Exploring Indie Publishing with Anita Dawes

About Anita Dawes

Anita Dawes loves all things esoteric, magical and the otherworldly and would prefer to live in a fairy tale. In between these moments, she likes to visit old churches and ancient buildings.

She has written six fiction novels in various genres, Bad Moon, Simple, Secrets, The Scarlet Ribbon; Let it Go and Not My Life. Presently working on a sequel to her popular supernatural romance, The Scarlet Ribbon.
Anita has recently rediscovered her childhood love of poetry and often writes and posts them online.

Owned by an egocentric black and white cat called Merlin, named after her favourite hero, Anita dislikes computers and prefers to writes longhand, sharing a website http://jenanita01.com with Jaye Marie, who transcribes and edits her work…

Exploring Indie Publishing with Anita Dawes

Two years ago, when I first started hearing about Indie publishing, I never thought it would be something I could actually do, as the thought of anything to do with a computer filled me with dread.

I had been writing for years and submitted my work to most of the mainstream publishers. Very nearly made it too, but as they say, a miss is as good as a mile! Which was a shame, for many people liked what I wrote.

So, it didn’t take long for the idea of doing it yourself to become something I was determined to do. I enlisted the help of my sister, Jaye, as she is far more computer literate than I. More stubborn too!

What Jaye had to learn was incredible, and unbelievably hard. I tried to keep up with her, but there were days when even she was pulling her hair out. Some of it was easy, which tended to lull us into a false sense of achievement, but we persevered.

Eventually, we learned how to upload one of my manuscripts to Amazon, and I was finally a published author. (Well, sort of)

We didn’t stop there. We wanted to upload my other books and create paperback copies too, proof positive that I was truly a writer. One little success meant there could very well be others, and that was the best incentive in the world.

Learning how to do all that was a nightmare, but soon, four of my books were on Amazon and we were like a couple of Cheshire cats. We were tempted to stop there; after all, I now had six paperback copies of my books on my shelf, as well as the Kindle editions.

But we soon discovered that this was only half of the battle. Apparently, you need a platform, a reader friendly website to promote my books or they would remain in limbo. Then there was all the socialising and networking. So many writers were publishing their own books; we were a ridiculously small pebble in a very large pond!

We managed to create a passable website and established a presence on the internet. Not that this is the end of the story, there is no way you can rest on your laurels (that is if you even have some!)

Even if nothing monumental comes from all our efforts, we know we have tried our hardest. But we won’t stop writing, for that’s the fun part!

About the Book

Annie’s Song by Anita Dawes
Genre: Disturbing Family Drama

Synopsis

Family or Freedom, which would you choose?

Life in the backwoods of Virginia at the turn of the century was perfect, until Annie discovers a nasty family secret.

Something her family have been doing for years.
She knows she cannot live like this but her protests fall on deaf ears.
Her struggle to change everything only makes her life so much worse. forcing her to try and escape…

Annie’s song echoes through the mountains,
her sorrow falls with every drop of rain.
Pieces of her heart lie scattered throughout the forest.

Will her footsteps lead her to the freedom she seeks?

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