Nancy Jill Thames, Author ~ Queen of Afternoon Tea

By Nancy Jill Thames

A lot of the journey on the road to publication is trial and error. Very few authors make it on the first go round.

Here's what did and what I wish I'd done:

1. Write a good book. Find a catchy title (numbers are great - "1,000 Days to Healing" etc.). Get the book edited by someone who knows what they're doing. (I just now found mine.)

2. Do a great cover. (Look at covers in your genre and find out who did them.)

3. Self-publish on CreateSpace - Amazon's self-publishing arm (24/7 support).

4. Format professionally (I have a great guy) for Kindle (prc) Nook (ePub) Smashwords (Smashwords file) and Kobo (ePub).

5. Get a FB author page and begin to interact with friends and fans by asking people to like your page. Post about what's going on with your journey and with your book. Think of it as a mini-blog.

6. Blog once a week working to engage readers. Put it into another language (mine is in Russian) - this is for Blogger on Google. Create a link for your book to sales sites. Another author and I wanted to create a blog for Christian Cozies so I came up with the idea of the magazine. She invited four more authors so we take turns posting once a week. Now we have things to tweet and post about!

7. I tweet a daily scripture, book 1 for free using 3 hashtags and rotate sales sites during the evenings. My other books are linked in the back. If readers like book 1 they order the rest.

8. Engage on FB, find similar pages as yours and participate. Offer your book link where appropriate.

9. Make sure your categories/tags are specific enough to hook readers.

10. As for discipline, I self-impose deadlines and break up the work in manageable sections. I have a 255 pg book to rewrite so I plan to rewrite 51 pages M - Fri this week as a goal to finish.

11. I do emails, social media, and check statistics on my iPhone before I get out of bed. Next, I make sure my blog posts are written for the week. Then I work on my novels.

12. I joined a local writers group, the American Christian Fiction Writers (national and statewide) and support fellow authors whenever I can. I donate to the local animal shelter because my books feature a dog. You could donate or volunteer in your field.

13. I read what successful authors do and try to apply their methods.

Hope these ideas help.

Best of luck and please message/comment/email me any questions you have - I'll do my best to give you answers.

See you in my books!

~Nancy Jill

Mystery novelist Nancy Jill Thames began publishing Christian fiction in 2010. The author of six books in the Jillian Bradley series, she is an award winning blogger and is listed numerous times on the Author Watch Bestseller’s List, this in addition to winning first place for her chocolate cream pie.

When she isn’t plotting her next book, she spends time with her six grandchildren, tags along with her husband on business trips, and plays classical piano for her own personal enjoyment. She is an active member of the Leander Writers' Guild, American Christian Fiction Writers, ACFW CenTex Chapter, and supports the Central Texas SPCA with a portion of her book sales. CONTACT INFORMATION jillthames@gmail.com

Nancy Jill is busy working on Book 7 "The Ruby of Siam" a mystery taking place in London.