I’ll be running two blogs here:
- A SELF EDITING BLOG
I’m an experienced fiction editor who couldn’t afford an editor for my own novels…so I did it myself.
To do this I had to devise a methodology for how to edit your own prose effectively. There’s no great secret to this – basically it’s about multiple runs with clear purposes and parameters. The blog will explain the breakdown into runs and how to define your own purposes and parameters. - MY ADVENTURES IN SELF-PUBLISHING
Divers Novels is my own imprint, created to self-publish my books.
Self publishing was a clear and conscious choice. In the blog I’ll explain why I made it.
The blog will also be a kind of stop motion live stream of how it goes, complete with full financial information (costs, royalties, etc.).
So blogs always have their purposes – what are mine? Firstly, I’ll be honest and upfront and admit that my main aim is to generate traffic for my novels. Maybe the blog is interesting/useful and you’d like to show appreciation (buy my books). Alternatively maybe you want to see what my self-editing method results in (buy my books). Or perhaps you just reckon they look like interesting novels you’d like to read (buy my books). To this end, expect plenty of links around the site to help you buy my books.
But I also want to be a professional novelist and I’ve spent the last 6 years editing for (mostly would-be) professional novelists. What have I learned from this? That, at least financially, wanting to be a professional novelist SUCKS!
Or perhaps a better way to phrase it is that the compulsion to try and be a professional novelist is to wander naked into a room filled with mosquitos, leeches and vampires. Yes, they all want to suck your blood! For which read your money. Every one of them will tell you that to stand any chance of success you need what they are selling.
And increasingly this is in fact true.
What saddens me – as someone with a lifelong love of reading – is that the more success comes to correlate with budget / existing influence the less the reading world is going to see the great stories of the non-rich / introverted-and-unknown. Running blogs that might help little-known people who can’t afford editors / typesetters / publishing services providers / marketing services providers / etc to improve their books and publish them themselves is my tiny way of trying to shift the balance slightly back.
These blogs will be appearing here very soon, so please bookmark this page and/or follow me on social media to keep updated. But bear with me just another week or two (from 15th June 2024), because I’ve got a TO DO list as long as my arm for self-publishing The Lost Piece to finish first. Sorry!