The Pros and Cons of twitter - as a writer and a regular human!

The Pros and Cons of Twitter

(as a writer and a regular human)

As I try to finish my latest story, ‘The Wish Factory’ (the third of four ‘Beastly Bullies’ children's book collection stories to be released on Amazon Kindle) which will hopefully be out later this month, I've spent the last couple of days fiddling around on twitter during my writing breaks.

Doctor Gremlin of the 'Beastly Bullies' collection

I’ve never really 'used' it before but have found it to be quite involving, especially as you can choose who to ‘follow’ on it and find all kinds of interesting information, ideas and opinions.

This has also led to me becoming further distracted by the upcoming UK general election, as a lot of the content on twitter is focusing on that.
I would never ever include politics in any of my stories, as I believe children should be free of the worries of the adult world as they get on with the busy and confusing job of growing up, going to school, doing homework, making and breaking friendships, living with their family or whomever, and taking on all kinds of different hobbies, facing various personal challenges, etc etc etc!

Twitter: a good but time-consuming way to follow events?

I can’t really say that I have my ‘finger on the pulse’ at all – as following the news can take up a lot of time and I try to avoid spending too long staring at screens. However, twitter seems a potentially empowering forum for some without a voice to ‘speak up’, if you can separate the more interesting or insightful tweets from countless other random (and sometimes inappropriate) daily ones!

If you have a moment, why not visit my twitter feed to see who I’m following and find out what some of them have to say:

There’s all kinds of cool science feeds like ‘Physics World’ and 'Science Weekly', links to masterful documentary makers such as Simon Schama, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Louis Theroux, amazing images from Earth Pics, the insights of characters ranging from Ekhart Tolle to Kurzgesagt, and regular updates from great children’s authors including JK Rowling, Michael Rosen and Frank Cottrell-Boyce.

JK Rowling's twitter feed could be worth following

I suspect you either have to be famous or ‘time rich’ to manage get a lot of followers – something I’m not sure I’d be comfortable with anyway!

I aim to use my own twitter feed to 'retweet' or 'favourite' anything I think might appeal to any like-minded souls, while perhaps adding a few comments and observations of my own along the way if ever the mood takes me - so feel free to follow:

Feel free to follow me on twitter!

As for any aspiring authors reading this and pondering the use of such social media, I suppose it can't do any harm to try - although I’m not sure I’d recommend putting too much time into it when you're supposed to be writing...

Anyway, from a writer's point of view, twitter seems potentially useful for:

• Announcing new releases
• Keeping readers up to date with potential new developments in your stories, the evolution of your characters, new cover designs, etc
• Interacting with your readers
• Increasing your 'exposure'
• Giving updates on any readings, signings, talks, etc that you might be doing
• Interacting with other authors
• Announcing any new posts on your Blog or Facebook page

However, as great as all of this sounds, it's not all wonderful, as twitter can still be:

• Very time consuming to keep up with everyone’s tweets and respond when necessary
• Difficult when trying to separate ‘the wheat from the chaff’
• Open to abuse – are you ready for the possibility of negative comments on social media?
• No guarantee of increased book sales

twitter can be a good way to interact with readers

If you do decide to start 'tweeting', you might find these online guides useful:

Mashable twitter guide book

How to get more twitter followers

And for teachers, ways to us twitter in the classroom

You can also learn how to 'embed' your twitter feed into your blog page here (it's very simple, even I managed at the first attempt - see the right-hand side of this page)

Do you have a twitter feed already? Which are your favourite feeds? Can you recommend any interesting ones for young readers or children’s authors? Please share them...

Self-publishing guide to POD with Createspace: 'Smell of Poo' Children's Book out in paperback!

The 'Smell of Poo' Children's Book Collection is now available in print!

FYI EDIT 2020: Createspace has now been merged with Amazon Kindle pages. It is now easier to format and publish a print book using 'Kindle Create':

Use Kindle Create to help publish your paperback book

***

After completing the rather arduous task of formatting the text and cover design to suit a high quality paperback edition (see the guide below so you may benefit from this experience), the 'Smell of Poo' collection is now available in print - for those of you who prefer to hold the actual book in your hands (I still prefer the feel of paper to holding my kindle, but maybe I'm just old fashioned?).

You can find it with all the information you need here:

The 'Smell of Poo' is now out in glossy paperback!

How to prepare, format and process your book on Createspace - an easy 'Print on Demand' self-publishing guide:

Even though I don't expect to sell too many print versions as they are more expensive than the ebook version, it'll be nice to give out a few copies to friends and family (my parents are afraid of anything with buttons anyway), so the whole POD process has already been worth it in my view...

With regard to the formatting process, people can charge a lot of money to help you but I recommend being patient and trying to manage it for yourself (as much as I appreciate Createspace and their enabling self-publishing authors to print on demand, I did raise my eyebrows at their fees - hence this advice).

If it's just a regular paperback you're going for, i.e. no colour or pictures inside, then it's not too tricky. Just remember to set your margins for the text, have someone redo your cover design with a blurb on the back, and tick all the necessary boxes in createspace in their step by step self-publishing process.

Firstly, for text formatting, you can see the margin requirements here (6x9 is the recommended book size for most regular fiction):

createspace printing options

For further advice on this, The Creative Penn is as helpful as ever:

Print on demand self-publishing advice

Then, go to Fiverr to find someone who can 'redesign' your ebook cover into a paperback cover with all the right dimensions, etc (it needs to be 300dpi, by the way). Personally I used 'Fluxydesign' who I hope you agree did a nice job:

createspace POD cover design

Here's the full glossy paperback cover with spine - not bad eh?

Createspace give you a choice of 'matte' or 'glossy' covers. They say that matte is better for fiction / glossy for non-fiction, however for children's books I was advised by an experienced self-published author (see the next link) to still go with glossy - aren't we all usually still drawn to shinier things after all..?

Matte or Glossy book cover?

For the book description section, make sure you have your 'metadata' ready with lots of keywords to help your readers find your book, while also making sure it matches what is in the book itself! Here's a few hints and tips from 'The Book Designer':

Guide to Metadata / Keywords for ebooks

Incidentally, Createspace also give you the option of choosing a FREE ISBN for your book, which will save you a fair bit of change if you're on a budget.

Everything else in the createspace process was so simple that I'm sure most people will be ok, i.e. selecting distribution channels, pricing and so on - it's a bit of a 'no brainer' really and basically depends on your own intentions.

However, it isn't too obvious that you can 'create' your own createspace estore! It is already set up for your but you can change the colours and background and even add your own banner. Here is a guide to help you along with this:

Guide to creating your own Createspace 'estore'!

For resizing an image for your banner (good luck with this!) I found the best way was to simply do a 'print screen', paste it into Microsoft Paint, then resize it there. This link might help you if you're as 'techno challenged' as me..:

Guide to 'resizing' with Microsoft Paint

Phew, having just written this post it actually seems like quite a lot - but compared to going through the process of finding an agent, then finding a publisher, then getting published and making any kind of profit or reaching a potentially large audience, Createspace and their kind are heaven sent!

Good luck with the self-publishing process! If you have any other useful hints or tips, please leave a comment...

The 'Smell of Poo' is now out in glossy paperback!

Recommended Writing Guides

The Best General Guides to Writing for Children

Thanks to the absolutely brilliant 'Read Liverpool Online Library', I could enjoy (and learn a lot from) the following books:

Absolutely crammed full of good, practical advice as well as plenty of idea examples to help give you a kick start. Cleaver covers all the fundamentals of children's story writing from setting, character and plot to structure and content.

There are endless vocabulary suggestions while there's also quite a comprehensive section on getting published, too. The layout of this guide is concise yet very informative and if this isn't enough for you, there's relevant further reading recommendations in each section of the book as well.

Coppard and Newbery co-wrote this book to great effect, covering just about every aspect of writing that any new children's author would need to know. They speak of their own experiences whilst also drawing on that of other esteemed writers.

It is a well structured and quite comprehensive guide and -along with the other books featured in this post - stands head and shoulders above similar 'guides' I have come across. If you need more than this as a general guide then you will probably need to read a number of books covering the specific content subjects.

Reading this guide from cover to cover is as rewarding as any online course I have seen and it even sets you tasks to help with your ideas and structure.

Some writers refer to this book almost like an aspiring writer's bible and having had a good look through it I can begin to see why.

Full of good advice from authors who have 'been there, done that' - such as JK Rowling and Eion Colfer - it also contains comprehensive listings of publishers and what they publish. I found this dedicated children's writers' edition to be much more useful and inspiring than the general 2015 yearbook which I also recently borrowed from the elibrary.

If you know of any other useful guides to writing for children please share them in the comments box. Also please refer to the 'Writing Guide' page on this blog for more useful hints and tips...

The online Writing Guide is here!

The online Writing Resource Guide is here!

I've been writing for a while now but only as a hobby. However, having taken a break from the day job to be able to spend some time finally producing a few stories, I first had a look all over the web for hints, tips, guides and courses that would help me hone my craft and learn more about the publishing process.

There was so much information out there it took a while to separate the 'wheat from the chaff', and to help save other writers precious time (which would obviously be better spent writing), I've compiled the best courses, links and resources I could find into a list that can be found in the page entitled 'Writing Guide' at the top of the screen.

There's something for everyone in there, covering everything from the best free online writing courses to advice on all aspects the writing process. There are also resources for poets and plenty of valuable information on marketing and publishing.

I've also created a page full of links to fun and effective language and literacy resources for young learners to check out.

Ok, that's enough from me, just click on the 'Writing Guide' page at the top of the screen and away you go!

P.s. If you have any other such useful links, please add them in the relevant comment sections, thanks! And if you're still struggling with the whole thing, just remember...