Tara Richter, Author & Publisher, is interviewed on what’s the most rewarding part of being a published author for Tampa Bay’s Business Woman of the Year Awards. Click to watch the video below:
Tara Richter
Tag Archives: Author Tara Richter
Write a Book Yourself: Step #2 Start Blogging
If you have not already created a blog, do it now. It’s free and a great way to drive traffic to your website, to get your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) high in Google rankings for you or your company, and to write your book.
Once you have set up your own blog you will have a platform that allows you to organize your words. If you’re not good at just sitting down and writing 10,000 words, blogs can greatly help you finish your book. They are much easier because they’re done in short chunks. A blog should not be more than 2-3 paragraphs—short, nice and sweet bits of information for the reader. Also, if you start publishing small bits of information out there once or twice a week, it’s giving your audience little teasers of what’s to come in your book.
After you start getting into posting and organizing your blogs, you can start publicizing them and incorporating them into your social media to read a wider audience.
If you have never blogged before or aren’t familiar with SEO, don’t worry. The book will break it down step by step with instructions to walk you through the process.
Tara Richter Author & Publisher
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Write a Book Yourself Step #1: Write Your Own Words
Most people want to write a book at some point in their lives. The only difference between the authors who publish a book and those who don’t is simply taking the time to do it. If you do not think you have the time, money or resources available to you to write and publish your own book, think again.
Some people may think a ghost writer is a better, easier option—but these are your stories; this is your pain and/or happiness. No one can fully understand what you have gone through in life, so they cannot accurately express it on paper. Only you have experienced it. Ghost writers can also be very expensive. So not only will you lose money by going with a ghost writer, but you will also be losing your personal touch and connection in the story.
There is no short cut to get it done, but I can provide little tricks that will make it easier.
- Utilize Every Minute. You need to take advantage of every spare moment you have to finish your book. There is never a right time to compose a novel. You will never have those extra minutes just looming around. You have to create during chaos. You have to make the time and effort in order for it happen.
- Don’t Edit While You Write. Write when you feel inspired and don’t stop until you feel like you have gotten it all out. Once you get your thoughts spinning in your head you need to stop what you’re doing and write them down, even if it’s chicken scratch notes. You can always go back and edit later.
- Use Google for Spelling. Google is much more up to date than Word.
If you want to write a book, you can. But the first step is getting the words out. Just the idea of it can be overwhelming and stressful—which is why many people who want to write a book don’t. If you are new to writing or need help getting started, the full version of my book will provide you with some insight on how to make this seemingly impossible task, possible!
Richter Publishing also has packages where we can write the book for you to make it even easier! Contact us for more info.
Tara Richter Author & Publisher
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Sunday Writing Tip
While you are writing your book, if it doesn’t make you laugh, cry or think… it’s not worth putting on paper. Your words need to move you and inspire you, otherwise they will not inspire others. I go through all these emotions while I’m writing my books, even this last one that is more a technical guide. You still need to weave a personal story throughout to keep people interested. It doesn’t have to be a lot, but just a few paragraphs in the beginning to give it a human element that others can relate to. Maybe a funny story of something that happened that correlates to the information you are going to inform the readers of. It’s a skill learning how to do this. To educate people while keeping the engaged and entertained at the same time.
by Tara Richter
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Writing Tip of the Day
While you are composing your book, don’t worry about formatting, how it looks in word, or editing. Sometimes you will get caught up in those details, but it’s more important to get the thoughts out of your head & on paper. Cleaning it up, editing and formatting will be done during revisions. Your first document is a rough draft. They call it that for a reason, it’s rough, probably going to suck at some points, but that’s ok. No one writes a perfect book the first time around. Just get the concept and ideas out of your head no matter how awful you think it might be at the time. Especially once you get into the writing flow, sometimes phrases come out of your mind faster than your fingers can type. So things can get chopped up and not make sense, but that’s what the editor is for. To read it from another persons perspective that is not in your head knowing where the story is going. Your job is just to write!
by Tara Richter
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Design a Compelling Book Cover
Now that your manuscript is finished you need to design a cover to showcase book. This is the selling part of all your great content inside. It needs to sell itself just from looking at the cover. They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression, neither does your novel.
This maybe a more difficult part if you do not have any design skills. However, less is more. You do not need a really fancy cover to get someone’s attention to buy your book. It should be simple and bold. Think about a billboard for instance. Companies have about 30 seconds or less to get your attention while you are driving 70 miles per hour on the freeway. Most billboards have few words with a large picture, plain, bold fonts. The same should be with your book. You should think about how it would look sitting on the shelf 5 or 10 feet away. Can you read the title? Can you see the pictures? Does it intrigue you enough to walk over and take a closer look? Do you get the overall concept within 30 seconds?
A tip from a graphic designer, (that’s my college degree) is to every now and then during the process get up from your computer and walk across the room to view your design. How does it look? Sometimes we get caught up being so close to it, you forget to look at it from another perspective. Think of the books that you have purchased in the past. What did you like about the cover or didn’t like? Mimic the design that compelled you to buy a book. I personally like to place my professional photos on the front or back of my books because I’m branding myself. It also gives a human touch to my advice so others can relate to me. Deciding if you want your photo on the cover depends upon the kind of book you’re writing. If the story is about depression, you wouldn’t want a bright eyed, smiling face on the front. Make sure the images portray the content accurately.
Since I am a graphic designer, yes I do have an extra talent to be able to design my own book covers. Nonetheless, you can do it too. I have used Photoshop and Illustrator on my first 3 books. Photoshop is the best tool to use because you need layers and be able to know the resolution of your images, 300 DPI (dots per inch) minimum for printing purposes. If you do not want to buy Photoshop, you can download a free 30 trial period that will give you enough time to create your cover. Or you can hire a professional to do it for you. We have a lot carte services & can create a great cover for you.
by Tara Richter
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