Ernest Hemingway

Introduction

One of best things about internet is freedom that it can give. Within reason, you can talk to anyone, anywhere about mostly anything. It is a great communication tool.

Recently, during Seattle earthquake, I was able to get minute-by- minute feedback about what was going on from people that I've met online - real-time information even though I was sat in my office across other side of world in UK.

One of areas that is currently being revolutionised by internet is world of publishing. You can have your writing available to millions of people within a few hours. The frustration of rejection after rejection from traditional publishers can partly be assuaged.

You can do this too.

You can have your novel, your short story or your poem available for entire technological world to read. You can meet and talk with writers from all over world. You can critique other people's work and get feedback on your own.

In short, you can become part of biggest writing circle this world has ever seen.

In this book, I'll be advising you how to get started - things you need to get yourself up and running. I'll be including links to useful sites and resources. I'll show you how to build a website that will be a showcase for your work. I'll also give you advice about that most difficult of tasks: marketing your book.

I hope this book gives you inspiration to get started.

'I love being a writer. What I can't stand is paperwork'.

Peter De Vries

Getting Started

You've written your blockbuster. You've sent it off to a dozen agents and publishers. Then...then it happens - rejection letters start to arrive.

I'm sorry, this really isn't for us.

This is only a personal opinion, of course, but...

You write well but we're not in market for this kind of work at moment.

All best in your efforts to get published.

Fiction writers appear to be despised members of internet writing community. Our product doesn't promise reader financial success or prospect of an early retirement. We don't claim to know one true secret of how to make a million or how to drive thousands of people to your website each day. Other people aren't likely to use our books in a marketing campaign or pay to give them away as freebies.

Imagine emails you could receive: 'Easy Assonance in Eight Easy Steps', 'Build your own sonnet in less than 14 Days' or 'Sign Up Now: This Short Story deal terminates tonight!!!'

It would be great, wouldn't it?

Alas, this is not our lot in life - I sometimes wish it was or I wouldn't be driving around in a small Fiat Punto.

To write fiction is to suck marrow from life, to engage our minds in pursuit of literary excellence, to lay ourselves open before our readers.

Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery. Henry Miller

This sounds far from hard-hitting world of internet commerce. And it is. The marketing gurus have used internet to their advantage. It is time that we fiction writers do same.

I've written this article to encourage everyone who writes fiction to fully utilise resources that we have available to us on World Wide Web.