Publishing Process

We have been talking about the process we use for publishing, over at Raconteur Press, as we streamline it and work in having more than one person doing it all. Which is very interesting, and actually relevant to the Indie authors as well. For myself, having done this for years, I hadn't really sat down... Continue Reading →

The Blurb from the Abyss

[--Pam Uphoff--] Blurbs. The bane of many an author’s existence. They aren’t a brief synopsis, they’re a teaser. A hook. Something to get the potential reader to at least “look inside” if not just hit the buy now button. I'm pretty bad at them. So I just put up a book, with my usual last... Continue Reading →

My, How Time has Flown!

Alma T. C. Boykin No, not the year 2022, although I've got mixed emotions about seeing it leave. It wasn't the best of years for me personally, but it was much, much better than several that come to mind. I was thinking about the ten years since I released my first fiction book, A Cat... Continue Reading →

Re-release me, let me go

I really always thought that was regrease me, let me glow... Today's prompt from wordpress was 'Who do you envy?' My thought at the moment would be people who don't have to play the waiting game for, it seems, everything going. I've never been much good at waiting, and it was always the trad author's... Continue Reading →

Open for business, and an invitation

This first Friday has come at a good time, as I'm about 30 pages from clearing the last manuscript in my queue. So if anybody has a manuscript that's all but ready for publication, and wants to avail themselves of Margaret's Volunteer Copyediting and Proofreading services, contact me at margaretball7 at gmail dot com. The... Continue Reading →

Proofreading open again

My first venture into volunteer proofreading has been very rewarding. It’s been great to see new writers coming up whose careers I can follow; I’m getting a great list of new and forthcoming works to read. And I’ve been especially happy to see a lot of original takes on fantasy and science fiction themes. No... Continue Reading →

The time has come

'The walrus said, to speak of many things, of shoes, of ships, of sealing wax, of cabbages and kings...' It is entirely possible to confuse the latter two, so it is probably wise to avoid both because regicide is generally considered socially acceptable but regiphagy can give you gas, just like cabbages... eh. forgive me.... Continue Reading →

Life of an Indie Author

I've restarted the weekly live chats, and I am contemplating doing readings. Not live readings, but prerecorded teasers of older works, or upcoming ones. I have no idea whether either of those will lead to sales, but that's really not the point of the weekly chats. My son, who has been trying to help me... Continue Reading →

Who are the real gatekeepers?

(This post originally appeared October 2013. While some of the players have changed, the basic premise still remains. There are still those out there who believe indie authors are hacks--at best--who haven't struggled hard enough to earn the title of "author".) Over the last couple of days, I've seen a number of posts by authors... Continue Reading →

Reality Check

Track sales, look for trends, they said. Shudder. But I did it anyway, and the take away is pretty straight forward. Being a visual type, I graphed it. This is the total sales in the first two months after it was published, in the order the books were published.   The old series (black line)... Continue Reading →

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