4 Top Tips For Self-Publishing Your First Book With @Pokercubster

Writers have a shit load of decisions to make:

Who to kill today, knife em or hang em, daily word count totals, book prices, whether to drown your book blurbing sorrows with vodka or wine… the list goes on.

But one of the biggest of all decisions of all is whether you’re going to run the rat race to traditional publishing, or  push the shiny red button yourself and claim the indie badge.

I made my decision. My blood runs thick with indie colours.

Publishers have their place, I’ll never see my books in a store *weeps* but that sure as shit ain’t enough of a reason for me to go begging book in hand to their doorstep.

Maybe there will come a time when I might need them and I’ll wander up tail between my word covered thighs. But I haven’t slaved over my book for two sodding years, only to be told what cover I’m having, or when I can market or change the price or a myriad other things that would piss me off and I certainly ain’t accepting the 79p pittance for a book sale.

When this goes live, I’ll be in Paris, so your comments might be delayed in appearing.

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Today’s lovely guest is the gorgeous and totally glam, Debby. Someone who has become a dear friend to me through the blogging world and one I truly hope to meet her.

Debby is a self-published author who has taught me more than a thing or two over the time I’ve known her. Today she’s giving us top tips on self-publishing.

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Nominations for Bloggers Bash Awards Are Now OPEN!

We are finally on the count down to the bash, peeps.

I am so excited I really ought to be wearing a sports bra what with all the bouncing up and down.

So far we have announced the totally-off-the-chart-gorgeous venue here. Then we announced our blogger extraordinaire and guest speaker Luca here.

But now, now after months of waiting I can officially say, that nominations for the bloggers bash awards are

NOW CLOSED

PLEASE NOTE THIS IS NOMINATIONS ONLY. VOTING DOES NOT OPEN UNTIL 19th May

Bloggers Bash – The Ultimate FAQ

We have been asked a number of questions on the Bash, most of which are similar to each other. So we thought we would round them all up and pop them in a post all together.

If you have any more questions that haven’t been answered here, let us know and I will add them to this post and pop them on the Bloggers Bash page.

So without further ado here are the Bash’s FAQs

The Bloggers Bash Awards ARE HERE!

This is it. These are your Bloggers Bash Awards.  BIG thank you to everyone who made suggestions. The committee spent an entire evening discussing all of them. Lots of them were similar or connected to each other, so rather than take each one specifically we have tried to incorporate as many as possible under the awards we have chosen.

We have a number of new awards this year, and some changes to the old ones.

For those new to these awards, they are part of the Annual Bloggers Bash. A physical get together in London, England, every summer. This year’s is on June 11^th, if you’re interesting in attending then drop us a line on:

Annualbloggersbash(AT)yahoo(DOT)co(DOT)uk

You can find more information here, information about the venue here. If you can’t make it but want to follow electronically, you can join the facebook group here, or use the hashtag (#)BloggersBash to follow the feed live on the day.

We are not accepting nominations YET. We will be open for nominations for the awards on April 22^nd. So in the mean time, have a think about who you want to nominate and who you think deserves these awards.

Finally, if you would like a bloggers bash t-shirt then Geoffle will be taking pre orders during April, so hop over to his blog and ensure you follow him for the latest news on them.

Bloggers Bash SPECIAL Announcement

I promised this year would be bigger and better and it really is.

I feel like a school girl at a backstreet boys, Spice Girls, Boyzone, Take that, fuck it showing my age Justin Bieber concert. But…. here is our next big announcement…. *Drum Roll Please*

7 Laws of Writing Reader Grabbing Headlines

I hate this post. I do. My eyes were achy from rolling so hard by the time I even sat down to write it. But I HAD to because, as much as I feel like I just Peter Panned my shadow,  (ok my soul), and handed it to Captain Devil-Hook, there is no question that these tactics work.

Here’s the thing: My mum, loves me to the ends of the Earth, which means she reads these posts. All of them.

*waves, shouts ‘love you mum’* 

As much as I adore the fact mumsy reads them and tells me they’re wonderful. I’d rather like some unbiased feedback. I mean, mum thinks most things I do are good… amazing even.

Although now I think about it, she doesn’t know about the time I… 100% not finishing that sentence.

We all write for a variety of reasons: some blogs are therapeutic, some are started to meet the amazing community and others to build platforms. Whatever the reason, even if you start not caring whether anyone reads your stuff, something happens the moment you get, likes, comments that aren’t your mum, or your first spike in stats.

Realisation.

That’s what happens. The realisation that someone you don’t know, just read the words you wrote. For writers, that ignites the flame of desire. AND WE WANT MORE. More readers, more followers, more stats.

BLOGGERS BASH AWARDS – CHOOSE YOUR AWARDS NOW

As part of the bloggers bash (the annual get together for bloggers) there are a number of awards given out. Awards that are voted for by you.

Last year, the committee agreed on 6 awards for the bloggers bash awards. However, this year, we are opening up the award categories to you…

Grow Your Audience – 8 Tricks Efficient Writers Use On Twitter

Time. That precious commodity no one has. Everything is about time. I bitch about time, ALL THE TIME! But it’s a misnomer. See, if I have time to shovel a chocolate bar… (fine two bars) in my gob, then I can find time to schedule tweets, finish that bloody book, and pin my posts to Pinterest.

I’ve already talked about choices, and the fact reaching goals is all about choice in my post a couple of weeks ago that talks about Setting Unrealistic Goals in Order to Achieve Unbelievable Outcomes.

Everyone knows Twitter is in the top 5 tools for boosting traffic, but scheduling tweets is another matter. I have tweets scheduled up to 6 months in advance. Yeah, really, and no, it’s not because I’m super organised. Once I write a post, I use a program to create template tweets and then schedule them for the next 6 months. It’s a pain at the time, but seriously, when you sit back on Monday’s, knowing you don’t have to tweet every 4 seconds you’ll be thanking me.

So how do you actually schedule tweets? And you know, add all the links and pretty pictures and stuff?! I’m going to tell you.

Bloggers Bash 2016 – Venue Announcement

The Bloggers Bash Committee said this year would be bigger and better – and trust me, it will be. We, the committee, have plans afoot to make it a cracking day.

If you don’t know what the bash is, it’s an annual get together for bloggers everywhere. The bash is open to everyone, whether you blog about writing, cooking, parenthood, beauty, fishing or anything in between, this is the event for you. AND irrespective of blogging platform – so if you have friends from other platforms please let them know.

The event is open to any blogger from any blogging platform – and please, if you aren’t a wordpress blogger – share this post.

This is the chance for you to meet (in real life) all those firm friends you have made through blogging. This year, the bash is on Saturday the 11th June, in London, England.

I said we had plans. We do. The first of those plans is the exciting news that we have secured a venue. And boy is it amazing.

5 Mind Boggling Reasons Canva is YOUR Blogging Design Heaven

A friend recently suggested I take some time to look at Canva. I tried not to raise an eyebrow, time is not a commodity I can spare much of to learn new things. But I trusted their professional suggestion and trotted along to investigate this new fangled site.

Having scrutinised it, I have to say I highly recommend it as a design site. For those of you who don’t have photoshop and illustrator its the perfect substitute. It has a plethora of professional looking templates for everything from book covers, blog photos, infographics, flyers, posters, cover photos… anything you could want it has pre made templates which you can edit to your hearts desire.

If you want to increase your blog traffic next year I am certain this tool will help.