Three Steps To Success As A Writer

All writers have three main objectives; to write a good story, to get it published, and to make money from it. The first two are relatively easy, the third not so.

The first simply requires a creative mindset and an investment of time and energy. The second only requires that the writer signs up with some sort of online publishing platform, such as Vocal Media.

Since you are reading this article, you have already signed up to this platform. All you have to do now is utilize the user friendly editor to get your story written and presented in a highly professional manner. Now comes the more difficult part, number three, making money.

In time, if you write your story and present it well, if you stick at it over a prolonged period of time, you should gain an audience and make some level of money from the reads. However, there is one more hidden way of making money from your writing.

First of all, once you have written your story and published it on Vocal Media, then you will have something which can be published elsewhere, such as on other writer's online platforms. In this way you can try to monetize your work to your heart's content. It may take some time to build up a global audience, but if you don't shoot, you can't score a goal. Moving on...

I think every writer's dream is to actually write a book and have it published. That is where I found myself after writing about two hundred stories on Vocal. I remember looking at a blank screen and wondering, where the devil do I start? I need a story to write.

Then for whatever reason I suddenly thought, wait a moment, I have already written a story that I can publish. In fact, by that time, I had written more than enough material for a dozen books! All I had to do was edit a number of previously written stories together, and viola, I had a book!

My next step was to sign up to KDP, Amazon Kindle. The KDP process is all fairly straight forward, even for an old technophobe like me. However, there was one stumbling block, thankfully easily resolved.

To publish a book on KDP the story has to be formatted to be eBook friendly. I personally found that to be a tiresome, time consuming process. If you find yourself in the same position, do not despair, economic professional help is at hand.

On my Linkedin profile, I was constantly being messaged by all manner of professional people, including some who specialized in formatting your work for KDP publication. All you have to do is send them your story, complete with fully credited copyright free images, and they will do the rest. They will then return your writing to you in an acceptable format, ready to upload directly onto KDP.

The cost of having my book made ready was surprisingly low. So low, that in the end I did publish a dozen eBooks. The total cost for those twelve books was about 100 dollars!

As it happens, the man I used promotes himself on Fiverr. And it was through Fiverr that I paid the man. This made me feel a lot more secure about giving out my financial details. With Fiverr, there are levels of security, such as paying them to pay your service provider.

Of course, if you are less of a technophobe than me, you can download and use the KDP Kindle Create app, though your story will still need to be formatted for ePub publication in order to upload it on to Kindle Create. But if you can easily change your text to be an ePub file yourself, you are home and dry. However, remember, it is probably far better to let somebody who knows what they are doing do all that preparation and get on with what you do best, more writing.

Another resource you can freely use to change the format of your story is available at a variety of internet sites. Simply Google 'Free formatting for eBook publication.' However, I would advise using somebody who will not only transform your text into an ePub file, but will also take care of page layout and the book's front and back covers, complete with the book title and your name overlaid on the image of your choice. For ten dollars a book, it is more than worth the cost.

That is basically how to get your book published and out in the market place. There are other matters to deal with to do with marketing and promotion, as well as the price point you want to settle on. I will try to deal with those aspects in another article.

One more thing, KDP can turn your eBook into a printed book if that is what you want. Personally I have not yet explored that feature. However, as I am now in the process of publishing three new books, in all probability, that will be my next step.

One final word of warning. Do make sure to run your story through Grammarly to correct any spelling or grammatical errors as these are not easy to correct once you have published the book.

And be open to any professional suggestions your story formatter makes about what will and what will not work in terms of layout and presentation. When your book is ready, a good formatter will send you a proof copy of the work to make sure that you are happy with it.

Be aware that if ,after receiving the book from your formatter, you make anything more than a few minor corrections, you may well be charged a higher fee.