There is a lot of talk about how indie writers can or can’t use social networks like Twitter and Facebook to climb the Amazon charts. From my own experience, here are 8 things you should do if you want to avoid making stupid mistakes and wasting precious hours that could be spent writing. 1. Pick [...]
Here’s how I think writers should behave when using social media; the golden rules that you should always remember if you want to make friends and influence people – and sell some books along the way! 1. It’s not all sell sell sell Imagine if you met someone for the first time and the first thing [...]
Along with the cover image, your book description is one of the two main tools you have for selling your book on Amazon. Many authors really neglect their description, either because they don’t understand its importance, or because it’s so hard to get right – if you don’t know what you’re doing. The good news [...]
I’m featured on Rebecca Bradley’s great blog talking about social networking and how writers should use it. In a nutshell, writers should not exclusively use Twitter and Facebook for endless streams of promotional tweets with links to their books. That’s: a) Very irritating b) A waste of time c) A waste of a great opportunity [...]
The world is full of clichés about never giving up your dreams, of try-try-try again. It’s what fuels reality shows like The X Factor. It’s a story that athletes and celebrities use to fill the pages of their autobiographies, between the early chapters on their childhood and their big break. For writers, who dream of [...]
It takes guts to publish a book in the 21st Century. Back in the old days, before the internet, a handful of books got reviewed in the papers, and the reviewers were all professional critics. I’m sure it was nerve-wracking enough then (read the brilliant A Vicious Circle by Amanda Craig for proof) but now the old [...]
There may be a self-publishing revolution going on at the moment, but for many authors the dream is still to get a traditional publishing deal. Readers of this blog will know that Louise and I have just done it, but our route to our deal with HarperCollins was as far from the traditional route as [...]
Last year, my co-writer Louise appeared in the Evening Standard which, for non-British readers, is a free daily newspaper that is distributed across London. Pretty much every commuter reads it – on my journey home yesterday, around 7 out of 10 of the people in my train carriage were leafing through it. I expected the [...]
I was interviewed by Joanna Penn, of The Creative Penn, about my journey and how I had a No.1 Kindle bestseller. Watch and enjoy! Watch here on YouTube (For some reason I can’t get the embed code to work – it keeps bringing up a different Joanna Penn Video, hence the link to YouTube.)
Allan Guthrie has self-published a number of bestselling crime novels, including Bye Bye Baby (which has sold over 20,000 copies) and Killing Mum, another big seller. I’ve read Bye Bye Baby and loved it; it’s an original, realistic crime thriller that heads off in unexpected directions. His third Kindle novel, Kill Clock, is due very [...]
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