Nicholas Lochel Inspires Write Links Members
First there was the spectacular view from the boardroom at the top level at the Brisbane State Library followed by a passionate and insightful talk by Nicholas Lochel author of Zarkora.
Nicholas and his sister Alison have had enormous success self-publishing their fantasy series Zarkora with their books available in most Dymocks stores in Brisbane and most independent book shops.
Their books are in constant demand by children from ages ten up with quite a few adults fans. Both Nicholas and his sister have frequent book signings across Brisbane since their first book: The Fyrelit Tragedy, was published in 2012. Book two: The Lost Kingdom is out now, with book three due for release May 30, 2015 and book four scheduled for the same year.
Nicholas and Alison are an amazing success story and more big things are coming their way soon.
Thanks for taking the time out to come and chat with us, Nicholas, we could have listened to you all day!
• Do your research and know what you want in your product, from paper quality to fonts and editing services
• Your goal in self-publishing: to break even
• Put any earnings straight back into your books
• Handing out bookmarks works
• Print no more than 500 copies initially
• Make connections with bookstores and build relationships
• Work your book signing, stay around as long as you can
• The sweet spot for book signing in a book store is from 9 to 10am and 2 to 4pm
• You have to love writing and selling books (and a fair amount of stress), otherwise don’t do it!
• Set up your fan base
Katrin Dreiling sold her first illustration, Samantha Wheeler received a May Gibbs Trust Fellowhip, June Perkins had several poems accepted to the Prints Rhyming Poetry Anthology, Yvonne Mes signed a contract for picture book Meet Sidney Nolan with Random House Australia, Fay Dent’s Izadora books are selling like hotcakes.
Charmaine Clancy shared the latest details of her upcoming Rainforest Retreat for writers and Jenny Stubbs has been busy planning the StoryArts festival.
Here are some pictures of our critique groups hard at work. Our critique groups go for 2 hours and are broken up into picture book, junior fiction and young adult. Members exchange manuscripts a week before the meeting.
Comments
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Jacqui Halpin
You’ve summed up the meeting perfectly, Yvonne! 🙂
The Fast Fingers
I’m not an author but I have known a lot of authors already because of my job. I really learned a lot from this post. Thanks for the tips! Good to see how authors work together to achieve common goal. 🙂