For those of you who are either contemplating becoming an author or are writers who want to get to bestseller status super fast, I thought I would share with you what I believe to be the ten prime factors that are necessary for book writing and publishing success.
Some of these ten vital points are highly technical, while others require hours and hours of practice and perfection, but I am sure you will see the benefits very quickly once you start following my advice. Ready?
The Golden Rules for Successful Book Writing:
1. Add Blank Pages
Always include a lot of blank pages at the back of the book because this makes your book look thicker, so it looks like much better value to book buyers. With Ebooks, this trick works nicely too, by making the percentage read line a lot longer, so readers will be duped into thinking that they have a lot more pages to read than they actually have left. With some books, reaching the end sooner than anticipated might even be a relief for the reader.
2. Make Clear Mistakes
Be consistent with your typos and spelling mistakes. According to Cambridge University, the reader’s brain will adjust quickly enough. For example:
Cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.
3. Exploit your Mother
Always dedicate your book to your mother. It dramatically increases the aawwww factor, and also gives you an opportunity to include yet another blank page after it.
4. Change Your Name
If you have a long name, change it. Bestselling authors must restrict their names to six letters or less so that it can be seen in enormously tall, bold letters on the front cover. Long names reduce the font height by an exponential factor for each letter after the sixth. If your name is ten letters or more, expect readers to need a magnifying glass to find it on the cover. Meaningless initials are also, of course, mandatory.
5. Age Quickly
If you are under fifty, do not put a photo of yourself on the back cover. Writers must look mature, experienced, sage and well, old. If you really want your photo on the back cover, do a bit of magic with Photoshop to add some wrinkles, glasses and grey hair.
6. Ditch the Narrative
Use a lot of dialogue in your book because it takes up a lot more page space, and helps with point one in making your book thicker. Narrative tends to be in tidy, solid paragraphs, so stay clear on neat, economical space saving paragraphs as much as possible. Use brief, very short dialogue lines of only a few words, and you will have written a tome in no time at all. For instance:
“It’s easy,” he said.
“I agree,” she said.
7. I Love This Book
Get your very best friend, mother or spouse to write the book review blurb for the back of your book because they love you and will only say very nice things about you and your book. They probably never got around to actually reading your masterpiece, but who cares.
8. And, But, So
Use very short, simple words. Words comprising of over six letters can be confusing for some readers. Interminably elongated words foreshorten your probable market prospective to exclusively those readers with an elevated intelligence quotient. Have I made my point clear.
9. Punctuation
Always start a sentence with a Capital letter, and try to remember the full stop (period) at the end. It helps readers navigate the text a little better. Avoid using semi-colons though; as no one really knows how to use them. If in doubt about your punctuation — use an em dash — as it always works.
10. The Story, One Hopes
Make sure you have some sort of story to tell and that you don’t just copy and paste stuff that isn’t yours. Three hundred pages of Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, sapien platea morbi dolor lacus nunc, nunc ullamcorper. Felis aliquet egestas vitae, nibh ante quis quis dolor sed mauris. Erat lectus sem ut lobortis, adipiscing ligula eleifend, sodales fringilla mattis dui nullam has proven not to sell very well, even though, admittedly, it does speed up the process of writing a hell of a lot.
11. Bonus Rule: The End
Readers seem to like having a neat ending to a story, so make sure you tidy up all the loose ends that you created in your story and don’t just leave…
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