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Ben Ellis

Novelist and screenwriter

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CategorySelf-Publishing

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Self-Publishing: 5 More Ways To get Book Reviews

June 12, 2018October 18, 2019Posted in 'Broken Branches', Self-Publishing by Ben

I blogged about this back in December 2014 after launching my debut novel, In A Right State, – Self-Publishing: 10 ways to get book reviews – so read that post first for 10 basic ideas, but here’s 5 new ones I’ve discovered after trying to get my second novel, Broken Branches, out there to potential reviewers.

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24/7 Twitterthon to promote BROKEN BRANCHES = Abject Failure

April 8, 2018October 18, 2019Posted in 'Broken Branches', Self-Publishing by Ben

You launch a book and the next thing to do is promote it. In fact, leading up to the end of editing it and sorting out the ebook and paperback formatting, getting the cover done, in the back of your mind is the whole ball-achingly dull process of promoting your unrealised genius to the planet.

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Self-Publishing: Is it worth publishing a ‘failed’ novel?

September 2, 2015October 18, 2019Posted in 'In A Right State', Self-Publishing by Ben

I’m classing a ‘failed novel’ as one that has been submitted to agents and publishers over a year or two without having achieved a sale or any/much interest. This is what happened with ‘In A Right State‘. ‘In A Right State’ is my first novel and I sent it out to about 40 agents and

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Self-Publishing: Promoting, 5 Things I Won’t Do

August 26, 2015October 18, 2019Posted in Self-Publishing by Ben

This is more of an anti-blog post to counter all those how to market your book type blog posts which contain a lot of crap, a lot of obvious common sense and a lot of ‘what planet are you on?‘, eg. Spend £20,000 on targeted Facebook ads! Here’s a few things I see other authors

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Self-Publishing: Do I need an ISBN Number?

August 21, 2015October 18, 2019Posted in 'In A Right State', Self-Publishing by Ben

ISBN numbers are a big worry for a first time self-publisher, at least it was for me. They smell of officialdom and when you start looking into it, the smell intensifies with cost – Nielsen UK ISBN Agency – £144 for 10 ISBN numbers! What is an ISBN? Here’s the official answer from ISBN International;

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Self-Publishing: Lessons Learned

August 18, 2015October 18, 2019Posted in 'In A Right State', Self-Publishing by Ben

A year on from self-publishing my first novel, what lessons have I learned? What would I do differently next time? What mistakes did I make? Even though my sales have been pretty poor, I don’t think I made many mistakes. I experimented and as a result there’s a few things I won’t be doing again,

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Self-Publishing: Paid Advertising, Is It Worth It?

July 30, 2015October 18, 2019Posted in 'In A Right State', Self-Publishing by Ben

Once you’ve written a book, edited a book and published a book, you need to promote the book. We know this, but how? You can go asking and begging for book reviews, you can try marketing/PR stunts, you can go on a social network and blogging frenzy to drum up some business and you can

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Amazon, Let Me Give My eBook Away!

July 27, 2015October 18, 2019Posted in 'In A Right State', Self-Publishing by Ben

I finally get a Bookbub promotion approved because I said I’d give it away for free. Goes against my Taylor Swift-like instincts but I put it down as a marketing cost. I’m selling fuck all at the moment anyway, so profits aren’t going to be hit. (profits! lol!) I set a date and then log in

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Self-Publishing: ‘In A Right State’ 1 Year Review

July 23, 2015October 18, 2019Posted in 'In A Right State', Self-Publishing by Ben

6 months ago I reviewed the progress of my debut self-published novel, ‘In A Right State‘, here. It weren’t pretty. The second half of the year didn’t go much better, in fact, probably worse. I’ve sold 11 copies over the last 6 months on Amazon, 27 in total for the year. I doubled the amount

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‘In A Right State’ on iBooks, Nook, Kobo and more…

March 26, 2015October 18, 2019Posted in 'In A Right State', Self-Publishing by Ben

I’ve done my penance on Amazon KDP with pretty poor results so the next step was to spread my wings and get submitting to the other online retailers. The problem with this idea is that submitting to these sites would take time and is about as much fun as chicken pox. Fortunately, I’d met the people

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Still Me
Still Me
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