Brian Rathbone at Fireside Books



Brian Rathbone



Brian Rathbone hosted a writer's workshop at the Forest City, NC Fireside Books store on March 12, 2011 and spoke to a group of writers about the pros and cons, the ins and outs, of publishing. He shared his experiences by telling the story about how he self published his trilogy "The Dawning of Power" as a trade paperback and as an audio book.

"I couldn't present a business case to a publisher, " Rathbone says, "I didn't have an audience. No one knew who I was." Brian got busy. Following a natural inclination toward technology this self confessed computer geek started exploring options. Podcasting grabbed his attention and through BlogTalk Radio and other outlets he began to produce and put up podcasts.

He published the first book in "The Dawning of Power" as a free download, using a marketing method known to insiders as Freemium, giving away the first book and charging a nominal fee for the second and third books. In addition he published the trilogy, in one volume which is for sale as an  audio book, again for a few dollars. He's also had the book printed, publishing the book in trade paperback. And had the 1,000 books he ordered delivered. They arrived shrink wrapped on a pallet, but that's another story.

Rathbone willingly shares his adventures, paving the way for future writers who might use his experience to avoid some of the pitfalls, some of the difficulties of writing, publishing, receiving, warehousing, marketing, and distributing books without the benefit of a publishing house.

In the last ten years, marketing and distribution has fallen more heavily on the shoulders of the writers, even with traditional publishing methods. Today writers are largely responsible for creating their own buzz. That's one thing Rathbone says he wishes he had done. He wishes he had created more buzz BEFORE his book came out. He says these days, "Writers spend an equal amount of time writing and marketing; you have to view the author as a commercial artist."

Using high tech techniques to come from behind, Rathbone has made every effort to build buzz and it worked. Follow Brian on Twitter. With more than 17,000 Twitter followers and thousands of book downloads, you can't say: no one knows who Brian Rathbone is. He has found an audience, one he built bit by bit using social media marketing to find, mine, and fill his niche as a new fantasy fiction author. Even so, he says, he's essentially, in as far as a publisher is concerned, a One Trick Pony, with one podcast, one book, one website. But that's not exactly the case. These days publishers are approaching him.

What's next for Rathbone, who wants more than anything to earn his living as an author? Book number two is in the works.

And now for the finale...
Rathbone dropped a lot of technical tips, shared a lot of links to freeware that he's used to publish, and shares his experience freely. Yes, his books have ISBN numbers, he bought a batch of ten, and used nearly all of them. You can hear more about that and listen to the entire Fireside podcast at Fireside Writer's Workshop but be warned, it's 2.5 hours You can also visit Brian at his New Fantasy Fiction web page and while you're there download his trilogy, "The Dawning of Power".

Brian's Link List:

Twitter Anyone? Follow Brian: http://twitter.com/brianrathbone

EPub Editor: http://code.google.com/p/sigil/

EPub Manager: http://calibre-ebook.com/

Auto Recorder and Editor: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/  (use BETA 1.3.12 or later)

Spoken Word Normalizer (sorta) Evens out voices at different volume levels
http://www.conversationsnetwork.org/levelator

Transfer Files to Webservers: http://filezilla-project.org/

Can't Afford Photoshop? Try gimp: http://www.gimp.org/

Record Skype Audio Calls: http://scribie.com/free-skype-recorder MP3 Converter

Run Report to see how well you target terms. Run one free report a day or $80.00 Month
http://www.seomoz.org/

Brian uses the free Rank Checker and SEO for Firefox add-ons. Track search rank, page rank, backlinks, etc from within Firefox. http://www.seobook.com/

Track usage of your website and blogs. More powerful and useful that you might imagine
http://www.google.com/analytics/

Shorten links for Twitter with the added benefit of tracking how many clicks the link gets
http://bit.ly/




And don't forget to visit Brian's free fantasy ebook page: http://www.brianrathbone.com/free-fantasy-ebook.html  
And a huge debt of gratitude to Fireside Books, we love you!