Freelance Editor Helen Woodall offers advice, help and information to aspiring and exisiting authors, and anyone interested in writing.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Don’t compare yourself with others
The absolutely worst thing possible for an author to do, is to try to model their writing/book/blog/website/book trailer or anything else, on the one they’ve seen of SallySellsALotofBooks. What works for Sally is unlikely to work for you simply because it’s not your voice, your style, your passion.
I fully understand that your passion might be to get rich as fast as possible, but readers want a book that draws them in, where they relate to the characters and stay up way past their bedtime reading because they absolutely have to know what happens next.
That intensity is almost impossible to achieve by modeling yourself on anyone else.
Certainly you can use their editor, their cover artist, their color scheme. But do those things work for your story? She likes yellows and sunshine and your book is all about disaster and death. That color scheme is not going to work for you.
Be yourself. Write what is your own personal passion.
By all means hire a good editor, even SallySellsALot’s editor, and cover artist. But ensure your book cover, your trailer, your blog, is all about your book and your passion.
Readers aren’t stupid and they don’t like fakes. Besides, no one knows what the next big thing will be, and it just might be the book you want to write that no one is interested in as yet.
Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com
Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.
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