What does focus mean to you? Something that happens automatically when you use your modern camera or smartphone? A type of Ford car?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m talking about personal focus. That moment of clarity, when the fug and fog around you disappears, what’s truly important comes into view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The life of an independent author \u2013 one who doesn\u2019t have a traditional deal with a large or medium-sized publisher \u2013 is one of wearing two hats, almost being a Janus figure \u2013 looking both ways. Janus, the God of beginnings and transitions. The beginning is the creative side, the writing of a novel; the transition is one of becoming a commercial author.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What are you talking about, Gerald?<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m talking about writing and publishing. To create an income stream as an author, you need to write the books, and then you need to sell the books. In our courses and workshops, we describe writing as an art form, also a craft; publishing is a business. The two are very different. There\u2019s a reason publishers aren\u2019t authors \u2013 they\u2019re good at what they do, and not good at what we do. Publishers are focused – making books, marketing books, and distributing \u2026 books. But an independent author needs to be both writer and publisher. Book sales don\u2019t happen without both being in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marketing is hard, if you\u2019re a creative. You need to switch hats, or maybe look in a different direction. Janus-like. Okay, I\u2019ll quit the analogy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have teamed up with some fantastic authors in recent weeks \u2013 Anita Belli<\/a>, Ellie Holmes<\/a>, and Deborah Kl\u00e9e<\/a>. We are all local to each other at the top right-hand corner of Essex, UK. We are all members of the Frinton Writers\u2019 Group (which was started by the wonderful Lesley Kara<\/a>). We all have products we need to sell, or in the modern jargon, IP (Intellectual Property).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, we are the Four Marketeers. We are working both together and separately, sharing our research, highlighting our results, and generally supporting each other. We\u2019re condensing some of the masses of information available, and sharing that amongst our group. As authors, we\u2019ve been working together for a few years now. We understand and trust each other, and we know each other\u2019s writing. Now, we’ve turned to face a different direction, outwards, into the book-buying market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s been a great beginning to our group, less than a month old, and we are now FOCUSED! More writing will come, of course, but we now have more balance to our businesses. For that\u2019s what we are – business people, with novel-writing at its core.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And because I\u2019m trying to practice what I preach, if you are interested in any of my fiction (thriller \/ crime), click here for my fiction page<\/a>. I have also written writing craft books, so you can click here for my non-fiction page<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thank you for reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What does focus mean to you? Something that happens automatically when you use your modern camera or smartphone? A type of Ford car? I’m talking about personal focus. That moment of clarity, when the fug and fog around you disappears, what’s truly important comes into view. The life of an independent author \u2013 one who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,45,8,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspiration","category-marketing","category-my-writing","category-publishing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/400px-Janus1-copy.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s5y3CH-focus","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":925,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions\/925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}