Where Normal Need Not Apply
Branding and goal planning. Sample topics: deciding on your goals and priorities, branding issues, entrepreneurship, platform building and ownership, series vs. stand-alone stories, etc.
No, that’s not a rhetorical or trick question. Recent events in the publishing industry have left me asking that as a serious point of confusion and discouragement. I know this is an ongoing complaint about the state of literature. Over a century ago, people complained about penny dreadfuls and dime novels, and […]
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We’ve all seen the Google Friend Connect (GFC) widgets on websites and blogs we visit. Some sites have asked us to join GFC to qualify for a contest or giveaway. On our own blogs, we enjoy seeing the avatars of our readers (and the numbers of our “members” go up). […]
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Last week, we had a great discussion in the comments about whether we call ourselves writers or authors. In general, we agreed that while we don’t judge others by what they call themselves, we each have our reasons for what we call ourselves. Many echoed the idea that we want […]
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*sigh* It’s happened again. An author has insulted other authors and a huge percentage of readers. Why do people do this? Between social media, the interrelationships of the publishing industry, and the permanent nature of the internet, news of negativity travels far and wide. Sure, we can’t spout unicorns and […]
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Recently, the Awesome-Dipped-in-Glitter (TM) Kristen Lamb pointed out that “aspiring is for pansies.” We are not aspiring writers. Aspiring: to have a plan, desire, or hope for something. Writer: a person who writes. If we put those together, that means an aspiring writer is a person who plans, desires, or hopes […]
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The comments of my last post led to a great conversation about how not having a business mindset will likely hurt authors. However, I didn’t say writers absolutely, positively must be business-minded. I don’t think writers without an entrepreneurial spirit or business sense are doomed. The truth is that we can’t be good at everything. We all have […]
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Have you ever visited a restaurant where the food was fantastic, but the service was atrocious? I’ve known several places like that. People who love to cook might dream for years about opening their own place—and then once they do, the restaurant fails. Why? Because the skill of being a […]
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This isn’t going to be one of those “let’s bash traditional publishing/self-publishing” posts. There are still too many of those opinions on both sides, and I don’t want any part of that. Two people I respect blogged recently about publishing and kool-aid. Agent Janet Reid posted about the ten things authors […]
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I’m excited to share today’s guest post with you because in addition to being a lovely person, Jody Hedlund runs a fantastic blog for writers. As if that wasn’t enough, she’s also graciously arranged for a book giveaway of her latest release, The Doctor’s Lady (see bottom of post for details). Jody writes historical […]
Many writers, especially new ones, talk about how they write for themselves. When we first start out, we might not know if we’ll even be able to finish the project, so it makes sense that we’re writing for ourselves. We want to get this story out of our head. We want to […]
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