Self-publishing experiment: Changing your book title MID-LAUNCH! Crazy or BRILLIANT?

transformOne of the things I REALLY love about self-publishing is that it gives you the speed, flexibility, and freedom to try bold experiments and turn on a dime to respond to how your book is performing. I’m a huge advocate of trying new ideas and using each book launch as an opportunity to experiment and test different theories. So I’m putting my own words into action this week, with a wild and crazy experiment: I’ve changed the title and subtitle of my newest book MID-LAUNCH!

So, you can now grab my new book Self-Publishing Success Strategies: 19 Tips To Sell More Kindle Books and Grow Your Audience for $0.99 right here!

Here’s a little more info about why I’m trying this experiment, and be sure to come back when I share the results in the next few weeks!

Continue reading

Writer Shop Talk: Are You an Indie Author?

newshoptalkIt occurred to me when I set out on this new branch of my self-publishing adventure that my choice of using the phrase “Indie Author” in the title of my latest book — and an entire self-publishing series — might be a dangerous move. Some authors and writers get REALLY rankled when you attach the term “indie” to what they do.

I’m not sure if it’s having a negative impact on my books sales or overall perception of my work among some readers, but it has got me thinking more about the term “indie” and what it means to me.

Continue reading

Building Launch Momentum for your Kindle Books (Without a HUGE Author Platform) Part I.

newshoptalkIf you’ve got a massive author platform to tap into, it’s not hard to rocket your books up Amazon’s charts and move some serious units right from the get-go. But what if you’ve got less to work with? I’ve been at this for a while, and even with six books out (and more on the way), I’m still developing and expanding my platform to where I want it to be. That hasn’t stopped me from finding success, and it shouldn’t stop you.

My self-publishing manifesto, Write Short Kindle Books, launched just two months ago and quickly became an #1 Kindle best seller in several categories. It’s done really well, though my platform, mailing list, and social reach is a lot smaller than a lot of authors and writers out there. I just launched the follow-up book, Indie Author Success Strategies: 19 Tips to Boost Your Kindle Book Business, and I’m back to square one with building momentum for this new book. Seems an appropriate time, I think, to talk about book launches!

Continue reading

Writer Shop Talk: Letting Your Book Drafts Percolate

newshoptalkA while ago, I decided that my creative and professional plans for 2015 would include launching a STUPID amount of quality books this year. Things are off to a great start, with Write Short Kindle Books becoming a #1 Kindle Bestseller in multiple categories and selling over 1,345 copies during launch month. As I continue to work on the final draft of several other books and outline upcoming projects, I decided to dig up a few old un-launched book projects that I had put on the shelf. Sometimes, if you’re me at least, you write books, set them aside, and then FORGET that you’ve written them. Whoops.

But a little time away from your drafts can be just the thing you need to realize that what you wrote actually isn’t utter garbage.

Continue reading

Writer Shop Talk: 5 Alternative Ways to Write a Book

newshoptalkWords and ideas don’t come easily to everyone. Each of us has our own mental blocks and quirks that can inhibit our creative flow from time to time. As I delve into in great detail with the first book in my new Indie Author Success Series, writing books can be faster, easier, and a lot more fun than you might expect. Sometimes, however, you’ll want to embark on a new book project, but your brain is all clogged up. What to do?

You sit down to write, but the words, the ideas, the pages just don’t come freely. Don’t sweat it. Maybe it’s time to explore alternative creative ways to building a solid base of material to turn into a draft of your first book project. Here are a few clever approaches to teasing the knowledge from your noggin — or gleaning it from the heads of others — to get your early draft material down.

Continue reading

Writer Shop Talk: Writing Targeted Books

newshoptalkI’m in the middle of a tight deadline week, so I’ll keep this short-ish [edit: HAHAHA YEAH RIGHT], but I wanted to take a quick moment to reflect on something I’ve mentioned in the past that was really driven home this week after watching the growing positive results of my latest book launch. You see, it’s been a long time since I’ve had a book project get as sticky in the Kindle Bestseller charts as Write Short Kindle Books has, so I wanted to quickly dissect that bit — and double down on the importance of RESEARCHING your niche BEFORE you write a book and also the importance of TARGETING your books to niches that have a strong audience.

Continue reading

Writer Shop Talk: A Few Thoughts On Not Giving Up

newshoptalkI can think of a staggering number of moments throughout my decade-long journey as a professional writer where I could have just given up: on key projects, on my quest for certain dream gigs, on earning enough money to make a living from all of this, on so many things. Giving up is EASY. It’s also terribly boring.

Maybe it’s my stubbornness, or my drive to succeed despite the odds, but muscling down and sticking with things even when it feels like failure is imminent is a big part of why I’m able to keep writing professionally for a living. This week, and the past six months in general, has been a big reminder of that.

Continue reading

Shop Talk Interviews: Episode 1 – Andrew Groen on kickstarting his new Eve Online history book

In this debut installment of Shop Talk Interviews, I talk with long-time game journalist Andrew Groen about the massive Kickstarter success off his new book project: A History of the Great Empires of Eve Online. We chat about the project, cover some tips on how to run a slick book Kickstarter campaign, and also briefly touch on turning long-form articles into books.

If you like the show, stay tuned! I’ll be having other special interviews in the near future on a sporadic basis. You can also tune into my regular bi-weekly podcast The Freelance Game, which covers the ins-and-outs of the writing life and freelancing in the video game industry.

 
https://nathanmeunier.com/tag/authorship/
nathanmeunier.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2021-39
105244
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:ZPEVLRZKGHH6ZVFJ2AM53X2FHASRFEBE
<urn:uuid:b9523b72-eb04-41ce-9f90-e3e9c77d0058>
2021-09-17T04:36:34Z
192.0.78.24
text/html
sha1:IXMSA5N7FEAOBEY3BPJB6YWMPFMG75X7
<urn:uuid:3b00603b-5b8e-4b90-8d35-6daa734ab06d>
https://nathanmeunier.com/tag/authorship/
response
<urn:uuid:ec081425-b4e2-4cc2-9568-a5ee8fc20c9a>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2021-39
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for September 2021
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-93
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.2-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/