Several weeks ago, we discussed why authors shouldn’t worry about the ebook versus print debate but should instead focus on their readers’ online versus offline buying habits. Shortly after that post, I visited my local Barnes & Noble bookstore, a beautiful two-story building complete with an escalator. I love that place. But […]
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Last time, we discussed how our decision about which method we go with for publishing should focus more on our readers’ online versus offline buying habits than on their preference for ebook versus print formats. And we bemoaned the fact that those numbers are hard to come by. But let’s […]
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The Keynote Address at this year’s Romance Writers of America (RWA) Annual Conference was unusual. Instead of sharing an inspirational or funny story about her trudge to success, Stephanie Laurens essentially gave a lunchtime workshop about the publishing industry, complete with a PowerPoint presentation. Some were disappointed or bored and left early. […]
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The last couple of posts have been about beta reading, beta readers, and authors helping each other. I love positive, uplifting conversations like that. But the comments brought up an important point: Sometimes the relationships we have with other writers in our circle aren’t all unicorns and rainbows. Sometimes a […]
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It’s tempting to put all our effort into a big debut or breakout book. It’s natural to want our work to make a big splash and gain attention. We might think that if we break out, we’ll have it made. But there’s a dark side to that approach, especially if […]
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*Shh* Be very, very quiet. We’re hunting agents. (Sorry, with that picture, I couldn’t resist the Bugs Bunny reference. *smile*) Many—if not most—writers want to find an agent at some point in their writing career. Even in this age of self-publishing, writers still want agents to help them with foreign […]
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In the world of traditional publishing, if errors make it through the editing process for a book, authors (and their readers) are stuck. A lucky few authors are able to get egregious mistakes like wrong character names or missing paragraphs fixed in later print runs, but most of time, errors […]
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I’m excited to share today’s guest post by author Roz Morris. After ghostwriting many bestselling books, Roz recently self-published My Memories of a Future Life, her first novel under her own name. Roz’s decision to self-publish came about partly because this novel doesn’t fit into normal genre boxes. However, even as […]
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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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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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