Welcome to Become A Successful Author. I started in the publishing industry a little over a decade ago as an editor at Third World Press, a 40+ year old publishing house that has way too many awards to list and quite a few million-plus-books-sold authors. They publish mostly nonfiction, which is not where my heart is, so I moved onto several publishing houses as a freelance developmental editor of fiction. All along my journey in the publishing industry, I’ve looked for ways to promote and help authors be the best they can be.

I decided to step into the world of self publishing October 2010 and was quickly inundated with questions from my traditionally-published friends on how to do this, that, and the other. Between those questions and the questions I receive on the craft of writing, I quickly became swamped and found myself repeating information. That’s when it hit me—You’re an author with roots in nonfiction. Write a book that contains the answers to questions you continually receive. Give authors the full picture instead of bits and pieces. Next thing you know, I was over 60,000 words into Become A Successful Author. When I first began writing the book, I intended on naming it Become A Published Author, but as I wrote I realized anyone can be a published author. I want you to be more than published. I want you to be a successful author.

I can’t tell you what success means to you, but I can give you tools to help you write, market and build your high-quality brand efficiently so you can go as far as you’d like in your writing career. I released the eVersion of Become A Successful Author August 2011 and was a little surprised at the feedback I received from an author who hadn’t read it. He emailed me about a guest post I had done. It was as if he were offended that I had the audacity to say he wasn’t already successful or that he didn’t already know the business. I didn’t know this guy from Adam, but that he had such a strong reaction told me he was part of my target audience. I’ve been in the business for a decade as a developmental editor, author and marketing manager for various publishing houses and don’t know it all. I’m learning new information every day and never intend to stop learning. I truly hope that none of you get to the point where you think you know it all. The moment you do is the moment you lose your edge.

Since I don’t know it all and what I do know is my opinion (granted an educated, professional opinion), I’ve called in the troops to help give additional perspectives on this new world of publishing we are in. I don’t always agree with everything they say, but I want you to see others’ views also.

Enough of my rambling. Each month I’d like authors to gather here to work on Becoming A Successful Author. I hope to have the new blog posts up the second Thursday of the month to give you time to read and soak in the posts, then Friday-Sunday we can have a mini-online conference of sorts.  Be sure to sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss any posts. Trust me, this is going to be one fun trip. There will be no posts the months of December and January.

http://DeatriKingBey.com/ or http://www.llreaper.net/

Become A Successful Author is used in the “How To Write That Novel” course at Chicago State because it covers everything from branding to writing to editing to formatting and uploading electronic and print books to marketing and so much more. Your time is money. Look at all the time, thus money, you’ll save by ending your search for answers: Purchase Become A Successful Author (eBook) for only $4.99 from: Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), Barnes & Noble  or print copies for only $9.99.