List Your E-Book with 50 Online Bookstores

117 Keith Guernsey

Author Keith Guernsey is back on this episode of The Author Inside You to tell us about writing his inspirational book based on his battle with cancer. Keith shares with us a great tip on how to easily list your e-book on more than 50 online bookstores. If you have an e-book or plan on publishing one, then this episode is a must-listen!
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books2read.com

You're listening to the author insides you podcast, a weekly podcast designed a, motivates you to finish writing a book. She was a publisher and build an audience. Keep listening if you're looking to get propelled into the next chapter of your life, and now it's the author inside you podcast. Hello and welcome to the author inside you podcast.

I'm Matt Rafferty, Rafferty. We welcome back author Keith Guernsey. Keith joined us back in may of 2017 when he relayed a great story of how he gained 15 minutes of fame that helped him rock it up the Amazon book rankings. Today Keith has completed his third book, overcoming the odds. This is my story of triumph over cancer, life-threatening brain surgery twice.

And obesity. Welcome back, Keith. How are you? Right at the moment, Matt? I'm doing great. Um, thanks for having me on again. I appreciate it. Uh, feeling wonderful. I am in remission from my second battle with cancer in the last two years. Very much great news. It's been a true team effort. So it was when my lovely wife became a crackerjack caregiver out of sheer necessity.

They did a wonderful, wonderful job, and, and I've had. Tremendous support from friends and family. But just to backtrack a little, as I said, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer back in March of 2018 and then had to wait six grueling months to have surgery to have my prostate removed. Wow. They just couldn't get it scheduled.

The hospital on Zillow, one robotic machine, and he hadn't a lot of other people scheduled ahead of me, and of course it went over the summer, so he had to take a vacation. But, um, he, he got it out in September of 2018 and he said it was a complete success and I thought it was sailing along, ready to live a happy, healthy rest of my life.

And then all of a sudden in a followup visit, they detected an anomaly in my blood work. And he referred me out to hematologist. Now, I had no idea we want a hematologist was or did, but we went and we took a very dear friend of ours who was in very experienced oncology nurse to kind of interpret ER, uh, the medical terms back to layman's terms.

So we don't understand what's going on. To me it was perfect because when they say you have cancer for a second time, you kind of go into a foggy type of denial. Sure. You don't hear a lot of them share, but you know, it's, it's been a, an interesting journey. Uh, you learn an awful lot about inner strength, and like I said, now I'm in remission back in the gym feeling great.

That's fantastic. Congratulations. Thank you. So let's talk about writing now that you've published three books. What do you wish you had known. Before you started your first book. I wish I had a Cracker Jack editor. Man. I find some grammatical mistakes in the first couple of books, which I was able to, since I saw public freedom, go on and edit them on the fly.

Once a traditional publisher, once they're printed, they're printed. I learned a lot. I have completed my third book, which has become very, very successful, uh, in honor of world cancer day. We are pleased to offer back to the American cancer society a 25 cent donation for every copy of any of our three books ordered through the end of March, 2020.

That's great. Very generous. Thank you. It's our way of giving back. I started at book, Oh wow. The road to remission, featuring a chapter by my lovely wife, Susan as the, as I said, the concept of caregiver and what all that entails. Oh, I bet people are really going to find that. Very interesting, especially for caregivers.

I now believe that you have just widen your audience even more because caregivers are like, Oh, what does Susan have to say about this? Not only that, but she's a former journalism major at the university of Iowa, so she writes with a a a real flair. That's fantastic. So she must be thrilled to be. Coming up on being a published author.

Oh, she is, definitely. She's definitely, we're, we're thrilled to be healthy and happy and home and well, Keith, when in your journey did you decide to write this third book? I wrote it as an inspiration and then that's what readers are telling me. It is because I keep reading about suicides and 22 veterans a day committing suicide.

Last I country and I'm, I'm looking to give people an inspiration and explain that you can overcome the bumps in the road, the blips on the radar screen, if you will, and someone much wiser than I, which encompasses an awful lot of people once said that the man above does not give you more than you can handle, which I found to be true.

And I want to, you know, I want this book to inspire people and my readers tell me it really is. Well, I just heard today on the news that someone folded you only die was, but you've live every day. And they said, try to think of it differently instead of thinking, you know, we only live once. No, we live every single day.

Exactly. Right. And then I wrote it for this time of year with this time of year in mind, because seasonally affected. Disorder is, is a real thing. I had a coworker who was really affected badly by this, and I wish I wrote a 20 years ago street so she could read it and realize you got to live every day and do the best he can and overcome the, uh, the bumps in the road, so to speak.

So how was the writing process different in this book from your previous books? Well, shorter because I, I think I had a, an interesting story to tell, but not. Warren, peace length. Interesting. I don't like fluff, you know, I like to get the point, you know, I write nonfiction. It's like to get to the point, tell my story and be done with it.

Now, the remission book probably going to be a lot longer, but in this case, my hand, a lot of help. I did have a good editor and I with this book, and I also had a young lady who helped me with formatting. For, you know, for KDP, Amazon, their requirements. Little on the strict side, but we got it done and I just had another young lady volunteer to create me a new cover, which she did.

Wow, that's nice. It's amazing. You know, the kindness of people. It just blows me away. Well, Keith, how did you find your editor for overcoming the odds. From our writers group. We talked about skills and various skills that we each had and she said she was an editor and I said, I'll take a look at this and see what you think.

And she did quoted me a price that was reasonable and I said, let's go for it. And we did great. This episode of the author inside you podcast is brought to you by scribble file. If you're writing a book and you need some help with some professional writers looking over your work, then you need the joint scuba file.

Go to  dot com and sign up. One aspect of scribble file that I really like is a writing Academy. It is a free writing resource produced by members of the scribble five community guar writing professionals in the Academy. There are some really cool courses that you can click on and learn all about specific types of writing, such as cliches or, or how to make dialogue flow naturally while writing.

Perhaps you're thinking about writing a screenplay. There's help for you on scribble firewall. So one of the articles on the writing Academy is common screenplay mistakes, how to format a screenplay, and one of my favorites is correct semi-colon usage. If you're writing a book or a screenplay and you'd like some professional help, go to  dot com the best thing about it is it's free to sign up.

So go to  dot com while we were doing our research, before we begin this episode, I noticed that on a webpage code books to read with a number two in their books to read.com that your ebook is available on over 10 different ebook stores. How did you go about lining that up? That's fantastic. And the books to read is an offshoot of drafted digital where my book is also published and they just offer a universal link.

And when you create the universal link from your Amazon link, they just place it on Kobo. And, uh, if you have any reader, they place it on Barnes and noble. If you have a nook. Yeah. We just give them wanting to give people a choice. Yeah. That is great. There are people who won't buy from Amazon for whatever reason.

So we wanted to give them an alternative. And that was your publisher. Who did that? No, no, no, no. I did that. Oh great. Cause I self published. The advantage is, first of all, self publishing is my favorite four letter word free. You don't have to pay a publishers in. There are publicists I've heard from the want to charge and it was opened her mouth to publish a book.

Oh yeah. It gives you ultimate freedom. You know, just the perfect example is this brand new cover that's much better than the previous one. You know, I was able to open up my book, put it on there, and within two hours it was live. That is great. Well, how did you find out about books to read? Is it free to join?

Yo? Yeah. Yeah. Everything's free for to create the universal link and refer back to all these sites. Yes, that's true. Oh, great. We'll put a link to books to read in the show notes so everybody can click on that and see after they get their book published. They too can join that. It'd be great. You know, one of the things I enjoy doing is helping out my fellow officers avoid the pitfalls that I encountered.

So if you have my email address, if you want to share that, please do. Okay, that'd be great. And you're fine with people reaching out and asking questions? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. If I don't have the answer, man, I'll be having to make one up. That's good. That could be book number five. Do you have any new advice for our listeners?

Yes. Be consistent. Be persistent. Do not let bad reviews get you down because again, it's just someone's opinion. You know, not everyone's going to love. Fuck. I've been very fortunate that I never got anything less than a four. Wow. So I haven't gotten any negative reviews, but I know my fellow authors have, and they seem to.

Based on the comments. I see. They seem to get really down in the dumps, but you can't, you know, it's just someone's opinion, not everyone's gonna like every book you write, the other thing is right, every single day, minimum three sentences and, and you'd be amazed if you're. Working on a book, how often three sentences turn into three pages.

Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, so that's my story. I'm sticking to it. Yeah, because maybe you're thinking, Oh, it's too much to write. It's too much to write. I can't do it tonight. I'm too busy. But like you said, if you just say. Write three sentences, then it just takes off on its own. Right. And that's why I go to the gym at five o'clock in the morning, so I don't have a chance to talk myself out.

Then I sit on my stairs and I write my three sentences minimum. So before I have a chance to talk myself out of doing any writing today, and before you know, it. You've got a book. Great. Well, that's great advice, Keith, and thank you very much for coming back for an Encore interview here on the author inside you podcast.

Oh, it's my pleasure, Matt and Leah, and I'm thrilled to be here and anytime you want my Angeles advice, you just call me up. Thank you, man. I would really like to hear from you and find out what you think about our podcasts. If you have any feedback you'd like to share with us, please drop us a line at

[email protected] you can find that email address on our webpage, and until next time, right on. Thank you for listening to the author inside your podcast with your host, Leah and Matt Rafferty.