Guest Post – THE ROUTE TO PUBLICATION Seumas Gallacher on how he discovered that he had to make social networks work for him if he wanted to be a self-published author
I’m handing my blog over today to Seumas Gallacher, a Glasgow banker turned crime author who says that finishing his first novel was one of the best feelings he has ever experienced in a life full of rich emotions.
…an ol’ self-publishing Jurassic’s thoughts on the ‘business’ of writing…
…my birth certificate first saw light of day sixty-sum’thing years ago… but my journey into self-publishing crime thriller novels kicked off only five years back…
A strange combination at first flush, yeez may say… but in all seriousness, I think it works… the marriage of the experience of an ol’ Jurassic in terms of business longevity, and the enthusiasm of a relative newcomer to the eBook phenomenon… when I first threw my literary lot in with Amazon Kindle, I happened across a series of excellent informative blog posts by Rachel Abbott, whose first novel ‘Only The Innocent’ blew the roof off the rankings… I earnestly recommend all yeez Lads and Lassies of Blog Land to go Google her stuff… she espoused approaching the ‘entire’ business of writing, end-to-end, not just the bit about producing the manuscript… that meant looking at the ‘business’, inclusive of a strategic business plan, a marketing program, a budget, both in financial terms and in time management… and why ‘time management’?… because it’s necessary to ‘Build the Platform’… to ply yer SOSYAL NETWURKS in a manner that isn’t spamming… but getting awareness ‘out there’ of yer masterpieces… where yer readers can find them… pricing… genre… reviews… being a constant reciprocator for others on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and all the other outlets where we quill-scrapers and readers congregate…
Don’t yeez be fooled for a second, however, that this is easy to do… like anything else worth attaining, if yeez don’t put yerself into it, yeez ‘ll get NUTHIN out of it… and vital in all of it for me has been the indulgence in an almost daily blog… I use WordPress (coz it’s free, and I’m Scottish!)… each blog post of mine is automatically linked to every other SOSYAL NETWURK channel that I use… the result is that my direct contact is with over 15,000 pairs of eyes… the secondary and tertiary viewing possibilities run into the millions… my learning curve has been steep and swift… five years ago, I could hardly switch on a laptop without blowing fuses all over the city… (I bought my first ever Mac back then to type up the first novel, one finger per hand at a time… and it’s still like that, but it WURKS for me… and if can WURK for this ol’ Jurassic…)… it also occurs to me, if I’d started this scribbling adventure before the eBook and Kindle age, I prob’ly wouldn’t be enjoying it quite so much… the power of holding a major part of my own writing destiny in my own hands is terrific… which brings me on to another thing… if yeez don’t enjoy the process, ask yerself… why do it?…
ENJOY!!! cheers, LUV YEEZ!…
Connect with Seumas on his blog and on facebook. Follow him on twitter at @seumasgallacher or email him at seumasgallacher – at – yahoo.com
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