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Why haven’t I Tapped This Resource Much, In The Past?

I’ve finally written about the animals in my earlier life, and enjoyed it, putting the resulting article, here, on this site, Vocal, a new one for me, and perhaps one to spend more time at, depending on how it goes.

Finding new places, or exploring ones already used are both good ideas, if you’re a freelance writer, and love to share your words with a wide variety of readers … And of course, if you can get some cash, I mean, ‘monetise your writing’, all the better.

This new site, Vocal, is one I’ve seen the name of previously, but I didn’t look any further into it, until I noticed a friend (Hi Marie!), was now using it. So I thought, oh well, Marie had introduced me to Medium another writing platform that pays, in its own way, so what the heck, and had a try.

The experience of getting signed up was easy enough, and If people like my words, and give me tips, or like my writing, the wealth will flow in! haha. There’s a bit more to these things than just that though, there is the task of letting other people now about what you’re doing, marketing your words, in other words.

And as a shy and retiring writer, (it’s true, honest!), the idea of getting my word out about my words is never the easiest part of all of this. My ideal world would be one where a dedicated secretary or assistant would take on this publicising my work/words task, and I could go on just tap, tap, tapping away on the keyboard, producing my worthy writing, and perhaps reading such words at events organised by that same secretary/assistant.

But as is obvious for many reasons, this is not an ideal world, so I have to take on the spreading the word about my words role, as well as writing them, and editing them, them sending them places to get published. and make money.

I’m not reliant on my writing efforts, to have food and shelter, fortunately, and I’m sure, or at least hope, if I was, my efforts would be far more successful than they currently are … But I have books published, and I sell them, sometimes, so it’s not totally pathetic, just a bit of play money, in some ways though, apart from a couple of bigger monetary sources available to me, when I get three bigger lots of money, one is Educational Lending Rights for a book, a school reader, I wrote a long time ago, that was published and is in many libraries in Australia and elsewhere.

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Well I have in fact used this theme a little more, and written more on the subject of ‘dogs’ as well as one other post on Vocal, which was a poem I’m quite happy with, I think. You can take a look here.

If you like it, why not reward me, with a payment, haha, or at least tell me what you thought, anyway!

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Words & Books, and More Words & More Books!

Writer, Poet, Blogger, Editor, I write things, because words are my main tools for what I love to do, to write, and to speak, and if I’m speaking in public, for a purpose, words will be written, probably to properly say what I really want to say.

And this year is definitely a year of words, and books for me! I put out a call for words to be written and sent to me, and I know have a book on its way to being printed, so it can be launched and then provided to all of the wonderful people who’ve sent in their responses as requested. This book, and anthology of both poetry and prose is a fine look at what creative people thought on, regarding Covid-19, from the serious to the ridiculous, and all things in between.

This book will be launched during the Gawler and Adelaide Plains Festival of Words (Recovery), and this Festival is another perfect storm of words, with writers, and poets doing thier thing in a variety of ways, in a variety of different places, taking words to the community!

And today, I’ll be talking with a friend and one of the things that will be mentioned is another book a book that may well be written, and then published next year, with a launch, perhaps, because, well who doesn’t like to celebrate a new book come into the world?! I love book launches! This book with be the fourth in a series of books begun way back, when my son was at Primary school. He’s now a grown man, working for a living, with his own house … Wow.

And of course, there are the things I do regularly, a writing group meeting every Thursday, Poetry reading every month, and the Festival, an annual event held in July, with the seventh such Festival happening this year 22-25 July. What fun, what lovely words!

And there will be workshops run for that Festival, and I hope attendees might end up writing their own new book, and have a book launch, so I can attend, and feel joyful for having been involved in that new book coming into the world, a precious time for sure!

And of course there are also books in the library, where I visit every month or so, to find some more books to read, then take back again, free of charge. I love libraries, and I’m glad to live in Australia, where our library system buys books, and loans them out to readers the way they do, it’s great!

Yes, I love words, and I’m so glad there are many people in the world who love books too! Do you love books? If you do, leave a message to tell us about it!

One of my books, and a brochure, all about multiple sclerosis, which I’ve written about, raising funds and awareness about my chronic illness …
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The Book I’ve Edited Looks Fantastic!

Yes, I caught up with the printer, and the man who created the front cover, and it looks fantastic! This book will be ready well in advance of the programmed launch date, and that feels like a good thing, no, a great thing!

When I decided I wanted to make this book, Plague Invasion Creative Writing Responses to Covid-19, I wasn’t sure of my abilities to do such a thing, calling for reponses from people all around the world. But those responses came, and they came, and putting them together in satisfactory way pleased me greatly!

And I was thrilled that the printer, who I’ve used before, liked what he saw in this book! So it’s on the way to being made beautiful, with all of the right things in the right places! It is so thrilling to have managed such an important book, and even though I will be out of pocket intially, I expect, with actual book sales, I will cover all of my costs, and start to make money.

Of course, if I factor in all of my own time, and the time of the various writers involved, that would paint a different picture of it all, but writers write for the love of it, and then, as I have, they may move into the ‘editing’ role, again for the love of it. I gave a lot of my life to this book, and I’m happy to see it looks like a worthy book indeed.

The front cover captures the craziness of this Covid time we’ve all been going through, and I have been thrilled to have given this role to a young man who has been studying Graphic Design at university, and from the way he was talking to the printer today, he knows what he’s talking about, and I was impressed when I was listening to them talking about ‘bleeds’ and ‘bleeding’.

My mystery writer mind listened in, and I wondered about the possibility of such a conversation being heard and misunderstood in one of my novels in the future! But I have lots of other bits of writing to work on, and that idea may have to wait until another time.

I was doing my ‘Writer in Residence’ thing again today, and enjoyed in very much again. Even though I didn’t get much money in my tin there, I did work at raising awareness, to some degree, talking to one of the regulars there about Multiple Sclerosis. Later on, I went to Gawler, where the printing business is, and doing some more fundraising, and awareness raising there, or I tried, anyway.

There will be another opportunity for that again later in the week, and on Monday next week too. After that, I will be taking my money raised to the MS Society SA & NT, to see how close I was able to get to my target of $1000. I fear I won’t hit that total, but I’m glad I’ve been working at it anyway, confident that I did the best I could with it.

So today was a great day for me, and I hope for another great day again tomorrow, when I do a Zoom meeting about ‘branding’, and perhaps some more of my novel written!

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Spam On a Blog

So spam on a blog is a given, I suppose, so really, why get all angsty about it? The world wide web is just that web of people all across the world, and we all have our own reasons and motivations for what we do here.

Some of us write blog posts we hope will attract interested readers for information or amusement, others have quite different reasons for delving around the blogging world. The Spammers, for instance, want to get more people visiting their own blog, so drop links to it almost at randome, with comments that don’t necessarily make any sense at all, to my mind.

But then I am an Australian, and English is the language I use, while I suspect many spammers I meet on my blogs have a language other than English as their first language. Well done to them for trying, I suppose.

I don’t get angry about such unwanted comments, I just check my blogs, when I think of it, and delete such comments. And sometimes I have to admit, I have a giggle at the ‘mis-writings’ I read there!

And to be honest, the way my blogs are not attracting many comments at all sometimes, even a bit of spam is welcome, it gives me something to read … How sad is that little confession? Never mind, I have new platform to write on, and it’s far more interactive than blogging on WordPress is.

The new platform is Medium, and this is a link to my most recent post there: link Why not take a look at the site, maybe you could make tiny little bits of money there too! That comment will make more sense after you’ve read my post on Medium …

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Using Both Traditional Publishing and Self-Publishing

As a writer, I don’t say, traditional publishing is dead, and Self-Publishing has taken over. I am a user of both, to get my written words into books, published and presented to the world.

I have books published in both ways, and while I have made the most money from a traditionally published book, my self-published book sales have done far better that just paying for themselves.

So books … with traditionally published books, somebody else, the publisher, is the one who does most of the work to bring the books into the world, putting it all together, and getting in printed, then doing some book promotion, one hopes so anyway. The author may or may not be involved in the promotion of the book, but in the interests of book sales, it’s best if they do …

With self-publishing, it is the author who takes on all of the roles of the traditional publisher, as well as the writing of the words that make the book. And they then take over all of the marketing and promotion of that book too.

Book marketing, getting books into libraries and book stores is not an easy thing, but bit by bit, I’m slowly learning a little bit about it, and I know I am capable of speaking to an audience about my books and writing, so that aspect of promotion doesn’t scare me, I enjoy it, in fact.

At the moment, I have two books on the verge of being published. One is a self-published anthology, on the subject of Covid-19, titled “Plague Invasion”. It is a fine book, and will be launched at the Gawler and Adelaide Plains Festival of Words (Recovery), an annual event my writing group, Adelaide Plains Poets Chapter and Verse, is running for the sixth year, in late July.

The other book is one I submitted to a traditional publisher, Ginninderra Press, who have published two of my poetry collections so far. I am happy with the results of their work, with those two books, and look forward to working with them again, when my new collection “Leonard Cohen is dead” comes out in the first half of next year.

In my self-publishing role, I worked hard at getting the new book put together, asking for submissions last year, and considering all received, to make a worthy collection showing many aspects of this horror pandemic the world is suffering … It will be an important book, historically, and I hope I can do it justice … I’ve had good people working with me, and will have more assistance into the future in promoting the book, I am sure.

I have a printer, a local business, who I’ve worked with getting my self-published books printed, and I am completely happy with their work, so am using them again for the anthology. Next week, or the week after, I expect I will visit them, and hand over the final draft of the book, and then they will do their work, and not too long after, I will have books, as many as I can afford, and expect to sell …

That is the difficult part of being a self-publisher for me, being able to afford paying for the books to come into be printed. My time taken in producing the books, though the hours are many, doesn’t cost me any actual money, I do the work because I enjoy doing it, and I hope to reap benefits from book sales.

The best part about having books to sell though, whether traditionally published ones or self-published, is actually talking to the people who are purchasing a book from me. Obviously, I do a lot more of that, with the self-published books, because I am the one selling the book to them, not a more anonymous book shop.

That first traditionally published book of mine, which first came out many years ago, still brings me money, in the form of Educational Lending Rights, every year, based on the number of that book (titled “My Dog”), are held in school libraries. And easy way to make passive income, if the book gets purchased by the schools …

The books in the photograph, are from my Writer in Residence gig, which I do every Monday morning (not public holidays), and I get occasional book sales doing that. The books there are some of my books, not quite all of them, and I’ve been wondering whether or not I should be having more copies of one of my books published …

I might wait a bit longer on that decision, and see if I make money to do that, from the anthology coming out in July … Ah decisions, decisions! Money in, money out!

So overall, I can’t say which is the better publishing method, both are different, and the type of book may do better with one over the other. Self-publishing is frustrating when there problems, but it’s fun, when it goes well!

I’d love to hear from other writers about their experiences with both of these two forms of publishing, please leave comments!