Author: Eamonn Murphy - Writer

Eamonn Murphy has published over seventy stories in small press magazines and collected them into small, cheap volumes for posterity. They are available at all good eBook retailers and libraries. In his spare time, he writes reviews for sfcrowsnest. Retired now after years of hard labour (building sites and call centres), he lives near Bristol, England, with a nice lady, a nasty Jack Russell, an untrainable loony Labrador and some ducks. He has a BA (Hons) from the Open University but very little common sense. Find out more at eamonnmurphywriter.com.

The Two Truths About Self-Publishing

My girlfriend always says there is more than one truth – and I disagree – but with self-publishing, she seems to be correct. Surf the net and you will find the following ‘facts’ all over the place.

  1. Self-publishing is hard work but do it right and you can make BIG money. (To be fair, none of the hucksters say it’s easy money.)
  2. Self –publishing is a waste of time and you won’t make a penny.
  3. Marketing is indispensable and with the right marketing plan, you can make BIG money from your books.
  4. Marketing is a waste of time because no one’s ever heard of you and no one wants to know. You are shouting into the wind.
  5. Giving away free books is a brilliant plan to gain new readers who will snap up the next book and pay anything.
  6. Giving away free books is a complete waste of time. The readers will download the free books, never read them and not buy your next one.
  7. You must invest in a professional editor (around £400) a professional book cover (around £50 for an off the shelf or £200 for a custom made one).
  8. It’s not worth spending any money because your book won’t sell and you won’t recoup any of the cost. Edit it yourself about six weeks after you write it and do a homemade cover with Paintbox.
  9. You must be all over social media, build a mailing list, tweet, Facebook, Instagram, Blog and so on so that readers pining for your book will know you are there.
  10. All that is a waste of time. There are a million books on the market and 30,000 added every week. All the authors are peddling their crap on Twitter, Facebook and the rest but there are only a few thousand people left in the western world who actually read, most of whom are reviewers.
  11. Buy THIS book and it will tell you how to be a successful writer like the author.
  12. Don’t buy it. The author’s main success is telling people like you they can be a successful writer and selling books to you. How to Succeed in Self-Publishing books are the new diet and weight loss industry for the 21st

I should point out that the odd-numbered positive ‘facts’ are a lot easier to find than the even numbered negative facts but that’s because all the marketers selling How to Succeed in Self-Publishing books have clogged up the first few pages of any search.

‘What is truth?’ Pilate asked.

P.S. The real reason for writing is that I love it. As Orson Welles said, it’s the best model train set any boy ever had.

 

 

 

 

On the Popularity of Short Stories

I sold some books to Ziffit the other day. They don’t give you a fortune but it’s easy, fast and reliable. They turned down the following as not really having any value:

Elasticity the Best of the Elastic Press edited by Andrew Hook

Far Orbit edited by Bascomb James – stories in the Grand Tradition

View from Another Shore edited by Franz Rottensteiner – European science-fiction

Click on the links for my reviews of these on SFcrowsnest. They were all good anthologies with some excellent stories but out there in the cruel marketplace are worth nothing.

Weep, short story writers. Weep and write a twenty-volume epic fantasy serial to clog up the book catalogues.

Good news for space exploration

A super-advanced space drive (known as a Hall thruster) which is in the running to take humans to Mars has just broken all records for operating current, power and thrust for a device of its kind. Its development is being led by Alec Gallimore, University of Michigan professor of aerospace engineering and the Robert J.…

via Engage Ion drive, captain: NASA’s new subspace drive breaks all records! — SFcrowsnest

This was posted on sfcrowsnest by Colonel Frog. I thought a ‘Hall thruster’ was a knee trembler in the school corridor. Seriously, this is great.