books, books on the shelf

Bravo, writer Damien G. Walter of The Guardian has come up with a checklist of seven items the budding self-publishing writer should have accomplished before jumping in the deep end of the scary pool of independently published books.

He doesn’t say that you must have accomplished all seven of these items, though that would certainly help. If you’ve solidly come up with four, you may actually be ready.

By and large I agree with this list – certainly, for the likelihood of a commercial success (which is what everyone wants, right?).

#1: High Concept – usually (esp. in movies) refers to the kind of plot you can describe in one sentence. So, this may not indicate that anything is good, it’s just understandable before the purchase. Walter uses “Da Vinci Code” as an example. There are, however, many great books that would be hard to describe this way – and why do we need to dumb down the field any more than it already is?

#2: Practicing 10,000 hours to achieve mastery, a la a Malcolm Gladwell hypothesis. This I like. Writing, like music or dance or painting or anything, really, gets better with practice. The more you do, the better you get.

#3: Getting serious feedback for your writing. And, this doesn’t mean your mom! I can’t emphasize how important this is. Although painful, as well. Take classes with other writers who will critique your work. Listen to what they say and understand that the world may not be on your wavelength and that you haven’t communicated.

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#5: Having a platform: Self-publishing demands this, as the traditional publisher would be the marketer of the book, and that humongous task falls to the self-publisher. So be sure you do know social media or can afford to have someone do the marketing and publicity for you.

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