All of these communication strategies convey different messages and different people receive it differently. Some people might understand written words clearly, others struggle. There are some people who understand graphics and arts very easily while others cannot relate at all.

Writing is an art by itself, it is also a talent since there many people who would like to be authors but cannot write. The journey of writing start from putting down one word, then another and finally a sentence is constructed. The persistence in writing continue to make the writer grow while they develop paragraphs and eventually a book is produced.

While it takes time to write in some people, others find it easy to turn their writing into a book.  It takes a lot of time, motivation, dedication and sitting down long hours constructing sentences, paragraphs, making them into a book. However, hard this might sound or seem to be the work is rewarded by a published book but the journey is not yet finished as authors, writers and artist like to share their pride with families, friends and the world in their accomplishment of their hard-earned work.

As a first-time author, I can relate to the feeling of pride in achieving my objective. Finally, I turned those written manuscript into a book. What a feeling when I received my written work in form of a book, it was like graduating with my first degree, the excitement was overwhelming and I treat that book like my baby. My next step in this achievement is marketing. This is another story for another day but meanwhile, I celebrate my first step in being an author.

Are you a writer or dreaming to be one? Start with one step and dedicate some time every day in writing few words to start that novel or book. Do not let anyone put you down and have the confidence of conveying your message with your writing. You do not have to impress anyone but be proud that you are able to pick a pen and paper and put words into a book. Whether the reward will be gained from becoming the best-selling author the results of your hard work is your self-satisfaction of achievement. 

What is it like to be a first-time author?

USING SIGIL SOFTWARE TO EDIT EPUB

Today I am going to discuss about using Sigil. This is an editing software produced by volunteers and it is used by authors to format e-book. I had a lot of issues when I started using this software and even though I am not a high-tech IT guru, I consider myself a person with good computer skills.

I got really frustrated trying to understand how this Sigil worked, tried to watch youtube videos and some teach you one or two things but the nitty gritty small things are very hard to understand from the net. Finally, I spent two full days playing around with the software and nailed it.

At the moment I am loving the application it makes authors work so easy. It contains a lot of html format but that did not stop me from learning how to use it. I am proud that I did produce my e-book using this software. Since I have gained some skills I am happy to benefit others.