Q07: Research Resources

(This question is part of a larger subseries called Perpetual WIPs: Self-Published Authors. For the remaining questions, see here.)

What research resources, online or otherwise, did you find the most helpful?

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Twitter contains so much information, and reading the experiences of other Indie authors really helped. I also found twitter chats to be extremely helpful, as you can chat real-time with others going through the same process.

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I’m a member of a few Yahoo groups that talk about self publishing. It’s great because authors are so helpful and very candid about what worked for them.

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The personal blog of Leigh Ann Kopans [http://leighannkopans.blogspot.com], a successful self-pub author who shared much of her process and is very sweet; Pen & Muse [http://penandmuse.com]; and this bloggety blog right here, The Daily Dahlia. I learned so much about the traditional model from Dahl, and then I sought to recreate it in miniature form. (Blogger’s Note: So cool, thank you!)

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I just used the guides on the various self-publishing platforms, and followed the advice of my publicist.

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To learn about self-publishing, I went straight to Hugh Howey, the author of the WOOL series, and a champion of self-publishers. I searched his site for anything he had posted on self-publishing and followed all the links I could. Everything else I figured out on my own piece by piece. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I’ve also learned good lessons. The Facebook author groups I belong to have also been a wealth of knowledge, and I have learned a lot from other authors who tweet or blog about self-publishing. No one source has been more helpful than Hugh Howey, though.

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I had a self-publishing mentor that held my hand through every step. There’s really no other way to do it, in my opinion.

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For writing, Write To Done is an excellent source of articles on writing, both for traditional and indie authors.  The World Literary Cafe is also worth checking out: they’re basically a hub, collecting authors, bloggers, and vendors, then introducing them to each other.

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AbsoluteWrite.com was extremely helpful. And I can’t forget good ol’ Google!

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Susan Kaye Quinn has a great series on self publishing on her blog that I found really helpful. I also read a lot of blogs by people who have already done this. And of course a lot of support from friends who’ve self published already was invaluable.

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Oh man. I don’t even know—I did my research so long ago that I can’t remember. That’s bad, isn’t it? These days, if I have a question, authors on Twitter usually have an answer.

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