Musings of Two Creative Minds

     With the voice of experience, Mr. Gaughran shares his many insights of the world of publishing, and in particular self-publishing.  With the advent of e-books, many writers and would-be writers have found themselves faced with the opportunity to finally put out that book they’d been thinking about for years.  Yet, they quickly find that the most daunting task, is not writing the book itself, but how to get it out to the public.  Should they go the tradition route of finding an agent, and then a publisher?  Can they deal with the countless rejections or avoid the scams that promise seeing their work in print, for a ‘nominal’ fee of course.      Mr. Gaughran provides the reader with enough food for thought that would make a seven course meal look like an appetizer.  But he never gets preachy.  Instead he simply supplies the reader with tools and knowledge to navigate the world of Indie Publishing.  He provides ...

Knowing when to release your book to the public Every writer, dreams about this day.  The moment your latest work is about to be unleashed.  You've worked long and hard for it and the day has finally come.  You've shed blood (preferably not someone esle's), sweat  (and boy didn't you look hot at that moment), and more than a few tears (I'm not even going to try and make a joke on this one, I know damn well I've shed more than few in frustration, or because I wrote a section that moved me enough to shed them).  So you're all set and ready for your book's release, but in the back of your mind you have to keep asking "Is my work truly ready to be released?"  Is it? In my case the answer was a resounding "NOT EVEN CLOSE!" So, as a result of this fact, I've decided not to release my next work "The Vampyre Blogs - Coming Home" until further notice. How and why did this happen?  The answer is simpl...

Building an audience and marketing yourself... These six words strike fear and terror into the hearts of almost every new author I meet.  It also has the same effect on some of the more experienced authors I know as well.  Why?  Because there isn't a 'silver bullet' that will solve the problem for you.  There are so many different methods out there to try and raise audience awareness of your work and who you are.    Plus there's no guarantee which method is going to be the right one for you.  So you have keep trying and trying until you find one that works.  This is especially hard if you don't have a good budget to work with.  Many sites will promote your books for a fee.  Oh there are some that will do it for free, but the results vary from author to author.   You can also hire a publicity group to try and build hype, but even then you have to be careful.  The words "Buyer beware" applies to hiring someone el...

What's in a name?  A novella or novelette is just a short story that is rather long and falls short of a full-length novel right?  Well according to my research, this is only partly correct.   Length or word count, is the key to what defines a short story, a novelette, a novella and of course a novel.  I admit I was rather surprised to see that there was a difference between a novella and a novelette.  I always presumed they were just interchangeable terms for the same kind of extremely long short story.  Why was I even interested in finding out about all this in the first place you may be asking yourself.  Well I'll tell you.  If you hadn't heard already, I decided to do a short story that involved my vampyre character Nathaniel Steward (who will be getting his first full-length novel around October 2015) and several of my characters from my first novel "The Bridge".  I did this because I was hearing from more and more readers...

To celebrate my first novel "The Bridge" being #44 on Smashwords Horror Bestseller list of books over 100K words, I'm taking 50% off the price.  It's now available there for $1.50 for this weekend.  So take advantage of it while you can.  There's 15 reviews on this page so you can get a good idea of what others have been saying about this strange blend of paranormal mystery and science fiction. Remember: Smashwords offers this book in the following e-reader formats:  Apple, Sony, Nook, Kindle, Kobo, EPUB, PDF (for regular laptops and desktop computers), and others. Oh, and if you're one of those people who already bought a copy and loved it, please help spread the word of this special promotion.  Thanks so much and have a great weekend everybody. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/272613

Okay, yesterday was a big day for me.  My novel "THE BRIDGE" is now available in two 'brick-and-mortar' bookstores.  How did I make this happen?  Are sales jumping through the roof?  Is my name out there so much that fans are demanding it be available everywhere?  Two words.... I WISH! No, the simple truth is when you're an Indie Author (someone who has published through Createspace or other means to make a printed copy of your book), you have to do a lot of things yourself.  One of them is marketing and getting your book into stores.  Now, if you've done a good job marketing and your sales on Amazon and Barnes and Noble websites are going really well, you might land up in bookstores.  Some chains look to those sites to see what's the hottest sellers going and is it available in print form.  They don't want to be left out of the loop and fall behind.  But you have to have great sales for that to happen.  But if you're just star...

Okay, as you all know my first book is out.  "The Bridge" is available on Amazon, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, I-Tunes, Nook, Kobo, Smashwords, Createspace, and a bunch of other places.  How did I do it?  And how are the sales coming so far?  Are probably what you are asking at this point.    Well, I'll be honest, the sales are going slowly.  The book has only been out maybe 2 weeks and during that time it took over a week for it to appear on a number of those sites.  But that's no excuse.  It is definitely out there, so why aren't more people buying it right away?  The answer is simple, "They don't know it's out there!" Now here's where we get into today's discussion.  I'll briefly answer the first question "How did I get it in so many places?"  Then we'll address how I'm going about to correct the problem of getting the word out. Now I published my novel both in e-book form and trade paperback for those who ...