The easiest part of being an author is writing the book because when you finished, there is a sense of accomplishment when you see the characters you created come to life on the page
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, 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 books. But before you can blog, you need to 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? Lucky 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.1888pressrelease.com/
http://www.pressreleasepoint.com/
http://www.free-press-release-center.info/
http://www.freepressrelease.com.au/
http://www.yourfreepressrelease.net/
If you have a list of your own and it’s not listed here, please let me know so I can add it on to the list. Thanks and happy writing!