Cheryl Cowtan on Writing

I have been setting Goodreads to the side as I build my author platform, and even just writing this statement strikes me right in the oxymorons. Why? Because, people join Goodreads to talk about books, share books, review books, put books on their shelves, and promote books. Now that my first adult horror novel, "Girl Desecrated",  is launched, I realize I should have been focused on this group of potential readers instead of trying to sift through Facebook and Twitter. You see, some people on Facebook like to read. Some people on Twitter like to read. But the 55 million Goodread members are an author's goldmine because everyone on the site likes to read. So, there's gold in them thar hills! How do we get it out? Obvious step #1: Create an author page and load up a book. Here is what else you can do: The Goodreads' initiative that created the most buzz for my book was a giveaway . The giveaways are for print books only, at this time. You pick your book,...

The process from novel drafting to book promotion can be a long, confusing journey of pitfalls that costs us money, causes us to doubt ourselves, and can dampen the spark that gave us the courage to start in the first place. Until a self-publishing degree is offered at our local universities, we authors have to educate ourselves on the complexities of self-publishing. There are thousands of self-taught experts writing blogs, selling books, broadcasting, and offering lessons via video to help authors navigate this learning curve. We could spend years  exploring and mining the extensive market of self-publishing information, and I have. The trouble is, when we are surrounded by a plethora of information and a multitude of people pointing us in different directions, we get bogged down with information overload and become mired in indecision. In my upcoming book, How to Solve the Top 5 Indie Author Problems, I examine the five challenges many indie authors fac...

On Saturday Feb 4th, I attended GenreCon2017 in Guelph Ontario, where, for the first time ever, I tried selling my novel at a Con. I was armed with some realistic expectations from Brandon Sanderson (Writing Excuses), Joanna Penn (The Creative Penn), and other authors I network with, so I'm actually quite pleased with how things went. I set realistic goals and as a result, succeeded at all of them, and I learned a few things about selling at conferences. #1 I can sell at a Con and keep my pride too :) I took " Girl Desecrated ", first-in-series of The Fergus She , which I published on Halloween 2016. I had a little marketing scheme going, which included pre-preparing a 3 second blurb, a 30 second blurb, and offering free tree-of-life bracelets with each sale. I also dropped my novel's price $4 from the Amazon.ca cost, and signed each copy with a quote from the novel. “Bad-girls, highlanders and vampires, in Guelph!” Now, I know I could have been more ...