On writing a book. Or just becoming an Author.

So, you want to write a book?

Super. Go for it. Bum in chair and write. Until you are finished. If you are dead keen, you will . Otherwise, you probably won’t.

But now you need readers?  (Not necessarily ‘cos of course  you could just stuff it under the bed and forget about it though it does seem silly to have spent so long writing a book if no-one’s going to read it- even if you really wrote it because you just simply HAD TO WRITE IT and this is usually the BEST REASON to write a book because let’s face it, chances are you are NEVER EVER GOING TO BE A BESTSELLER or even MAKE ANY MONEY from it) , and so you try to SUBMIT it to PUBLISHERS so that it is nicer to read as a PROPER BOOK with a nice COVER  and even IF IT GETS PUBLISHED (unlikely) you are still going to NEED READERS because EVEN PUBLISHERS NEED READERS otherwise there would be no reason to PUBLISH. Phew. )

This is a bit tricky. You need to become a bit of a pest and ask your friends if they are interested in reading it. That’s a good start. Most of the time, because they must like you (or they wouldn’t be your FRIEND, would they?) then chances are they will probably read it and even if they didn’t really like it, they will still say, I READ YOUR BOOK and you will smile anyway.

But if you want readers, other than your friends to read it, you have to MARKET YOURSELF and you have to DISTRIBUTE IT.

This is hard because chances are, NO BOOKSHOP wants your book because they only deal with BIG PUBLISHERS and ESTABLISHED AUTHORS so you must create a SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM so that you become SOMEONE who has written a book that OTHER PEOPLE will get to know about it and maybe even read it .

(Another blog another time will tell you more about this DISTRIBUTION thing I promise but TWO BLOGS in one day is about enough !)

And so creating a SOCIAL MEDIA platform is a BIG JOB because you have to work out how to create a FACEBOOK page and TWITTER account and BLOG (I don’t think this is a very nice word)  and TWEET (And I usually have far more to say than just tweet so this is really tricky for me) and most of the time, you’re just a MOM or just SOMEONE because even MOM’s ARE SOMEONEs  though most often they forget that they are actually SOMEONE because most of the time they could be ANYONE (even doctors, lawyers, accountants, artists, computer boffins or desk office workers but you wouldn’t know that because most often they will tell you they are JUST A MOM)  and often they are considered EVERYONE because multi-tasking  really is a prerequisite here, but they definitely don’t like to be NO-ONE though often, that’s what they think they are because they sometimes forget WHAT THEY WERE and then its just easier to think of themselves as NO-ONE. This is NOT GOOD.

Gosh it’s complicated hey?

So, I found a really quick and easy way to become AN AUTHOR, without even writing a book!

Here’s the secret: when you set up your FB page, it says COMMUNITY or something else (can’t remember) but I didn’t really like this or quite frankly have a clue what it’s supposed to mean, so I (actually Megan and I ) were trying to implement some changes and we CLICKED again and up popped another option and with it,  the word AUTHOR.

And that’s how NIKI MALHERBE BECAME ” AUTHOR”

Simple as THAT.