The problem with self-publishing

by benmweilertNo Comments
As a self-published author, I was almost surprised to find how easy it was to get my book out there. Back in 2011, when I published First Name Basis, I used the tools available to me through my “print on demand” publisher of choice: CreateSpace. From the cover creator to the interior template, all the work I did on my book was my own. Sure, I had a few people read through it and give me some notes on proofreading errors and other minor tweaks, but in the end, I did all my own writing, editing, and formatting so that the story I wrote would be available to a broad audience. Since then, I have learned just how much more work must go into self-publishing a book. Still, it remains a free endeavor for anyone who wants to publish their own book. Self-publishing a book is surprisingly easy. Fast forward to today, and I have read more than my fair share of independent...
Read More

What a month of content looks like

by benmweilertNo Comments
Back in June, I wrote a post about what it takes to “do it all” as an independent author. While one of the many tasks of the independent author is marketing, nobody will buy your books if you’re always promoting them on social media. There needs to be a balance of promotion and what’s known as “web content.” Web content doesn’t need to be much, especially for social media, but the fact that you’re continually posting about something shows that you’re actively engaged with people who could potentially become your audience. There are plenty of debates about which social networks to post to, how often to post, and when to post during the day (or during the week), but this post won’t go into the details of that. I still haven’t figured out the “sweet spot” for social media, but I have accumulated a regular schedule of web content that helps me to be active on these platforms. When it comes...
Read More

So you want to be a writer . . .

by benmweilertNo Comments
Congratulations! Admitting that you want to be a writer is the first step in achieving that goal. “But . . .” I hear you hesitate, “what does being a ‘writer’ even mean?” Plenty of people have their definitions for the term, but in its simplest form, being a writer means that you write. Simple, no? Some of the complexity of the term “writer” comes when people make the transition to “author,” since being an author usually means you’ve published something (be it self-published or traditionally published). I consider myself an author because I have written books and published them. Others might disagree, since the process of being traditionally published is a lot more involved (and complicated). Either way, we’re getting ahead of ourselves a bit. Let’s start on the ground floor: being a writer. Being a writer simply means that you write. If all it takes to be a writer is to write something, then you could be a writer just by writing...
Read More

Dear Young Adult Fans

by benmweilertNo Comments
Calm down. I know you sometimes take it personally when someone doesn’t like a book that you love, but that’s the beauty of life: people are allowed to have differing opinions. When it comes to the Young Adult (YA) genre, I recognize that it’s not written for me, as the demographics of the genre sway more toward women than men. By the same token, I know most women aren’t going to read the science fiction or fantasy books that men seem to enjoy (this has its own problems, which I’ll get to later). With the enormous influx of YA books hitting the marketplace after the success of the Harry Potter and Hunger Games series, there are plenty of books to choose from . . . and not all of them are well written. Regardless, I still occasionally pick up a YA book that seems to have an interesting premise in the hope that it’s the rare gem in the sea of mediocrity. When I first started...
Read More

What to avoid when asking for reviews

by benmweilertNo Comments
For almost a year now, I’ve been writing reviews of books and posting my reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. At first, I began doing this because I started signing up for giveaways on Goodreads. My plan was to read the books, review them, then use them as prizes for the participants of National Novel Writing Month in my region. When I realized it was also easy web content for my website, I dove wholeheartedly into these reviews. After all, I had been writing movie reviews for many years, so 300+ words on a book I just read shouldn’t be too difficult. What I did not expect was that soon people would be contacting me to review their books. When I received my first request to review a book, I was flattered that someone had found my review on Amazon and decided that they liked my review enough to send me their book to review as well. However, I soon realized what...
Read More

How Not Tetris explains my planning process

by benmweilertNo Comments
I’m a planner. Ever since I wrote my first novel in 2010, I’ve usually had many different story ideas tucked away in their own Word documents. Each time a new idea comes to me that would apply to one of these stories, I open up the document and jot it down so I won’t forget about it. Even though I plan my writing projects out years in advance, there are usually plenty of ideas I never use in the finished manuscript. Either the flow of the story prevents their use, or I find they aren’t as strong as I initially thought they were. While I’m not nearly as fastidious about collecting ideas together before starting a project as I used to be (First Name Basis had 35 pages of notes), I do continue to plan and research well ahead of when I finally sit down and write the first draft. There are plenty of ideas I never use. Recently, I’ve re-discovered a free...
Read More

What it takes to do it all

by benmweilertNo Comments
There are days I see the benefits of going with the traditional publishing route. When you are signed on with a publisher, they provide some of the hard work it takes to make a manuscript into a polished and publishable product. From editors to formatters to cover artists to distribution, these publishers have the resources to help an author be successful. But what about the self-published author? One of the common misconceptions about being an author (especially a self-published one) is that we only have to write. In reality, a self-published author needs to perform the entirety of the publishing process by themselves. Now, you may be asking yourself, “OK, you have to do it all, but what does that even mean?” Let’s start at the beginning of the process, and I’ll walk you through it. If you want to self-publish, you have many jobs to do. Many of the most famous authors have a research department (or person). These are the people...
Read More

How traveling improves your writing

by benmweilertNo Comments
With the invention of the internet and the ease of access to an endless supply of research materials, practically every aspect of the writing process can occur on a home computer. We all know the cliché of the writer who holes themselves up in their house and spends days upon days in a disheveled state writing their book. While I always encourage writers to get out of their house and write somewhere else once in a while (especially when they have writer’s block), many successful writers have found what works for them, and it often involves a routine centered on making themselves the most productive they can be. Depending on their home situation, they could very well spend most of their time writing from the comfort of their favorite desk or table. Unfortunately, a limitation of spending so much of the writing process indoors is that some of the best research needs to happen in the field. One of the best...
Read More

Why exoplanets aren’t as reachable as you think

by benmweilertNo Comments
One of the tenets of science fiction is that of inter-planetary travel. The dream of boarding a spacecraft and launching out to the far reaches of the universe is an exciting idea, but the reality of this happening anytime soon is slim to none. Despite NASA’s Kepler mission identifying almost 3,000 exoplanets in its mere three years of research, there are limitations to reaching any of these newly-discovered planets. Through some research I’ve done for my science fiction novel, Buried Colony, four boundaries are keeping us from traveling to the thousands of planets in the known universe: Habitable Zone Distance Gravity Slings Escape Velocity The first problem with many of these planets is that they aren’t the right distance from their respective star for us. Too close and we’d burn up, too far and we’d freeze to death. The zone right in the middle is known as the “Goldilocks Zone” for being just right to sustain life. Fortunately, because the research...
Read More

10 years of journaling (and what it has taught me)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Earlier this year, I started polishing up the first draft of Fourteener Father, which I wrote last November. Because the time span this memoir covers was so vast (20+ years), one of the details I needed to flesh out had escaped my memory. It did not, however, escape my journal. Knowing the date I climbed the mountain in question; I used my journal entries of the nearby dates to nail down the detail I had forgotten. However, I was surprised to learn an interesting fact when flipping through my old journals. I have been journaling for over ten years now. That's a decade of my life written down and kept for posterity. Now, there's been plenty of changes in my life since I began writing to myself on January 1, 2007. I've graduated college with a Bachelors and a Masters degree in Engineering, moved to Alabama, written numerous novels, moved back to Colorado, dated and eventually married my wife. These simple, daily...
Read More