Fiction Writers

I started writing because I loved to read.  It was with equal parts admiration (How do they do it?) and disdain (I could do it better) that I crossed the threshold from reader to writer.  What did I find on the other side?  To my dismay, not a mob of eager agents or publishers clamoring to sell my book.  Instead I found a crowd of cynics:  aspiring authors who had been burned by con artists.  I was burned too, (moderately singed), and so I can certainly understand the need to guard your most precious treasure.

Not your book.

Your HOPE.

You can sell your book, whether self published, e-published or traditionally published, but the key is to SELL your book. Even before it is published, you want to generate buzz about yourself and your work.  You can do this if you create a blog and drive traffic to your site.    

Your blog should be relevant and meaningful to you and to your prospective audience.  Believe it or not even writers lose interested in writing if the topic is boring to them.  I couldn’t write a blog about car maintenance, even if my main character is a super hero welding a wrench.  It may tie into my book, but it has no long term appeal to me as a writer.  Subjects that interest me are Writing, True Crime, Reading, Self Help (motivation, setting goals, positive thinking) and Reality TV.  If it’s relevant to my work as a writer, I’ll post it on Fictionway.  I never run out of things to write about because this interests me.  My target audiences for my books are mystery, suspense and crime readers.   And if they’re like me, they’re also curious about the process of writing. 

Once you know the theme of your blog, you will need to drive traffic to your site.  A good way to do this is to post articles that provide good information and directs your readers to your blog.  Simple right?  The only trick is knowing where to place your articles so you get the most exposure.  There are lots of sites that allow you to post articles with links back to your site, including: Squidoo, HubPages and PeopleFuel.  Some allow revenue sharing, which is icing on the cake.  Explore these different sites and find a few (yes a few) that are easy to use and build links to your site. Without spreading yourself too thin you want to have links back to your web site from multiple sources.    How thin is too thin?   

You should probably try to write 3-4 articles a week for placement outside of your own blog.  You don’t need to add fresh content every week, but it will help you build a readership.  That is in addition to your own blog, which should have a minimum of 1-2 articles a week. This is where you want the bulk of your information.  I started with a couple of WordPress Blogs and then PeopleFuel.  This is enough for me.  There is a lot of information available for creating a blog, optimizing search engines (SEO), targeting key words and creating links. This is just a way to start and I’m sure you’ll get more proficient with time. 

Don’t give up hope.  You dreamed of writing a book, and you achieved it.  You dream of selling your book and you will achieve that too. It just takes belief, perseverance and plenty of patience.