TO WRITE OR NOT TO WRITE

The easiest part of being an author is writing the book because when you are done, there is a sense of accomplishment when you finally see the characters you created come to life on the page.

Unfortunately, the toughest and hardest part of being an author is promoting your book. To succeed in this business, you need a lot of patience and understanding and a lot of money to hire someone to do your advertising and marketing for you. But what if you don’t have a lot of money or no money at all? The answer is simple. DIY or Do It Yourself.

For a new and unknown writer like me, it means learning to navigate the internet quickly, creating your website and starts your blog to build a fan base. Then you have to spend hours hanging out with readers on their sites and blog like you’ve never blogged before hoping that they would notice you and eventually check out your book. But before you can blog, build your own weblog.

For someone like me who is not a computer whiz, the struggle continues. I am not terrible but I’m not that good either. Let’s just say I use the internet only to check the news, the weather and maybe some Hollywood gossips. Hey, I’m only human!

To new writers, don’t make the mistake I made focusing on one published book and spending too much time trying to find book reviewers, where to send the press release, finding a literary agent and/or publisher. That is a very exhausting time of my life, believe me. You need to continue writing books; lots of them and try to learn in the process so the next time you release a new book, you will not go crazy like the way I did. Okay, maybe I am exaggerating a bit here, but you know what I mean!

Like I said, the easy part of being a writer is to write the story. And when you are self-publishing, where do you begin? Luckily for us, in this new age of publishing, there are a lot of great websites out there that can help us get some wonderful ideas on how to market our book.

For children’s book, these are the websites I found that has a list of book reviewers, so check them out.

www.booktweetingservice.com/p/like-free-review.html

www.bookmarket.com/newspapers.htm

ww.writing-world.com/children/reviewers.shtml

www.theindieview.com/indie-reviewers/

www.bookmarket.com/newspapers.htm

www.wow-womenonwriting.com/17-review.html

www.ebookcrossroads.com/ebook-reviewers.html

www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/best-book-reviewers-on-twitter_b11136

And here are the websites where we can send PRESS RELEASES FOR FREE

http://www.prlog.org/

http://www.newswiretoday.com/