To Pen Name or Not To Pen Name, That Is The Question…

With apologies to Mr Shakespeare for corrupting his famous phrase, I wanted to look at pen names – or pseudonyms if you prefer – and whether using one is a good idea or not.

There’s quite a big piece over at Authorhouse on this subject, but I found myself disagreeing with a number of their points, particularly when it comes to using a pseudonym as something to hide behind.

I don’t mean you should use a pen name as a shield to hide behind if you’ve written offensive material, or even controversial material that you don’t want to be identified with. If you’ve got something to say, say it, but if you’re not big enough to stand up and support your ideas then keep them to yourself.

On the other hand, I write in several different markets and I need to put across different messages from different personas to make the best of the marketing opportunities available. In those cases I use pseudonyms. It’s like adopting different characters in different markets. Nothing wrong with that.

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Self Publishing Book Competition – Shelf Unbound

About ten days ago I wrote an article about Self Publishing Competitions – both for books and for short stories (which strictly speaking are writer competitions). I wondered about cost versus potential reward (you can read it here).

Seems as soon as you start talking about something online, someone hears about it and gets in touch. Anyway, next thing I know I’m being told about a book competition that’s open to all self publishers and has a very low entry cost: just $10.00.

So me, being a bit of a cynic, wonders if it’s all a bit of a scam – the kind of publishing site that’s appeared five minutes ago and is just set up to grab your ten bucks and run. But no, not at all. Not only has Shelf Unbound been around for a while, but Margaret Brown, the lady behind it all, is a well known and respected member of the publishing community.

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Self Publishing Awards – Worth The Cost?

Any self publisher has to be aware of marketing opportunities and both writing competitions and self-publishing awards give you the chance to get your name and books in front of more people.

So that’s a good thing, right? Well yes, if you win, but not only is that a bit of a lottery but most of the independent publisher awards and writing competitions out there actually cost you money to enter.

What’s worse, writing and self publishing competitions are ideal scams. Awards come and go. You might pay $20 or $50 or more to enter and then those running it just disappear. Or you get an “honorable mention” or an email saying “unfortunately your entry didn’t quite meet the high standard required….”

You’re out a few bucks, you wasted your time and you got no publicity either.

I’m not for one minute saying that all independent self-publishing awards and writing competitions are scams. Many are extremely valuable and well worth entering if you think your work is good enough.

So how do you tell the good from the bad? The opportunities from the opportunists?

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Wattpad Review – Essential Book Promotion For Self-Publishing Authors

As a self-publishing author you’ll be looking for as many ways as possible to promote your writing and your books. One way of attracting attention is via sites like Wattpad that allow you to submit part or all of your book for public consumption and criticism.

Mind you, it’s not a place to actually sell books, so why would you bother?

In a word, numbers. All online publicity is, at the end of the day, a numbers game. You might be able to find a few movers and shakers, you might be able to get your writing noticed by those who influence the buying public, but mostly it’s about getting your work out there, again and again, until it’s seen by enough people to make an impact.

Much as all writers like to hope their work will get noticed simply because the quality is outstanding, the truth is you’ve got to go out there and knock on a lot of proverbial doors. It’s hard, repetitive work that eventually gets the job done.

Wattapad is a huge community of readers and writers. You could almost look at it as a literary Facebook. Members get their own page and can either remain as readers or can submit their own work for consideration by others.

To make Wattpad available to as many people as possible, via as many devices as possible, there are numerous apps. Got an Android phone, iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire…? There’s an app for all of them and more. You can read and join in on Wattpad wherever you are, whenever you like.

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Self Publishing Companies – Read The Small Print!

If you’ve started looking into how to self publish your book you’ll soon realize that there are a lot of self publishing companies around. What I’m talking about here is companies who will turn your words into an actual, real-life book. Not digital publishing or ebooks – I’ll get into that next time – I mean the kind of book you see in your local high-street bookstore, or that comes wrapped in brown paper from Amazon…

My own view is that you should digitally publish first anyway, but a lot of people will never be truly satisfied until they’ve got something to hold in their hand. It’s perfectly understandable. I’m a great fan of the Kindle, iPad and other reading gadgets, but I still love to read “proper” books. Actually, for me it’s about the words, rather than the delivery medium, but let’s not get into an argument about that…

So out there is the “real” world there are self publishing companies who will take your lovingly-crafted manuscript and turn it into the kind of thing you can be proud of… or do they? It won’t take much searching to discover there are plenty of negative comments about some of them. It’s true that people complaining tend to make more noise than people who are happy with a service, but the sheer volume of complaints should at least make you aware of potential problems.

The challenge then becomes how to separate those who have misunderstood what they were getting from those who have a genuine grievance. After some lengthy investigations, I’m afraid I can’t offer any definitive answer as to which is the best self publishing company and which you should avoid – but I can offer some extremely important advice:

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