Meet the Authors was founded by Lee Davies and Rob Jones, specifically to support authors early on in their careers. They noted that those people who wanted to write, often found the self-publishing process something of a minefield with little available support, and the support that was there tended to be expensive, there were even schemes that took advantage of unexperienced authors, including those who expected them to pay a large sum of money to publish their work. Added to this were those who had published a book, and had some good reviews, but were then stopped in their tracks by one or two unpleasant reviews, leaving them wondering what to do next.
Even writers who had published a few books have lost hope particularly when sales dropped off or sometimes never even got off the ground, acknowledging the amount of competition within the self-publishing arena.
As they began to set up MTA, and meet writers, they were quite shocked at how many of the same stories were re-occurring, so they sought to set up a platform that could be accessed free at entry to particularly support those types of writers. Of course, it is not only for new writers or potential writers but support is also there for anyone at any stage of their, including published authors.
Part of Lee’s vision was to deliver short interviews which writers could use to promote their work both on our platform, their own website and anywhere else they saw fit, and this could be done at a reasonable cost. It is an attempt to move away a little bit from the expensive model of just promoting books by exposing them for one or two days, although you will find that their priority is to make sure that your book is exposed on their site, that it is prominent during the interview, and MTA can even offer a live signing experience. They have recently added the opportunity for you to read what we call a ‘snippet’, an excerpt from your book, or if you prefer, they can do it for you, and this will provide you with an additional promotional video.
Rob was interested in the psychological aspects of becoming a self-published author. In particular, the isolation felt by many writers as they start, and go through this process.
To begin with, it is very difficult to know who you can trust if you want to share your ideas and this, including how to use a nondisclosure agreement is part of what MTA offer. Even when your book is finished, sharing either the whole book or the concept with others can be a gamble. You would always hope that those close to you would encourage and support you, but they could be critical and that can have an early damaging effect.
This is why MTA has also been set up as a community and that community is there to give advice and support to each other as well as encouraging those who are struggling at any stage. Meet the Authors has put together a comprehensive catalogue of services, training and support that should suit every writer. There are useful links and a planner that helps you develop and design the whole of your book from start to finish, including events, characters and character profiles and structure. There is a self-publishing planner and template files. Training videos on anything from using a hashtag generator, and how to deal with book reviews to getting your Paperback and e-book on Amazon and other platforms, creating your Amazon profile, setting up a KDP ad, Facebook ad, designing book covers, how to start writing and much more.
They offer a ‘Pitch your Idea’ service, which will be covered by a nondisclosure agreement in which you can confidentially share your idea or potential ideas with them, only offering encouraging feedback, helping you to build on those parts which are most likely to work. Other services include grammar reviews, publication assistance and website design and creation.
If you want to become part of a radically different writer’s community, that is there genuinely to support you when you need help (and at every stage of your journey) then sign up for MTA. You can join for free and then discover how it can support you best.
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