How the Blogchatter eBook Carnival 2018 Made An Author Out of Me
The first time I heard of Blogchatter was in the year 2018. Several people known to me had mentioned that Blogchatter was the organization that championed the A to Z blogging challenge in India. At first, I wondered what the title A to Z challenge meant. Then I was told by a co-blogger that the modus operandi of the challenge involved writing 26 posts in the month of April alone. She also mentioned that though a theme was not necessary, each post had to be related to the English alphabets in order. Honestly, I was very apprehensive about participating in a challenge that could be as exhaustive as this.
Initially, I had decided against it. But in March 2018 a new idea germinated in my mind. Till that point in time, I had always been writing non-fiction on my blog and had never bothered to try writing fiction. It occurred to me that the A to Z challenge could be a golden opportunity to try my hand at fiction. For days I wondered what sort of fiction I would write. Finally, I decided on a suspense thriller stretching across 26 chapters with the title of each chapter related to an English alphabet. And that is how I began writing fiction for the first time.
The first chapter was titled ‘A is for Apple so rosy and red’, the second was titled ‘B is for a Ball covered with blood’ and so on up to Z. I found that my posts received an excellent response. The A to Z challenge 2018 was a brilliant experience full of camaraderie and all the participants had a gala time. This was immediately followed by the Blogchatter Ebook Carnival 2018. And that was when I realized that I could actually become an author. I picked up the 26 posts I had written as part of the A to Z challenge and began re-writing them in earnest so that I could create an eBook out of my blog posts.
We were a whole community of people with the common aim of churning out eBooks and many of us were first time writers. We consulted each other on covers suited for our eBooks and numerous other details. The mentors appointed by Blogchatter to guide us also gave some excellent advice. It was an extremely happy experience and the whole thing resembled a community movement of sorts. We even designed videos and posted them on social media.
Blogchatter constantly monitored our twitter groups, proferring advice wherever necessary. There are several things that first-time writers need to know. To create a good eBook the cover is extremely important. Several small things may put your reader off your book. These include things like the font you use, the line-spacing and the layout. Blogchatter conducted FaceBook video chats where they briefed us on all these things. I remember one piece of advice Blogchatter gave me which helped me particularly because my eBook belonged to the suspense thriller genre.
It is very important to remember that a book in the suspense thriller genre should not have any plot holes. You know how it is, critical readers will always tend to chew over facts that do not add up and point out the fallacies. I re-wrote several chapters of my eBook keeping this in mind. I was given a lot of useful advice by my co-writers too. We had a deadline to submit our eBooks to Blogchatter. Finally, after everyone had submitted their eBooks, Blogchatter released the books on their site for download amidst a lot of excitement.
And my eBook got downloaded as many as 315 times during the period it was available free at the Blogchatter site. And after the two month period, I published my eBook on Amazon and voila! I had become a published author with a book on Amazon. You can find the Blogchatter download link for my eBook, Eighty Hours To Save Karen on the following page.
And my eBook got downloaded as many as 315 times during the period it was available free at the Blogchatter site. And after the two month period, I published my eBook on Amazon and voila! I had become a published author with a book on Amazon. You can find the Blogchatter download link for my eBook, Eighty Hours To Save Karen on the following page.
But currently, this link points to the Amazon site where the book can be purchased.
As part of the carnival, each person had to compulsorily review three eBooks. One of the books that a participant has to review will be selected by Blogchatter while the other two are the reviewer’s choice. The main use of the review process is that it will help you to gauge the pulse of the readers. There is nothing like a review to give you a first-hand idea of where you have to improve as a writer. It will tell you what your weaknesses and strengths are. Here are a couple of reviews I received for my book Eighty Hours To Save Karen as part of the Ebook Carnival.
The main advantage of the Blogchatter Ebook Carnival is that if you have never been an author before, the carnival helps you to become one. For example, I had never written fiction before. And the Blogchatter A to Z challenge and the Blogchatter eBook Carnival together made me an author in the thriller fiction genre. After publishing my first eBook through the Blogchatter eBook carnival, I subsequently published another eBook in the thriller suspense genre titled The Krishnapur Kidnappings.
This year I am planning to come up with an eBook on sportspersons and in the background, I am also writing a full-length novel. You can see that I owe my foray into being an author of books to Blogchatter. So for all those people, who are thinking of joining the Blogchatter eBook Carnival 2019, all I have to say is, don’t waste any more time thinking and register immediately. It will bring out the best in you as a writer and you will thoroughly enjoy it. Who knows what doors may open up in the future by participating today!