How Tony Wrote and Published Two Novels

How Tony Wrote and Published Two Novels

Tony Alan Grayson

Smashwords Edition

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Copyright

This book is protected with Copyright © TXu 1-886-685, July 21, 2013 by Tony Alan Grayson.

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this e-book with another person, purchase an additional copy of it, and provide the purchased copy for each recipient. Please respect my years of hard work by refusing to participate in the piracy of books. My books are available online for the price of a vending machine snack. I ask for your support as I continue to craft new stories for you to enjoy. Thank you.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to those who persevere.

Prologue

How Tony Wrote and Published Two Novels is a guidebook to explain how I researched, wrote, edited, published, and marketed two novels in the e-book format. A Voice from New Mill Creek: The Methodists is both Historical Fiction and Christian Fiction. Goodnight Paige is a Contemporary Romance.

After Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, Smashwords.com, and on other e-book retailers marketed and sold these two novels, I began to speak locally at various reader forums. I found scattered would-be writers among the audience that had come to hear me talk specifically about one of the novels. Aspiring writers want to know how I did it. They seek a path on how they can do that too. This guidebook helps me to explain to aspiring writers what I have learned that has enabled me to publish my completed novels. Thank you for purchasing it. I will begin by saying what I tell my audiences face-to-face. You can do it. The only thing that can stop you is you.

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Disclaimer

As the title states, How Tony Wrote and Published Two Novels is a guidebook based on writing and publishing steps that worked for me. In this guidebook, you have received the value of someone else’s (my) experiences as you define your path to become a writer or to improve your writing craft, and to publish your completed work. Since writing is a personal art, each writer must make choices. Readers of this guidebook must understand that I can make no guarantee of success for your individual writing projects. To write a novel is to create. What you write and publish will be uniquely yours. Something that belongs to you is also your responsibility. To be clear, make ethical and honest decisions. Be prudent about incurring expenses. Persevere in your efforts to market your published work. The terrific news for you is that all of the profits from your direct sales and the percentage sent to you by book retailers (can be as high as 85%) are yours to keep. The steps in this guidebook have worked and continue to work for me. I am me, and you are you. I do not guarantee that your following any step in this guidebook will make your writing and/or publishing successful or profitable. Attain your goals through your own efforts and enjoy the pride and rewards of a successful writer/publisher.

Remember, that successful writing can be a repeatable process. Successful marketing of your completed writing can be scalable. Do the best you can, continue to learn, keep writing and publishing. You may be blessed with a stunning success on one of your works that will scale up your entire published portfolio!

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Table of Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Disclaimer

Part I: How to Write

Chapter 1: A Writer’s Reference Guide

Chapter 2: What do you want to write?

Chapter 3: Writer’s Technique

Chapter 4: Review and Revise

Chapter 5: Acknowledge Writer Sources

Chapter 6: Format

Chapter 7: Your Book Cover

Chapter 8: Copyright

Chapter 9: Publishing with Book Retailers

Chapter 10: Summary of Steps Before Business Startup

Part II: Getting Down to Business

Chapter 1: Your Business Setup

Chapter 2: Taxes

Chapter 3: Marketing Strategies and Use of Technology

Chapter 4: Collaboration with Authors

Chapter 5: Communication with Your Readers

Chapter 6: Contact with Publishers and Agents

Chapter 7: The Power of a Line of Business

Chapter 8: Expansion to Other Book Formats and Foreign Markets

Chapter 9: Plan for Success on a Massive Scale

Epilogue

Bibliography

Abbreviations

Vita

E-Books by Tony Alan Grayson

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Part I

How to Write

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Chapter 1: A Writer’s Reference Guide

Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF): In order to be a successful, published writer, you must be capable of conceiving, planning, writing, and completing a writing project. This is your first of three distinct and necessary actions that you must complete. My first two writing projects were full length novels. The purchaser and reader of each of my novels determines my success. This happens daily, over and over again. The reader of your completed writing project will likewise measure your work and fix your success as a writer.

Take a moment to reflect on why you purchased this guidebook. A guide, in any form, should help you get to where you want to go. Thus, if you would do something, or go somewhere, you must conceive and demonstrate capability to fulfill your goal. Keep the guidebook to use as a reference as you embark on your writing experience.

Writers are effective if they know how to write, why they write, and who is their reader audience. This guidebook specifically addresses why and how I decided to become a storyteller, the way in which I crafted two different stories, and how I published them as full-length novels. The guidebook specifically explains how I wrote and continue to write a novel, how to publish a novel in all e-formats, and how to convince book retailers to promote a novel for sale worldwide. Since a novel is a higher form of intellectual work, the guidance contained in this guidebook should apply to most forms of writing that you might attempt.

There are three parts to most chapters of Part I in this guidebook. In the first part, I explain the need, requirement, problem, or task that you should address. The second part contains a solution, steps, and ways or means that you could use to solve the problem. I may tell you in the second part how I solved a problem. The third part illustrates my writing. By sharing sample narrative or dialogue from one or both of my published novels, I provide you with an example that worked for me.

I offer my writer’s technique. Take it for yourself, and use it to create your own writer’s craft. Note: Craft means your unique style of writing. You may want to read the first chapter, and conduct practice writing, and build on that as you read each succeeding chapter. In anticipation that you may want to skip the third part of the chapters, I signal the beginning of samples of my novels with an insertion of my initials in Black adder ITC font size 14 (TAG).

To write a novel is to engage in an impulsive act. Most people have an active imagination, but few people catch their original thinking and develop it into an entertainment product for others to buy and read. Get your head around that. I did not say make a decision to write and get on with it. I said let your mind wander where it will, without boundaries. Write down what you think. Organize what you wrote. Begin to develop a habit of writing (about anything). As you recognize a pattern in your writing, add discipline, and get used to that. Creativity is an essential ingredient to build interest in readers to buy and enjoy reading your novel. Shape your creative thoughts into a plot, a setting, and characters. Since discipline is a near opposite of creativity, the lack of it is quite common in a creative person. A writer must obtain and exert a disciplined approach to his/her writing in order to establish and complete tasks. Develop repeatable and scalable habits in your writing craft, and be disciplined about applying those smart habits during your daily writing sessions. Discipline is the glue that binds your imagination to paragraphs, chapters, and a critical path (the plot) in your story. You must be disciplined in your method of connecting your writing project from its beginning to the end.

You may not know what you want to write, but if you have gotten this far, you need to know. Read on. Writers are individuals who bring to their craft their knowledge, opinions, and morality. There are many things that distinguish one writer from another. Subject matter is as diverse as the human imagination. Style can be learned, or it can be adlibbed. The retailer of the writer’s work in physical form (hardcover or a paperback book) will probably prescribe specific standards with which you must follow if you are to be published by them. However, an e-book retailer will tell you that you own your book, they will assist you on how to publish your book with them, and they usually give you a variety of options on how you can submit the format (Microsoft Word .doc and .docx are two formats). In this guidebook, I refer to writing a novel, which is what I did. You can use the guidebook to write in other forms: a one-page report, a poem, a short story, a play, a children’s book. I am qualified to tell you what I wrote. I crafted this guidebook on how I wrote and published two novels in a manner that might stimulate thought on how you might start, stick with, and complete a writing task that interests you.

I like analogies. They help me to reason, and I find them useful to explain my point of view to others. My analogy at this point is: if we were contract homebuilders, we would develop a blueprint for a house first. A building project or blueprint is our guide to us on exactly which tasks must be completed in order to build the house. You need to write down and organize your creative ideas about a novel. This is how you begin to write. Get everything in your head that is about your writing topic into readable text as fast as you can do that. When you run out of ideas about your novel, read what you wrote, organize it, and revise it. Over time, as you get creative and better ideas, later DRAFTS of your novel may look different from your first thoughts that you wrote down. Suggestion: When you complete a DRAFT, retain it as a file. Create a second file (a copy of the original) to conduct your first major revision. Consider the blueprint analogy. If you design a blueprint of your house, it is your idea of what you will build for a customer. The customer may wish for you to design other features, and by your consent to do that, you may have ideas of your own on how you might redo the original design. That does not mean that you have a flawed original design. Keep that first