My name is Mike J Quinn and I am a writer. You have probably not heard of me despite the fact that I have written songs, poems, technical articles, websites, and music for over 40 years.
I am recently finishing my third novel and I’ve noticed it’s now possible for me to get my art out in front of just about anyone, whereas before, I had to get through gatekeepers who got to decide whether my art had merit and deserved publishing or not. If they didn’t like my first few paragraphs, I wasn’t getting published. I also learned that I was a good writer, but not a great writer and nobody wants to read a good book, they want to read a great one.
Today things are possible that ten years ago were out of reach for most writers.
What has changed?
The tools with which to publish and market a book or other such piece of art are now within reach of anyone with a little time or money (or both).
The old traditional publishing model is still clinging onto life with desperate fingers and in its place is rising a new publishing ecosystem.
Then:
- Write a book
- Submit it to a publisher or agent
- Wait breathlessly by your mailbox for as many rejection slips as you have postage to send your manuscripts out.
- Repeat.
Now a writer can go directly to his audience if he just learns the rules of the new kingdom.
Today:
- Write your book
- Create a website
- Create a blog on a topic that is important in your book
- Create social media sites where you can form relationships with your audience.
- Blog about your topic and interact with your audience on social media.
- Repeat.
Writing the book was never the end of the story, far from it. Finishing the book was the first chapter of the story of the book’s life. How we handle the following chapters will determine the success of our efforts. Learning about the new too
The biggest complaint I read from new authors online is this:
Do I have to learn all those other things? I just want to write.
That’s really nonsense. If all you want to do is write, then write on. Nobody is stopping you. The real problem is, if you are like me, you will come to the realization that you don’t want to just write, you want to be read.
Without readers, we might as well just write our stories and put them in a drawer someplace. That just doesn’t work for me.
I want to leave this world with something it didn’t have before I got here and wouldn’t have had, had I not been here. These words, music, art, etc. are my legacy. Creating it fuels my life, and leaving it behind will hopefully sustain those who are left with it.
The old, struggling traditional publishing model has changed, only is hasn’t changed all that much. This is why it is doomed. Everyone knows that Darwin proved to us that if something doesn’t learn how to adapt to its changing environment, it will perish. That which does adapt will survive. Today all publishers want to talk about is not just your book but also your “platform.”
Platform: the size of the community you’ve built around your book.
The tools for building a platform are Websites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, iTunes, GoodReads, email lists, and a whole lot more.
If you haven’t built a community around your book where loyal followers are guaranteed to buy your book, the publisher isn’t really going to want to publish you. I’ll tell you a little secret that will make this whole thing make sense:
Publishers aren’t in the business of publishing books, they are in the business of SELLING books. You could write the best book on the planet, but if you can’t sell it, they don’t want it. Sure, publishers have media campaigns. These are only for authors who already have really, really large platforms already like James Patterson, Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, etc. Don’t bother with the question: why spend money marketing a book that’s guaranteed to sell and not spend money on something that might. They’ve been there, done that. It doesn’t thrill them as much as printing a book that already has a market waiting for it. They aren’t about to move heaven and earth announcing your new book if millions of people don’t already know who you are. There, now you understand how publishing really works.
A publisher isn’t going to publish your book unless you already have a website, blog, Facebook. . . and once they publish your book, they aren’t going to devote many resources at all to get the word out. That, my friend, has now been left to us to do. So why do we need publishers if we are going to do all that work ourselves? Now you see why they are doomed to die, or at least consolidate into a few large publishers that mainly sell books on demand. The bookstore is going to be the first casualty unless it too adapts to the changing environment.
So what if you don’t know how to make websites or use Facebook? You don’t have to make your own website, write your own PR releases, create podcasts, YouTube videos, create Facebook pages, and all that other stuff yourself. You could have someone else do this work for you. I, unfortunately, do not have the money to do this, so I had to learn how to do all this stuff on my own. I tried to get the help and advice from a few online mentors, but they seemed to more interested in either me becoming a customer, or for me to become a “content marketer” and learn how to market hyped-up products with ugly, garish “squeeze pages.”
I was on my own.
So as I went about writing my book, and being mentored by the aforementioned “Gurus,” and wasted a lot of time and money, so I got the idea that if I could help those who are trying to do what I’m trying to do, maybe I should put all these things I have learned in one website and help those who are traveling this same path. Hopefully, others can save some of the time and money I wasted in my search for what really works.
So here it is.
This website is for anyone who is having trouble understanding all the steps, tools and talents needed to become a successful writer in this new world of digital publishing. Please let me know if I help you and if there is something you don’t get that you’d like me to cover, please let me know. I have been writing this book and doing my research for over 4 1/2 years and am now putting this information together in one website. I am just beginning and I have a lot of stuff to share so keep coming back. I’ll update this website often. Subscribe to it if you’d like to receive emails with the new information right when I publish it.