Rise to the 10 Acts of kindness challenge...

This week is Random Acts of Kindness week. This is a principle I not only believe in, but follow through. I have made regular 'Random Acts of Kindness'  to people in my author / book community and it is now an embedded part of who I am - it really does become a natural way of living after a very short time.

Often it's the smallest acts of kindness that hold the greatest
power. 

 I try to do one significant monthly act, which is often a monetary gift to someone in need or a care package for someone who is feeling the presence of the black-dog, and a smaller daily act, which is often an investment of time or skill. My Fangirl Friday posts are a small part of this belief.

Sometimes, those folks know it is me behind the gift of money, time, sharing, cheerleading, kindness packages, etc, and sometimes they don't. People often find it difficult to ask for help and even more difficult to accept it when it's offered. It's not about rough riding people's dignity or displacing the delicate power balance between two individuals. There's an art to giving, but it's one easily learned.

Now, I know there are some cynics who say there is no such thing as a pure act of random kindness because it makes the giver feel good about themselves - which is a good point, but let's reframe that, in our book community there are plenty of incidences of folks getting all the feels for themselves over being total barstools! Trolling, nasty-reviewing, knocking down other authors, books, bloggers, has become sadly commonplace, and it sometimes feels like we can't get through a day with out some kind of negative drama unfolding.

Kindness is powerful; it's transformative - it has the capacity to literally change lives - and sometimes it's the smallest acts that have the greatest power.

THE  10 ACTS OF KINDNESS CHALLENGE

1) Leave an honest, encouraging review for an author who has under 50 reviews on Amazon.

2) Post on your Facebook timeline, a copy of the book you are reading, tell your friends why you're enjoying it, why they should read it, and tag the author.

3) Head to an author's website and drop an encouraging message into their contact box.

4) Buy a book from an indie who you don't know anything about.

5) Create a fan picture / bookselfie of an author's book and post it on instagram, Facebook etc and tag them.

6) Like an author's Facebook page and write them an introductory message - just say hi.

7) Take $5 and download 5 random ebooks in a genre you love from the bottom of the rankings. (Rankings aren't all about quality, they're a lot to do with exposure - there are some hidden gems lurking in the bottom of the Amazon ranking pool)

8) Create a piece of fan art, photography, colouring, crafting, painting, sketching and post it to their timeline -- I can't tell you how joyful this makes an author.

9) Buy a ticket for a book signing - someone who is starting out and doesn't already have a thousand fans queuing to see them. It's soul destroying to put yourself out there and no one show up. (#BeenThere)

10) For goodness sake, if your friend or family member has written and published a book, buy it - it doesn't matter if it's your kind of book or not - you don't have to read it!
You'd shout them a coffee, a beer or a birthday card - so shout them a book sale. Rankings matter and especially on launch days. Every sale makes a huge difference to Amazon rankings and how much exposure that book will go on to get --- and who knows, you might even enjoy it.

So - this is quite a lot to do in the remaining days of RAK week - but hey, I've always encouraged the healthy breaking of rules -- feel free to do any of these at any point throughout the year. The universe will thank you, and so will the book community xxx

Introducing the founder of Little Bird Publishing....

That will be me.

Many of you don't realise that as well as being a 'full time' (that's a bit of an inside joke) writer, I am also the founder of Little Bird Publishing House.

Originally, I set Little Bird Publishing House up as my own unique press. It was designed to be the business front of my indie publishing career, and it worked really well. This was way back in 2010 when the idea of owning your own publishing house was still quite a novelty in the whole indie book world.

However, with the boom in indie books and authors, I began to see a LOT of dream paddlers; people offering to take your book, charge you a couple of thousand pounds and turn it into a bestseller - yeah, right!

It wasn't right - and it wasn't fair, and by late 2013, I had learned SOOO much on my steep learning curve, it felt time to help some other folks out. I began branching the idea of a publishing house with the establishment of two anthology projects. Dark Heart & Night Shade. It was an amazing way of testing the ground to see if I was ready to actually become not only an indie author, but a publisher, too. The Dark Heart & Night Shade projects led to some fabulous author friendships, and two of the authors are now fully-fledged Little Bird authors.

Fast forward to 2016 and we are a publishing family of ten; Hazel Robinson, Toya Richardson, Helen Whapshott, Alison Clarke, Martin Ferguson, Jo Richardson, Jill Turner, Katie M. John (me) and in 2017 Brandon Robb and L. Keane will be joining us. And when I use the term family, I don't use it lightly. As a collective of authors, we support each other, encourage, build, lend a hand, and generally hang out on social media.

My mission with Little Bird is and always has been that we are stronger together. That when we begin to work as a community of artists, amazing things happen - and they do.

I treat every single one of the books that run through Little Bird as dearly as my own, from the first initial edits, to the art work, to the marketing, to the love of the story - all Little Bird books are my beautiful nieces and nephews. Every author I work with is respected for their own unique and beautiful voice - that's what Little Bird is about; not crushing authors and creatives into a marketing book, but giving unique voices a chance to shine.

Every single Little Bird Book is worked until it is of a quality ready for readership - and the reviews, awards and fan-bases prove that.

I don't worry about markets and sales trends when it comes to selecting the stories we are going to publish, I focus on the story, on the author behind the story - and it doesn't matter if it sells 10,000 copies, or 10, every single story is important. Every single author's voice is important.

The thing about writing and defining oneself as an author is that it's freaking scary as hell. You're terrified that someone is going to 'out' you as a fraud, that someone is going to knock you down so hard that your'e never going to quite get up - and although it isn't always the nicest of worlds, by creating a community of authors who have genuine friendships grown through shared experiences and belonging to something a little bigger than being all by themselves, it makes the whole thing a lot less scary, and a hell of a lot more exciting.

In 2017 we see the next big step for us as a publishing house. We are the primary sponsors of Chapter.Con London and many of the Little Bird Family will be attending and manning our Little Bird super table, and we are also going to have a full publishing table at Leeds in 2018 with Hourglass Events. We are always growing and despite sometimes feeling like I have a million hats to wear, editor, designer, publisher, marketer, author, business woman, it's an amazingly fulfilling way to live.

If you want to find out more about Little Bird Publishing, or if you are an indie author who thinks that they might like to try a different kind of indie publishing, then you can see our public website www.thelittlebirdbookstore.com, which also has a link for authors to our publisher's website www.littlebirdpublishinghouse.com 



You can also come over and give us a LIKE at our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter at @LittlebirdPub - which amusingly is not a place you can procure beer from, but keep up to date with what we are all doing.