Book Submissions

Ogma Press is a short-run and print-on-demand* publisher and distributor of Irish-interest books for the international market. Ogma, the ancient Irish deity of writing and eloquence, one of the Tuatha de Danaan, who created Irelands first written form, the Ogham alphabet.

more info >>>>>>

Click here to enter poetry contests online!

firstwriter.com, every writer’s indispensable internet resource. This site aims to provide you with all the information you need as you progress in your writing career.

more info >>>>>>

Search firstwriter.com for a Literary agent that handles the genre that you are interested in. select the genre from the drop down list in the search box below. Results will open in a new browser window.

firstwriter.com - How can we help you get published today?

Find** Literary Agents **

** who handle: **

Select Academic Adult Fiction Autobiography Biography Children’s Cookery Crime / Mystery Current Affairs Erotic Factual Fantasy Fiction Film Scripts Gardening Health Historical Horror Humour Leisure Lifestyle Literary Fiction Men’s Military Natural History Poetry Psychology Radio Scripts Romance Science Sci-Fi Short Stories Sport Suspense Theatre Scripts Theology Thrillers Travel TV Scripts Women’s

5 Steps To Self-Publishing Your Novel

by Bruno Somerset

Thanks to advances in technology, self-publishing is growing at a tremendous rate. Authors considering this route are faced with a dizzying array of options. My self-publishing experience is still developing, but I have a novel that will be self-published sometime in April or May, and perhaps my experience will be helpful to someone just starting the process. Here are five steps that I have followed:

Stop thinking that you will write a book someday and set a real deadline for yourself. Far too many aspiring writers think that they will write their novel at some hazy point in the future when their life settles down some. Life never settles down. Just start writing and don’t stop; even a page a day will produce 365 pages in a year. If you find yourself in this position in September or October, National Novel Writing Month in November is a great way to break through and actually finish a first draft. Their website is www.nanowrimo.org.

After writing the first draft, let it sit in a drawer for at least a few weeks. You need some distance from it before you start the first revision. Give your mind some time to rest. Actually go outside for a change. When you come back to the first draft, read it out loud to see how the narrative flows, and remove sections where things bog down.

Send your revised draft to a good freelance editor. You need an objective professional to tell you where the book needs work, as well as to catch simple grammar, spelling and punctuation errors you wouldn’t see yourself. A Google search will bring up multiple freelance editors, but be sure you check their references before using one. A word of warning about letting friends read it before it’s finished: they are rarely objective, and their feedback is typically well meaning but just as typically useless.

Decide on a Print On Demand (POD) Publisher. There are many out there, including Book Surge, iUniverse, Xlibris, and Cold Tree Press, but most charge hefty up-front fees with no assurance you’ll ever sell one copy. The best POD Publisher I have found is Lulu (www.lulu.com); they charge nothing unless a copy sells. You do have to upload and format everything yourself, but the process is fairly simple, and the books they produce are of very high quality.

Don’t be shy about self-promotion. Even with a deal from a traditional publisher, you will have to do most of the marketing yourself. Tell everyone you know about your book, and ask them to tell everyone they know. Post links to your website or your book’s URL on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.com everywhere you can. Use Google Adwords, and pester local and national book reviewer until they’re sick of you. Be creative, and stop at nothing to get the word out.

In the end, writing, publishing and marketing a book is a daunting task, but the satisfaction you will receive from seeing your book in print is worth the sacrifice.

read more articles here

firstwriter.com also offer a copyright registration service for those wishing to copyright their work, just click on the banner below.

Publish and sell easily within minutes.

No set-up fees.

No minimum order.

Keep control of the rights.

Set your own price.

Each product is printed as it is ordered.

No excess inventory.

It can be a great learning and rewarding process for budding writer’s to submit their work to writing competitions. The creditability of winning such a competition to say nothing of the confidence it gives should you win is a high return for such a low investment. Fear of rejection is the stable diet of any Author but if you don’t enter you can’t win nor will you learn.

Writing groups and forums are a great way of getting feedback on your work from other writer’s. Most cost little if nothing to join and the learning curve can be fast if you are willing to give critique as well as receive it.

If you can take any critique in the manner it is intended which is constructive criticism and not a personal attack on you as an individual you will learn a lot. Any critique should be always seen as a step in the learning process. Those who spare your feelings rather than confront you with the truth are doing you no favours. I have yet to write a poem that wasn’t the better for some harsh but honest critique. The same principal applies to any creative art and those who succeed are those who learn that valuable lesion early.