Advice for Indie Authors: Nick Spalding - what a jolly good fellow!

Nick Spalding: Great bloke!

Being an indie author is not always easy. In fact, it is bloody hard! You spend hours and hours of your life typing away at the laptop, spending money getting your book published, and then even more hours in front of the screen trying to get people to read it!

It is a quite a lonely experience (queue the violins please...), and half the time you have no idea whether you are doing things the right way or not! In the past I emailed authors such as Mike Gayle and Danny Wallace, asking for a wee bit of advice. They invite you to contact them on their websites, but I've never had a reply. I understand they're busy people, so never really thought much about it.

But the other day I decided to drop Nick Spalding - indie author of the Amazon kindle best-seller Love... From Both Sides - a quick note to ask for some friendly advice from an indie author who has achieved incredible success.

I wasn't really expecting a reply, especially seeing as Nick has just signed a three-book deal with publishing house Hodder and Stoughton. He would clearly be far too busy to reply to me now...

But what do you know, a mere few hours later, Nick was kind enough to reply to me with some words of wisdom, and helpful hints and tips!

Hi Steve,

Here's Spalding's quick advice guide (ignore all, some or none of it as desired):

Write the best book you can and make sure you've clearly targeted your audience. The bigger the potential readership the bigger the potential sales.

Create a bold simple professional looking cover and blurb. Make sure they echo other books in your genre (just don't actually rip anyone off).

Price low to start with. 99p is a good way to go initially.

Spend only a small amount of time talking to other authors and a lot more time talking to readers.

Get drunk as often as possible. This won't help with sales, but by golly you'll have a good time and that's the main thing.

For more advice check out Kindleboards.com, mobileread.com, Absolute Writer Water Cooler forum.

Good luck with it :)

Nick

What a bloody good bloke. Make sure you check out his books at his website Spalding's Racket.