But to tell you frankly, I devoted most of my time reading Hugh's blogs rather than reading his novels. I have been inspired by what he says about his fellow Indie authors in their quests in the world of self-publishing. Hugh is an honest, down-to-earth human being who always shares his brilliant advice in this subject.
 |
| Successful Indie Author Hugh Howey |
Discoverability is the hottest word among the Indie writers and authors in the industry. Every single one of us hopes that one day our books will be discovered. I'm not a hypocrite to say, "Oh, please, I don't dream that crap, to be a best selling author someday? Oh, no, please." But you know what, I am aware enough that a lot of hard work require us to attain that dream. Tons of hard work, social media activities and many more. But the most important thing of all is for us to keep on writing.
So let's go back to this 'discoverability' word that excites Indie authors. According to Hugh, he received lots of email inquiries from Indie authors who ask how to be discovered. With such great humility, Hugh answered them with honest facts. And I know that some of you who read my blog, have already read that wonderful post he made. http://www.hughhowey.com/discoverability-and-donald-rumsfeld/
But for the sake of the Personal Notes feature of my blog, let me share you some of his thoughts that can be useful in order to be discovered. He advised that writing within a genre is a huge first step in becoming discovered. "No one is looking for you or your particular book", he said. "You are both unknown unknowns. You better write a book that's near a specific book", he added. I believed to what he said. He even challenged us to choose between the two: You can either change your name to L.E. James or you can start writing billionaire erotica. But he preferred to choose the latter which means you, as a writer has a wide choice from science fiction to romance, new adult, erotica, fantasy and crime. Hugh justified that people are looking for genre work.
In the upcoming blogs on the Personal Notes feature (he he) I would share you the word Discoverability According to Mark Coker. Mark is the founder of Smashwords, where you can find my novellas Prince of Nepal and Asian Boy. I always call him a genius because his strategies are brilliant and very useful in this competitive era of e-book self-publishing.
And for our feature of the day (or night, ha ha!) I would like to give you the synopsis of Barry Eisler's John Rain.
SYNOPSIS LOUNGE proudly presents...
A John Rain Novel: A Clean Kill in Tokyo
Barry Eisler
Previously published as Rain Fall
Name: John Rain.
Vocation: Assassin.
Specialty: Natural Causes.
Base of operations: Tokyo.
Availability: Worldwide.
Half American, half Japanese, expert in both worlds but at home in neither, John Rain is the best killer money can buy. You tell him who. You tell him where. He doesn't care about why...
Until he gets involved with Midori Kawamura, a beautiful jazz pianist--and the daughter of his latest kill.
"Eisler provides a cracklingly good yarn, well written, deftly plotted, and surprisingly appealing... Thomas Perry and Lawrence Block need not retire their hit men quite yet, but Eisler is clearly a challenger."
--Boston Globe
Includes a note from the author introducing the new edition. This is book #1 in the John Rain assassin series, though each entry is written as a standalone and you can read them in any order you like.
