Aug 6
I like pie…
Now my answer to who gets what share of the pie in publishing (actually in most things) is hey, let’s make a bigger pie.
That’s always seemed a sensible answer to me. I’ve spent years talking about ways to make reading more popular with as many people as possible. I can summarize many thousands of words into this: Give as many readers as possible what they enjoy. Help them find it, keep them coming back for more.
A rising tide floats ALL boats. Read more
It’s a new month and you know what that means. Amazon is being hated all over again. No, I’m not talking about the technical glitches it had yesterday during the early hours of its Prime Day event. Yes, I’m one of those grumbling about it because I missed out on something because, when the item went live and I clicked on it, I got the “Oops, we are experiencing a problem right now”. I lost out on the item as a result. But that’s not the current outrage, at least not in the writing community. If you’re on social media or if you follow the Kindle Boards, you know there’s a new round of “Amazon is pulling author accounts without explaining why!”
I’ve seen some references to some author having his or her account yanked. Then others chime in and claim they know someone else it happened to. Now, all this might be true but when I see no supporting evidence, no names, not substance, I find myself wondering. When someone dares to comment that it looks like a dogpile or witch hunt, they’re slammed by others in the thread. After all, if someone said it happened, it did and Amazon is evil. Read more
Jul 15
At LibertyCon, Alma Boykin cheerfully referred to herself as the horrible warning, and the great example of what marketing mistakes not to make. Afterward, Peter got thanked by an audience member for all of us being open, honest, and forthcoming about mistakes… but could they hear more on that?
So, sure! Some of you will have seen this before, some of you may have missed it the first time, and some of you weren’t reading the site yet. You’ll note that now we’ve dragged Alma into posting here, for a broader social media presence. (Muahahahahaha!) Read more
My brain has been on overload the last couple of weeks as I published one book and started on another. Family obligations and scheduling conflicts added to the overload. So the other day I gave up, pulled out my Kindle Oasis and read. Just read. For more than 12 hours, I let my imagination go where several different authors took it. One book was traditionally published and several were indie books. Each had their strong and weak points. Each came to mind when I read a post and the accompanying comments on The Passive Voice yesterday.
PG quoted from a New York Times article telling us we need more diversity in romance novels. Read more
Let me cheerfully destroy an illusion for you: I’m not a super guru of blurbs. I just write more of them than the average writer, so with slightly more practice, I have gotten slightly better skills. (for values of… I think I’ve written around 40? that are on books on sale, not counting practice blurbs on books that are already published, or blurbs that were written as examples and authors then used the example to craft something else for their own.)
But there are times I write real stinkers, too. And there are times like yesterday afternoon, when I am still completely exhausted from cleaning the house and Day Job, on top of the exhaustion from LibertyCon, on top of the exhaustion and pain of the months of dental medical adventures, when it’s time to give up and ask for help. Read more
The most exciting day in an author’s life is also the most terrifying day. Release day. That day when you push the button, the virtual door opens and your “baby” races out the door into the world or readers. Will they love your baby? Or will they look at it, screw up their noses and say “ewwww!”? You hope for the former, pray it’s not the latter and promise yourself you won’t keep checking your rankings and sales numbers every hour on the hour and, if you’re like me, fail miserably at finding anything else to do.
Well, that’s me today. Fire from Ashes, the fourth (and next to the last in this story arc) book in the Honor & Duty series is now available for download. The print version, along with new print versions of the other books in the series, will be available in approximately two weeks. Read more
When I sat down in the much too early hours of the morning to write this post, I found myself at a loss. My brain is fried and the ability to come up with something new seemed beyond me. So, as I will often do when I’m unsure what to blog about, I started checking out a few writing-related sites to see what they had to say. Nothing really jumped out at me until I started scrolling through The Passive Voice. One article in particular caught my eye. I’m not going to actually discuss the article, so I’m not linking to it. However, the idea behind the article did set me to thinking — something that might be dangerous since I’m pre-coffee. Read more
accordingtohoyt
TXRed
Amanda
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Dorothy Grant
Jonathan LaForce
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Peter Grant
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