{"id":5024,"date":"2017-10-29T22:04:55","date_gmt":"2017-10-29T21:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.parksandlandscapes.org\/blog\/?p=5024"},"modified":"2021-08-08T11:07:52","modified_gmt":"2021-08-08T10:07:52","slug":"interview-with-kate-chen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parksandlandscapes.org\/blog\/interview-with-kate-chen\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Kate Chen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interview with the author of \u201cHow To Be Owned By A Cat: Simple Action Plan For First Time Cat Owners Who Have NO Idea What They Are Getting Into<\/a>\u201d Kate Chen<\/strong>, October 2017<\/p>\n

– What do you like to read – fiction, non-fiction?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I prefer to read non-fiction 90% of the time as I enjoy learning new things that are useful to my daily life. I recently read “The Four Tendencies” by Gretchen Rubin which talks about how we are all divided into 4 personality types. It’s an eye-opening and enlightening read which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to know themselves better and learn how to communicate effectively.<\/p>\n

– What is your writing experience?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m a self-taught non-fiction writer. Most of my writing and inspiration comes from my own personal experience and that of others. When I need more information, I will do in-depth research online or read up books on similar topics. The books I write is based on the “problems” I encounter in life and I hope my little solutions can help others going through the same stuff.<\/p>\n

– Which advantages of being a writer do you see?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I guess as a writer, I’ll have more creative outlet than normal people. It also gives me more freedom to express myself. It’s not really an advantage but rather a different way of expression just like some people sing, paint or play musical instrument. Different strokes for different folks.<\/p>\n

– Which disadvantages of being a writer do you see?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Self-discipline! The discipline to sit down and write un-distracted is very important for a writer. Sometimes I’m full of ideas but one moment of distraction and the thoughts go “poof!”. It’s extremely satisfying when I can sit down and pen it all out without a care in the world.<\/p>\n

– Can you give some recommendations on how to write an interesting\/useful book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Actually any topic that speaks to you can already be an interesting \/ useful book. Or do you have a solution that someone is looking for?  I highly recommend drawing a mind map to outline your book chapters. I used to be stuck with information and ideas all over the place. But once I organized them into a mind map, I can just follow the outline accordingly. It’s really a life and time-saver for me. Google “mind map” and you’ll see lots of examples or check out the “Book Launch” by Chandler Bolt whereby there’s a very useful chapter on mind map to outline for authors.<\/p>\n

– Can you give some recommendations on how to promote a book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

If your books are on Amazon KDP, I recommend trying their AMS (Amazon Marketing service) to promote your books. You can start off with a budget of $1\/daily and test which keywords get you the sales. So far the ROI I got from AMS turned out to be the best bang for my buck.<\/p>\n

I have tried:<\/p>\n

– Facebook marketing but it’s too costly for my $2.99 books<\/p>\n

– Books Go Social twitter 3-month promo and their service is excellent but non-fiction don’t seem to be their strong suit<\/p>\n

– In the midst of trying Books Butterfly and their service seems prompt so let’s see if it works out.<\/p>\n

All in all, I’ve spent more money marketing than making money from actual sales. The hard truth is book promoters probably make more money than most writers. I guess keep trying until you find something that works for your kind of books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interview with the author of \u201cHow To Be Owned By A Cat: Simple Action Plan For First Time Cat Owners Who Have NO Idea What They […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":4942,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people"],"psp_head":"Interview with Kate Chen \u2013 Parks and Landscapes<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Interview with the author of \u201cHow To Be Owned By A Cat: Simple Action Plan For First Time Cat Owners Who Have NO Idea What They Are Getting Into\u201d Kate Chen, October 2017 - What do you like to read - fiction, non-fiction?\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index,follow\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/parksandlandscapes.org\/blog\/interview-with-kate-chen\/\" \/>\r\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parksandlandscapes.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parksandlandscapes.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parksandlandscapes.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parksandlandscapes.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parksandlandscapes.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/parksandlandscapes.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parksandlandscapes.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parksandlandscapes.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parksandlandscapes.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parksandlandscapes.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}