Tuesday 22 July 2014

Introduction

Everybody wants to be an author, or so it seems now that I’ve written a book myself. I previously had no idea that my dentist wanted to publish an erotic pirate novel or that my great aunt had already written a cookery crime trilogy. However, it would appear that for every aspiring author, there are at least ten books on how to become a bestselling author.

‘Become a Bestseller’ books are logically flawed. There are a finite number of bestseller spots to be won, so the more sales of a book that promises fame, the less likely it will work its magic for you. At some point so many people will have read the ‘How To’ guide that the advice is unlikely to help you stand out.

My recommendation: familiarise yourself with the basics then find your own way. Learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of those who trampled the brambles before you.

As an author who has made a series of catastrophic blunders interspersed with the occasional more splendid moment, I have experience of both how to self-publish and most certainly how not to. Yes, I’ve achieved a number one bestseller, but I’ve also felt impelled to call a reviewer a deluded parasitical wombat and gotten into a forty-eight hour slanging match with a troll (both rookie errors).
Handily separated into eight sections, this book will help you negotiate the most common hurdles in the path of a potentially splendid hotshot author.

Throughout this text I will refer to ‘author’ as somebody who both writes and wishes to attract readers. Writing simply for your own pleasure is a valid choice for some authors, but that is not the focus here. This book is about striving to be pictured in a newspaper, beneath the headline: ‘Yet Another Self-Published Author Really Stands Out’.