Advice and Resources for Writers: Publishing

This post is brought to you by author and longtime Hampshire Writers’ Society member, B Random.

You may not want to sell or publish your work. You may love blogging or just joining many writers in putting your work up on Wattpad for general consumption. Maybe you’re writing for the family. If all you want is a few readers, you’ve won.

But if you are looking for a wider audience, read on…

Writing Opportunities

Selling short stories to women’s magazines is now pretty much a thing of the past but stories or articles still do occasionally sell to specialist magazines if you know enough. It’s tough.

• Write short stories for free local magazines. You won’t get paid but it will give another confidence boost. There are some flash fiction anthologies you can contribute to, mainly online (e.g. Brilliant Flash Fiction/Flash Fiction Online) Look at past issues to see what they like.
• Reviews are great practice and a good way to help others.
• Why not club together with local writers and make an anthology, as one of our groups have done here in Chandler’s Ford? It’s a good way to sneak in poetry too.
• Factual/technical articles to specialist magazines is still possible if you have the skills or experience, e.g. Food/Drink (supermarkets), Travel (airlines), Wellbeing, Parenting, Tech, Arts/Entertainment etc. Take a good look at past articles before you submit.
• Write for fun! You could write custom prose or poetry for greetings or speeches on Peopleperhour or textbroker.co.uk. You could get creative; print, decorate and frame your work and sell it on Ebay, Etsy, Amazon or at Art fairs/markets.

I have not gone down all these routes so take advice first and step carefully.

Self-Publishing and Marketing

Some of you will make it to the end of a book, like me. Well done!

I used a course on Udemy (search for publishing) to publish on Amazon, following it to the letter.  I highly recommend getting on every one of these mailing lists for a constant stream of helpful advice. 

Tom Corson Knowles  TCK publishing.com

Mark Dawson’s Self Publishing Formula – just sign up for email inspiration and help

Creative indie – Derek Murphy – Guerilla Publishing – download free e-book guides on all aspects of marketing/publishing – templates

Dan Blank – We Grow Media – sign up to receive resources

Derek Doepker – Udemy Coach & kindle author

Joseph Michael – Scrivener Coach 

Alinka Rutkowska 

Whichever direction you go, know that your writing family is behind you, sharing your fun and wishing you luck!