TeenageTells- Publishing (5)

What happens after you publish your book?

The one thing that should not happen is that you just let it sit. You've done promotion before the launch, but now's the time to turn it up. Talk about your book whenever you can, and wherever you can. Find every opportunity and go for it. Don't think it's too ambitious, or that you won't get chosen. If you don't go for it, you have a 0% chance of success. Applying already increases that.

I'm personally planning to talk to some year groups in my school to talk about my new book, and recommend it. I'm sort of thinking about what to say. If you're nervous, don't worry! Message a teacher if they could share the news with other teachers. There are many ways to get the news out. But I always advocate for going and speaking to people. Whether it's one, two, thirty or three hundred. This practice is good for your wellbeing, confidence, sales and everything! It helps you talk about your book more in the future.

Go to stores or libraries. Donate copies. That may seem counter-intuative. But it gets your name out, and allows people to see your book. Donate signed copies if you want to. Even if you're not famous. I plan to do this next week, so I'll see how that goes. And go to stores, and ask if you can do events. You can email, but I find people ignore emails, or they get filtered to spam. Go somewhere and ask for a manager. Bring your book and show them! They find it impressive when you have the confidence to do it, especially since you wrote a book.

On the Waterstones website, there's a handy little button near the button when you look for information about getting your book into bookstores, which allows you to recommend a book to be put in stores. Do that! You never know. You might just get it into stores.

But how do you get it to Waterstones? Make sure you get your ISBN (if you are in the UK) from Nielsen. And have the price of your book in the barcode. Then, if published by Ingram Spark or Lulu Publishing, you're book-store ready.

Make as many contacts as you can. Whether you get accepted or rejected to opportunities, try to keep contact. I kept contactg with MK Lit Fest, for example, after I did an Indie Book Fair. I managed to get other things published, and get my work experience done there. I tried 1in200. My book didn't quite meet their standards. But I kept asking for advice, and kept being polite (remember that), and now a very nice man is showing my books around bookstores, asking if they would stock it. And I got to know 1in200 through MK Lit Fest!

Literally Google things you want to do -- writing competitions, book fairs, charity events, whatever -- and apply. My only criteria when I look is: allowed for teens, and free (unless it's a book fair. Then I'll only pay if I know that I'm going to be having a great experience). I don't recommend entering any writing competition that asks you to pay, unless you really really want to, because there are other options, and sometimes they rip you off. If something, don't go above 5£/$. It's like investing. Especially if you're a teenager, you probably don't have that much money. So try to find something free or cheap.

If your parent(s) let you, have a website or social media account (if you comment your tag/website, I promise I'll follow or look at it!) so you have a base of where people can find it. And it opens you up to the online world. And that reaches a larger audience. Yay! Doesn't have to be complicated. A page on your book. A picture of you annotating or holding your book. A picture of your desk. Your favourite quote. A blog post. Anything that you would find interesting, someone out there probably also finds interesting. That's what I try and do myself. Would I read this? Would I like this? Yes? Then let me make it. Simple.

But how do you actually get paid? Maybe it's because I didn't have a job before writing, but I was so confused. Within Ingram Spark, they count your sales for a month (for example, 20), then for each book you get specific compensation. For me, on average, it's £1.60 a book. So 20x1.6=£32. In 3 months, I will receive £32 on my card which I had to upload the information of before publishing. Simple. It's there. It was weird for me to comprehend, but it's that simple. That's for print books. I'm not sure for ebooks.

If you haven't gotten the message already, talk about your book all the time! Nothing else will get the word out better. You be your biggest fan, reach our and never ever give up.

My short little publishing series is over! I think this last one is especially useful. I hope this helped! See you next week.

P.S. A little birdie told me that Emerald can be found using this link to Amazon. AND that Nadia will give early access to the next book if you rate any of her current ones. What a great idea!