5 Steps to Better Writing

Presentation - Summary, Cover and All the Rest

Part IV – Presentation – Summary, Cover and All the Rest

Let me tell you something you don’t want to know.

People are looking for a reason not to read your book. Yup. Because reading takes effort and they aren’t going to put in that effort unless there is a good reason. So the reason for not reading…well…

…it can be anything

1.A ugly cover or no cover at all.

2.A god-awful title that gives the whole story away.

3.A totally weird/misspelled/stupid sounding screen name.

4.A summary that sucks worse than dishwater.

5.A first chapter with ten spelling mistakes and no action or too much of it.

Most of the time it’s a combination of 1& 2 and 4.

The silly thing these three things can be easily fixed.

Which is what this chapter will be about. Presentation and how to get people to even read your first chapter (so they can be dazzled and keep on reading.) You need to sell yourself before the reader even gets to the reading part. No one will even bother to click on your story if they don’t feel they are about to enjoy it. Without proper presentation they won’t read your stuff - even if you’re the next Stephen King.

(A few notes on number 3 before we talk about the rest of it.)

If you’re screen name is: Ilovemydog827 or fuckfrogs0.0 or something else stupid, change it. You can do that quite easily on Wattpad; all you do is you go to setting and write in a new one. Told you it was simple.

The name you use doesn’t have to be your real name. It should however, in my opinion, be a name. You are representing yourself as an author not as a ten year old who just got permission from mommy and daddy to join whatever lame on-line forum the kids are using these days.

And the first letter of a name should be CAPITALIZED and the others lowercase.

If you don’t want to use your real name – pick a pen name. It’s easy. Just like naming a character. And you wouldn’t call a character Ilikeboogers99, now would you?

It’s not that hard to make up a few names.

JohannaWilson

AlexBrickston

MiriamMoore

See I made up three of them, in like a second. All of these might not be available but since you’re just picking names at random it shouldn’t be that hard to find a first and last name combination that no one else on Wattpad has already, now should it?

If you want to use your real name (like me) you might have to put something behind it. Like I did Jennifer K (my name) and then the word Art.Now unfortunately people tend to read it JenniferKart, like my last name is Kart (which it is not) and think that I accidently capitalized the A too. Not the case, but since I’ve become rather fond of KArt I’m still using it.

While it is by no means a requirement to change your name you might want to at least think about changing it. For a more professional and grown up “vibe.”

Besides wouldn’t it be nice if the name on your cover matched your screen name?

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Back to what this chapter is really about. Selling yourself and your stuff. Okay that sounded kinkier than I meant. But with so many stories being published every second, getting people to read your work really means you have to be able to sell yourself.