TL;DR: My first book, The Beauty the Dead Remember, is ready for early readers as part of my ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) campaign. If you are interested in a quiet post collapse story with a unique take on AI, vampires, and big questions, then I think you might enjoy it. The one ask that I have is that when the book goes Live on August 20th next month, that you leave a review and let others know what you thought regardless of the good, the bad, and the ugly.
https://dl.bookfunnel.com/h89xnxkglw
Also, if you enjoyed it and want to read more or if you prefer to read a shorter length work to see if the world is of any interest, then there is a prequel that you can read in under an hour at https://dl.bookfunnel.com/vpm1bsrw1d
This month, I continue my journey into becoming an author. My first novel has been proof read and professionally edited and I had assumed that was the toughest part, the initial action of breaking the friction to move the boulder, but as it turns out, pushing that same boulder uphill is even more challenging.
For me, the hardest part is the marketing and letting people know that you even wrote a book, what it is about, etc. It is the same challenge I face with building two applications today.
For some people that is fairly intuitive and incredibly easy, but for others, such as myself, it is *extremely* tough and uncomfortable. How do you grow your audience? As it turns out, for writers, there is a method you can use that lets people know, but with less awkwardness and not completely saturating a conversation.
The current “best” solution is to use a newsletter or mailing list. Growing it yourself though is very, very slow. You can make a post or a website that has samples of your work and if a reader likes it, they can sign up for more works from the author. It makes sense, but how do you get visibility when you have none? It turns out, you can supercharge that entire process with authors that are already known by doing a newsletter swap.
Basically, a collection of authors will work together to each share their works to their readers. Example, Author A adds their work to the newsletter swap along with Authors B and C. Author A shares they have a new work coming out along with Authors B and C. Author B does the same thing as does Author A. Author C then repeats what Authors A and B did. This limits spam and helps everyone to have a broader audience. This is the single biggest way to start as an author from zero readers to your first reader. All good things.
The other issue is the delivery mechanism and letting readers see your style. There are many different avenues, but I have settled on Bookfunnel since it can deliver in a variety of content and styles from EPUB to PDF to Audiobook. In combination with the newsletter swap sending out the link, it then allows the reader to choose their book and format of choice.
This is my second newsletter swap. My first attempt was a short story called First Quorum. It was a 10k word short story that expands upon my upcoming novel The Beauty the Dead Remember. It is written from the perspective of multiple AIs first meeting and working together and is part of the larger world I’ve been building over the last year of a post collapse world, a planetary AI, a vampire, and the question of whether humanity should be brought back at all.
Right now, I am involved with several different newsletter swaps where authors share their works for free. If you are interested in being an early reader for upcoming Action & Adventure, Horror, Sci-Fi, or Fantasy, then there are 22 choices:
https://books.bookfunnel.com/arcbooster/8hokrunmm5
Alternatively, if you are interested in short length work that you can read in under an hour, here are 83 different choices in a wide variety of genres:
https://books.bookfunnel.com/short-story-smorgasbord-3/qd2i80xoa0
If you are a new writer, I hope this information helps you. If you are a reader, I hope this helps you find some new authors you enjoy reading and can support. If you are just curious, then I hope that my continued writing helps enlighten you about another world that exists that many are not aware of or exposed to.