Write Regardless!: A no-nonsense guide to plotting, packaging & promoting your book

By Michael Burge

"Writing is about doing the work. Publishing is about even harder work. Marketing and promoting a book is the hardest work most independent publishers will ever do."  

But Australian journalist and writer Michael Burge (traditionally published author of Tank Water and author/publisher of Questionable Deeds) does

• Language: English
• Publisher: High Country Books
• Release date: Jul 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9780645270556

Michael Burge

Michael Burge is an Australian author and journalist who lives at Deepwater in the New England region of NSW with his husband and their dogs. After graduating from the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Michael undertook media studies in the United Kingdom. His non-fiction debut 'Questionable Deeds: Making a stand for equal love' lifted the lid on familial and institutional homophobia in Australia during the marriage equality campaign. Michael has written, edited, directed and broadcast for Fairfax Media, Intermedia, United News & Media, Margo Kingston's NoFibs and a range of lifestyle mastheads. He is director of the annual High Country Writers Festival in Glen Innes. His complete works can be found at www.burgewords.com. 'Tank Water' is his first novel.

Book preview

About the author

MICHAEL BURGE is an Australian author and journalist who lives at Deepwater in the New England region of NSW with his husband and their dogs. After graduating from the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Michael undertook media studies in the United Kingdom. His debut novel Tank Water was published by MidnightSun. An earlier memoir Questionable Deeds: Making a stand for equal love lifted the lid on familial and institutional homophobia in Australia during the marriage equality campaign. His article ‘Backwards to Bourke: Bulldust About Gays in the Bush’ was published internationally in The Journal of Australian Studies. Michael has written, edited, directed and broadcast for Guardian Australia, Fairfax Media, Intermedia, United News & Media, Margo Kingston’s NoFibs and a range of lifestyle mastheads. He is director of the annual High Country Writers Festival. His complete works can be found at www.burgewords.com

Fiction

Tank Water

Closet His Closet Hers

Non-fiction

Questionable Deeds: Making a stand for equal love

Pluck: Exploits of the single-minded

Write, Regardless! A no-nonsense guide to plotting, packaging & promoting your book

Creating Waves: Critical takes on culture and politics

Plays

Merely Players

Copyright

First published in Australia in 2016 by www.burgewords.com

Reprinted 2019

This new edition published in Australia 2022 by High Country Books

www.highcountrywritersfestival.com

Copyright © Michael Burge 2016

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at publication, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause. The information in this book is intended as a guide only and does not replace training in writing, publishing and marketing books for publication.

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Foreword

2016

WRITERS ARE LIVING through tough times, and times are usually tough enough for wordsmiths.

Not since the invention of the printing press has it been easier to publish books using an array of affordable online publishing services, but these same systems and the distribution networks they feed have stripped the traditional currency of many of the same books to almost nothing.

Newspapers struggle to get readers to pay, and we now have multiple generations who do not expect any content should come with a price tag.

Yet it’s not all bad news. Despite the terrible odds stacked up against writing for fame, glory and riches, people still tell stories.

My lack of success in landing a traditional publishing contract for my work led me down this pathway, even as a log-jam of manuscripts was piling up in my head, heart and hard-drive. Write, Regardless! is the result of having many questions fired at me ever since I threw my cap in the ring and became a publisher who made a small splash.

I once worked in publishing and learned a thing or two about gauging what makes a good story, a savvy author and a win-win contract, but I needed to spend years researching online processes and social media in order to lay the foundations for this step into the partially unknown.

And I hasten to add I don’t have the answer to every question. I’m still learning, but after finding myself corresponding at length about my approach, and thereby losing time for my own work, I decided to look at how I achieved my limited success in order to have somewhere to direct queries.

In my first year as an independent publisher I profited from the publication of four titles, which made money after significant sales to libraries of the paperback version of my strongest non-fiction title Questionable Deeds: Making a stand for equal love. This title had relevance to the news cycle in that it spoke considerably to the critical political journey of marriage equality legislation in Australia.

The publication of Closet His, Closet Hers: Collected stories at the same time was no mistake. Fiction is a much harder sell, and I consciously floated my first fictional title on the same wave as Questionable Deeds. To put it plainly, I was objective enough to make decisions as a publisher as much as I was making them as a writer.

That is the key to Write, Regardless! It seeks to unlock publishing industry secrets, but it will also raise your awareness of what it takes to spend your precious time writing regardless of what the publishing industry thinks of all your hard work.

This book is not aimed at teaching you to write, although it has several encouragements to analyse your work to make it more engaging and entertaining to readers. It doesn’t offer short cuts. I started creating an online presence as a journalist twelve months before I started writing my first published book, and I encourage readers to give the process at least the same time as I have, which is now more than a decade.

Writing is about doing the work. Publishing is about even harder work. Marketing and promoting a book is the hardest work most independent publishers will ever do.

Write, Regardless! is the technique I applied to myself, and in doing so earned a third of a traditionally published writer’s average annual salary in my first year, without any support whatsoever from the traditional publishing industry or the mainstream media.

That might sound like very small fry, but weighed up with the high chance of getting ripped off thousands of dollars for the ‘one-stop-shop’ charlatans, or outsourcing the work to others, it’s a resounding success story. I made more than many authors receive from books that have been treated to the full suite of marketing and promotion, festivals and competitions.

As I write this, I am preparing to attend my first writers event as part of a panel discussion at Brisbane Writers Festival. For a self-published author in any country that is almost unheard of.

Write, Regardless! is available free online as a series of articles on my website, but I’m publishing it here with all the same links to other resources I created on the journey.

It will be of optimal use to writers who have at least one manuscript completed and the willingness to create another with a regular writing schedule of no less than a page of new material a week. It’s also designed for you to begin the work of becoming a publisher at the end of each chapter, before moving onto the next.

One page a week sounds like a small amount, but there is more to being an author than writing these days. Read on and courageously do the work!

2022

IN late 2019, I was offered my first book deal, a contract for the publication of my debut novel Tank Water from Anna Solding of Adelaide-based MidnightSun Publishing.

Suddenly, something I’d long dreamed of became a wonderful reality. I’d been writing non-stop since 2008, worked in several newsrooms full- and part-time, always keeping up with my minimum page-a-week pact with myself. I’d done the work!

As I write this, I’ve recently returned from a three-month, four-state, four-city book tour for Tank Water, and I’m enjoying the experience of attending writer’s festivals to talk about a novel that’s been well-reviewed, is a steady seller that went to a reprint after just a month in the marketplace, and causes readers to regularly send me wonderful messages about how much they enjoyed my book.

Being traditionally published only extended my experience in the processes that go into creating great books and getting them to readers. But I remain – and am extremely proud to be – a ‘hybrid’ author, one who is published by others, but also publishes their work independently.

And I am very pleased to share what I have learned with you.

Michael Burge

Is Write, Regardless! for me?

I SPENT OVER six years writing full time, including three years contributing online articles, before embarking on the publication of a line of titles across 2015-2016, books I wrote while developing a social media readership. In 2019, I landed my first publishing contract. The Write, Regardless! series of no-nonsense articles explains how I went from a good writer, to an Amazon bestselling* author (without getting ripped off along the way).