amy mcguire

Amy had so much information to share that I couldn’t get it all in one post. So I am happy to present the other half of her interview:

Dawn Ross: Do you have any technical writing tips?

Amy McGuire: Get your work professionally edited if you can afford it and get at least five or six of your friends and family, writers and readers to edit it before you put it up for sale if you can’t afford professional editing. Yes, you can edit your own work and probably should to a point, but make sure you get other eyes for things like grammar, spelling etc. I learned this one the hard way. I had my first edition of The Heart’s Discovery out with some grammatical and typing errors and the reviews reflected it. My second book I won’t be making the same mistake. Crazy thing is, I thought I went over it with a fine tooth comb. Unfortunately, even reading it aloud (which I highly recommend you do by the way) didn’t get all the errors. When you’re the writer of a manuscript and you’ve seen the same scene over and over again, your mind will start to fill in any blanks and change any errors. The mind is a sneaky thing. This is why I highly suggest you get an editor, whether professional or a friend or family member to give your manuscript a good looking over before you put it out. Especially in the self publishing field writers need to be extra careful to make their manuscripts look as professional as possible before trying to sell them. Take the sentence I just wrote. It’s grammatically correct and spelled correctly, but it kind of reads awkwardly, doesn’t it. Now I’ll take the sentence and rewrite it. Writers need to be extra careful to make their manuscripts look as professional as possible before selling them, especially in the self publishing field. We are scrutinized more heavily because we don’t have a traditional publishing house backing up our work. We also have to be head and shoulders over all the really poorly written books in our field. It drives me crazy when I find a book for free or .99 on Amazon because I can almost guarantee it’s poorly written or edited. Yes, that seems like a bit of a biased statement. I know there are many out there for that price which are edited and written well. Sadly very few readers will buy them because they know about the other poorly written and poorly edited books out there for the same price. I also think it’s frustrating to have to sell your book for cheap when you’ve been a lot of effort in, just because everyone else is trying to undercut you, but that’s another topic for another time. My final advice is this; as an indie author you are not in an easy field, but if you’re going to self publish, do it well.

Dawn Ross: In which venue do you sell the most books? Amazon, Smashwords, or other?

Amy McGuire: Interestingly enough, my website has garnered the most sales. Perhaps because I push it so much. I guess I figure, if I’m going to put so much effort into my site, I may as well use it as a major marketing tool. My book is on Amazon and Smashwords as well and I send people who buy my book off my site there to write reviews sometimes, but mostly, it’s been my own site. So I guess I’m not typical of all the self published writers out there. Or maybe I am. I’m not sure who to compare myself to at this time, still being a bit new to the game. I guess you could say I’m the opposite of John Locke in that very few sales came from Amazon. If I was to use a pie chart to say how many of my sales come from each distributor it would probably look something like this: 5% Smashwords, 10% Amazon, 85% my site at www.shesanauthor.com.

Dawn Ross: What do you do to market your self-published books?

Amy McGuire: I use Facebook mostly, with my own group, multiple groups I belong to, and my own page. I use Twitter a bit and have been greatly helped in that area by members of the groups I belong to who generously tweet for me every once in awhile. I also do a bit of word of mouth when I see people. I actually had a stack of business cards made up that I give out to people or post in public places as well. I don’t know if I’ve made any sales using those tactics yet, but time will tell. It’s also nice when someone you meet says, ‘You’re an author? How do I check out your site?’ or ‘How do I buy your book?’ and you can just hand them a card with all your information on it. I have my website, twitter account, Facebook account name and email on there along with the name of my current book and the saga. My books (paperback format) are also in the store of a friend with a little display. I haven’t seen any results from that yet, but probably because I haven’t advertised it as much as I should be.

Dawn Ross: What was the most difficult part in self-publishing your books and how did you overcome it?

Amy McGuire: Believe it or not, it was the actual motivation to do it. There is such a stigma around self published books because they have been done so poorly in the past, that I was afraid I wouldn’t be taken seriously if I did it. I overcame it with the help of a wonderful author, Jason Matthews, who wrote How to Make, Market and Sell Ebooks-All For Free. He has been my mentor through the process and beyond. Sometimes you just need a little nudge and encouragement when trying something new and scary. That was the case with me.

Thank you so much for having me on your blog, Dawn. If any of your readers are interested in purchasing my book they can do so at any of the following locations:

My site: www.shesanauthor.com/apps/webstore

Amazon Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/The-Hearts-Discovery-Valley-Volume/dp/1475265115/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1348239315&sr=8-3&keywords=the+heart%27s+discovery

Amazon Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Hearts-Discovery-Hope-Valley-ebook/dp/B0077IUEX6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348239315&sr=8-1&keywords=the+heart%27s+discovery

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/146706

You can also reach me at shesanauthor@gmail.com

Amy McGuire

Thank you, Amy! :0)

Welcome, everyone. I’d like to introduce you to another great author, Amy McGuire. Who is Amy and what does she write about? Read about her here today and come back again tomorrow for more!

Dawn Ross: Tell me about yourself.

Amy McGuire: Well, I’m the last of three children born to missionary parents who worked in East Africa for most of my childhood. I was born in the tiny town of Campbell River, British Columbia during one of their furloughs and about two and a half years later they returned to the mission field with me and my two older siblings in tow. My first published book is infused with some of the experiences I gained as a missionary kid and the culture I grew up in is a very big part of who I am, both as a person and as writer. I have written stories and poetry almost from the moment I learned how to form a complete sentence, and can say without question that writing is my passion. I’ve been married to the same amazing man for over eight years now, and I have to admit that the dark hair and light eyes combination of some of my male characters are inspired by him. I am also the mother of a darling four year old angel who makes me smile and believe in the power of imagination on a daily basis. I guess you could say my titles are as follows: Wife, Mother and Author. I love being all three and wouldn’t have my life any other way. Romance is my personal weakness. I love to read it, write it, talk about it, experience it when I can, and live it. If I ever ‘make it big’ I want writing to be my career and the ‘job’ I do until I can no longer type or come up with stories.

Dawn Ross: Tell me about your writing process.

Amy McGuire: When I first started writing The Hope Valley Saga it was one book. I had a notebook I took everywhere (this was pre-laptop) and I wrote as often as I could. Whenever I was able to find a moment, I used the desktop to type all the chapters I had written in my notebook into Microsoft Word. Sometimes just ideas, and not whole chapters would come me and in that case I would enter them into my notebook in Microsoft Word when I got the chance. As the story developed I ended up with multiple drafts, all saved in a special file on my desktop. For my birthday a couple years ago I asked for a small, lightweight laptop that I could use anywhere instead of constantly typing from my paper notebook. Now I use that almost exclusively but occasionally when I am away from it, such as I was when I went camping with my family about a month ago, I go back to my paper notebook and scribble whole chapters or just ideas.

Dawn Ross: Where do you get your inspiration?

Amy McGuire: I was once told by a very wise person to ‘write what you know’. So a lot of the scenes in my first novel are loosely based on actual events I experienced. As my story has progressed and I create the saga, I find my main inspiration is simply the world around me. I can watch a movie, or show or people in a crowded mall and get inspired. In fact, one of my upcoming (hopefully in the not too distant future) books which is sci-fi was inspired by another sci-fi show I watched recently. I find certain books I read will inspire me. Sometimes just being on vacation and ‘getting away from it all’ can have a huge affect on what I write. For instance, there is a scene in book three of my saga which I wrote entirely while on vacation in Florida, again, based off actual events. A thing as small as being bitten by fire ants while taking a walk with my family or as big as a horrific event on the news can be inspiring, depending on my mood and what particular scene I want to write.

Dawn Ross: Do you have any creative writing tips?

Amy McGuire: I don’t know that I’m very technical, but I guess my advice to anyone working on a novel they want to get published is this. Make sure you watch your points of view, that you don’t head hop. This is something a lot of the more famous writers get away with, and while it’s fun to know what everyone in the story is thinking, it’s not wise to play God as a writer. You need to look at it from the reader’s perspective. If this were real life, would they be able to know what everyone’s motives are all the time? Of course not. Besides being a bit annoying to jump from so and so’s thoughts to someone else’s without any breaks, it is also incredibly confusing. I have found myself many a time having to go back a few pages because I don’t know whose head I’m in. If you must tell the story from different points of view, use two line spaces between the paragraphs of each character and try very hard not to jump back and forth. A rule of thumb I try to follow is that there should really be no more than two points of view in any chapter. I’ve been told that one per chapter is best, but it can be very restricting in romance to write like that. If there are more than two I have to rethink whose point of view is the most important. I actually rewrote an entire scene in The Heart’s Discovery based on this principle and discovered that the scene was in fact stronger because it was in Gabriel’s perspective and no one else’s. It also can be lazy writing to just let your readers know what everyone is thinking all the time. You aren’t forced to show the emotions, but simply tell the reader so and so feels this way or that way.

Dawn Ross: This is not the end of the interview. Come back again tomorrow. In the meantime, check out Amy McGuire’s books at:

www.shesanauthor.com/apps/webstore

Amazon Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/The-Hearts-Discovery-Valley-Volume/dp/1475265115/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1348239315&sr=8-3&keywords=the+heart%27s+discovery

Amazon Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Hearts-Discovery-Hope-Valley-ebook/dp/B0077IUEX6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348239315&sr=8-1&keywords=the+heart%27s+discovery

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/146706

Amy McGuire