Writers On The Move: Creative Marketing

Apologies for the sad neglect of Slow and Steady Writers over the past months.  My writing has speeded up a bit since I stopped agonizing over every word.

How did I do it? The A to Z challenge, a post every day except Sundays for the whole month of April, starting with A then each one starting with the next letter in the alphabet.

Some authors manage to cover different topics on as many as four  blogs. Took me to manage one and I'm not there yet, W, X, Y and Z still to go.

Have a look the alphabet posts at my new author support site. The links to the Challenge and participants are there. It is my own support blog as a new author, where I log everything to be done as I market my novella. If you're a new or even not-so-new author, I'd love you to share your trials and tribulations there, too.

Today's question: I see lots of books for sale by other vendors on Amazon at vastly differing prices. If your book is not sold by Amazon but by an Amazon Marketplace vendor, what happens to royalties?

A summary of thoughts on Creative Marketing from my post at Writers on the Move:

Writers On The Move: Creative Marketing: Visiting a few of the millions of blogs online this month has confirmed my belief that marketing, as once we knew it, has changed. Banging t...

New Writing Opportunities

Writing Contests


Writing contests are a good way to hone your craft, to learn about writing to deadlines and to gain greater exposure and publicity for your work.


A new-to-me  information page from Be a Better Writer lists current creative writing competitions for both fiction and non-fiction. As the page holds details for the rest of the year, scroll down through the creative writing entries to reach the creative non-fiction contests half way down the page.


There is also a handy comments box where you can enter details of a competition you are running--or know about. After checking it out, webmaster and award-winning author Pearl Luke will add it to the listings.


A site well worth exploring and full of helpful advice.
It also hosts  the Page 47 short story submission page offering a flat fee payment for stories accepted for publication.


Read a selection of past stories already accepted and as always, read the guidelines carefully and obey them to the letter. Good luck.


How To Write A Short Story


Brush up your knowledge and technique by reading the fascinating and comprehensive article written specifically for Slow and Steady Writers by Australian novelist and short story writer Wendy Laharnar.

Happiness Guaranteed by Wendy Laharnar

Wendy's sci-fi novella Happiness Guaranteed, was third in the bestseller lists for its category on Amazon, Germany--no mean achievement. And her books and short stories for adults and children constantly garner five star reviews.




Come back on Monday June 4 and read her useful feature length article entitled Kick Start Your Short Story.


More Advice From Top Authors


Randy Ingermanson, creator of the Snowflake Method  and author of the free Advanced Fiction Writing e-zine is offering two novels Oxygen and The Fifth Man in  special ebook versions  containing appendices for writers on writing. 


Written by himself and John B. Olson they are on sale on Amazon and Smashwords for $2.99 each until tomorrow Sunday June 3.


l found the appendices so interesting, l bought a second copy of Oxygen to keep  on my non-Kindle e-reader.


Design Your Own eBook Cover


lf you're looking to save money, put June 22 into your calendar or diary. It's the date of the next free Writers on the Move Webinar.


Karen Cioffi is presenting Design Your Own eBook Cover in Ten Easy Steps. For those of us who find attending too difficult because of the time factor, the webinar is copied to send out later. Just remember to register with Karen to get the link for the event nearer the time.

Magdalena Ball--On The Value of Slow Writing

 With great delight  I welcome Magdalena Ball to Slow and Steady Writers today, talking about her writing process and her new novel Black Cow. I am a great admirer of the versatility of her writing which encompasses poetry, short stories, reviews, articles as well as novels.  If you are lucky enough to attend her content rich workshops at Muse Writers Conference and Writers on the Move, you may find this hard to believe but she says she is one of the world's slow writers too...

On the Value of Slow writing

Since I'm out touring my new novel Black Cow, I've been doing a lot of interviews. The first thing I always get asked is about what I'm working on now. Of course I've got a work-in-progress and it's coming along, but if I provide a very exciting overview of the plotline, it doesn't mean that the book will hit the bookshelves within the next few months. I'm a s-l-o-w writer. Is that something I should admit? After all, buzz is all about right now. I'm doing my best to create buzz for my new novel. Should I disappoint my fans by telling them that it will be at least two years before I've finalised the first draft of my third novel, and that's not counting the six months in plotting I've already spent on it? Though it isn't as hot as the slow food movement, slow writing is gaining, well, momentum (that's momentum of the tortoise variety). Yes, it's a movement, if not a revolution.  So what is slow writing and why write slowly?

Slow writing is about putting quality before speed. Like a long, slowly cooked Coq Au Vin, slow writing is well crafted, with rich, complex flavours, and deep, powerful characters. This sort of writing can't be chugged out. There's not much in the way of a rote formula to help you if you want to write this kind of work. Everything has to be fresh, new, and impeccably crafted.  Slow writing not only takes time to craft at the front end, it takes revision. That's lots of revision, not only on our own, but with the help of a canny editor.  That often means that the work has to be left for a little while after a first draft is finished, maybe several months to gain some all-important perspective. Then the work has to be read critically, like a reader might, with an eye to rhythm, to character development, to story and character integration, to that subtle but critical transformation that occurs between the pages of the book. 

Research, Reading and Readers

Slow writing allows for full and extensive research. This means taking the time to really find out the historical context of the period you're writing in, reading extensively. It might involve travelling to your setting, or consulting other books, or interviewing experts.  

Slow writers have slow readers in mind. That is, readers who take the time to enjoy the care with which you've crafted your book, to enjoy the subtle references and connections, the implications, the deeper themes, and to find the poetry in your prose.

Slow writing doesn't mean that the book you create is difficult, unwieldy, or laborious. Quite the contrary, because the careful, slow crafting will almost always equate to a smoother, easier, and dare I say it, quicker read for the reader.  But together, the slow writer and the slow reader form a partnership that begins and ends with attention, that precious and all too rare commodity in these fast paced times. 

Magdalena Ball is the author of the novel Black Cow. Grab a free mini flip book of the book from 
Bewrite Books  http://www.bewritebooks.com/mb/BlackCow/BlackCow.html

And a final postscript from me to say that Black Cow truly is a very good book. When I have finished reading it I shall be adding yet another five star review to all the others already posted on Amazon. Find out more about the author and read an excerpt from Black Cow.