Digital Publishing

A Titanic Journey with Hazel Gaynor

Unless you live in a very small hole, way underground, it has probably not escaped your notice that it is Titanic centenary week! Although for self-confessed ‘Titanoraks’ like myself, the fascination with Titanic never went away, I am certain that by the end of this week, Titanic will have a whole new legion of admirers who are spell-bound by her story and by the incredible accounts of survivors and family who lost loved ones on that tragic, April night.

For me, the Titanic centenary has been much more than a passing observation in an event I have been fascinated with since a child; it has presented me with an opportunity to self-publish and promote my novel The Girl Who Came Home, which I simply could not ignore. For months and months I wondered: could I self-publish? Should I self-publish? With a Titanic novel in my hand and a huge media event staring me in the face, there was really only one answer to my questions: Yes, I could and I should. So, how did I do it and how have I found the self-publishing experience? Here are my tips and observations (so far).

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Getting Published in America

America offers a massive English speaking market to Irish authors - Elloras Cave author Caroline McCall shares her experience of getting published in the USA with writing.ie, revealing her top tips for anyone wanting to make it across the pond.

If you have trailed around the writing seminars, or spent your Saturdays attending courses about how to get published, you’re probably feeling a little depressed right now. You’ve spent a year or more, writing and polishing your novel, but you have nothing to show for it except a growing pile of rejection slips. The publishing companies won’t look at your novel without an agent, and the agents are too busy taking care of the clients they already have. It seems that nobody wants to take on a newbie author.

Don’t give up.

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How Digital Publishing Can Change Your Life

THE path to become a published author can be a long and painful one. Many writers have spent years transforming their idea into a book. The next step is often more difficult: sending your final draft to a publisher. After all this effort, it is likely that your novel will lie unread on a slush pile. So after months - even years of waiting, you may hear nothing. You might not even get the courtesy of a rejection letter!

At this stage many writers are tempted to throw in the towel and bow down to the tyranny of the traditional publisher. But what if you are not ready to give up? What can you do then? Well, there is another option - ePublishing.

Thanks to eBooks, authors can now cut out the middle man and provide their content straight to the reader. This global revolution has given rise to many authors who have made their names online. One such heroine of the eBook revolution is Amanda Hocking.

After dropping out of college twice, Amanda found herself as a home care worker. She spent her free time writing and eventually tried to get one of her first books published, but it was rejected. Like many aspiring authors she kept trying, but after five years she had failed to make any progress. On Amanda’s blog, she remembers a conversation she had with a friend where she vented her frustrations about failing to get a publisher:

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Writing for the Web

There’s more to writing for the web than copying and pasting words into a content management system. While the inverted pyramid used in journalism is important, other writing customs are turned on their head

Remember everything you know about writing forget everything at the same time is the best advice I can give to freelancers hoping to break into the web content writing market.

Your sentences and paragraphs have to be short, your words have to be simple, your brain has to rewire itself.

Writing style

Pride yourself on a massive vocabulary? It doesn’t matter. Words like verbose are too difficult to use if you want the content to be accessible. (Accessibility and usability are two big words that you’ll get familiar with along the way.)

Think you’re really clever at word play? That doesn’t matter either.

Familiar with catchy headlines and sub heads/cross captions? They’re also gone. On the internet things have to make sense – straight away.

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