Information, inspiration and interviews on writing, self-publishing, book marketing and making a living with your writing. If you need help with writing your book, or you want to learn how to navigate the new world of publishing and book marketing, then join Joanna Penn and her guests every Monday. Also covers the business of being a writer and how to make money with your books.
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Writing Fast, Building An Audience And Facebook Advertising For Authors With Mark Dawson
OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna PennRecently, Forbes ran an article about Mark Dawson with the headline: Amazon pays $450,000 a year to this self-published writer. Today, I interview Mark about how he writes fast, the empowerment of being indie, Facebook advertising and email list marketing.
In the intro I talk about my cycling trip to Croatia which was a much needed rest away from the computer ???? You can see some of the photos on Flickr here.
This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.
Kobo’s financial support pays for the hosting and transcription, and if you enjoy the show, you can now support my time on Patreon. Thank you for your support!
Mark Dawson is an internationally bestselling thriller author with the John Milton and Beatrix Rose series. He also shares his knowledge with authors at SelfPublishingFormula.com and has a new course about Facebook marketing here.
You can listen above or on iTunes or Stitcher, watch the video or read the notes and links below.
* How Mark got started in writing back in the late 90s. Traditional publishing didn't quite go how he expected, despite a great advance. Dispirited, Mark stopped writing for a number of years. When he heard about the Kindle and self-publishing, he began to write again, starting slow but then writing nearly a million words in 2014. The number of quality books he produced catapulted him into sales success and then he began to grow his email list at the same time. In Nov 2011, Mark left his job to write full time.
* A comparison of traditional publishing vs self-publishing. The change in mindset Mark has had to go through. The empowerment of going indie. The author can't just write – you have to take control of your marketing and your business as well. The indie way is not for everyone though – it takes a certain personality type.
* How to speed up your writing. Mark's first self-published novel, The Black Mile, took 14 months to write but he began to speed up. His early books were heavy on research in physical locations, but in order to speed up,