Another year has gone by. I did one of these posts last year, and thought it would be fun to update it. Why? Several reasons: Not all self-publishers are Hugh Howey or Bella Andre or any of the other names that you’ll find in the top of various genres. In …
Inspired by others on the web who have done so, I’m going to do a numbers post. Mainly for reference, but also to show people what the income of a no-name self-publishing writer with moderate success looks like. Just to give some datapoints other than the millions reportedly made by …
Worldbuilding opinion has it that if you create a situation where aliens come to Earth, they must be ‘aggressive’. I’ve thought about this a long time in terms of population ecology (which is what I was trained to do) and have come to the conclusion that yes, this is correct, …
If you’ve followed me around for a bit, either here or in real life, you will know that I’m not in favour of the blanket “get your book edited” advice that’s being given to many-a beginning writer who is thinking about self-publishing. Make no mistake. I think editors do great …
The other day, may daughter finally bought an ereader. It’s a bit sad that my kids wanted to read “real” books long after I’d gone digital, but the physical size of a particular book that she wanted to read on public transport finally won her over. Anyway, having read said …
Looking at the future in an author’s career, the most important thing you can do is to weatherproof your sales. Weatherproofing your sales is: Diversification Taking control of your own audience Building an innate level of sales that does not rely on the vagaries of retail site algorithms In the …
Writers, especially when they don’t see immediate success, often get told “It’s a marathon, not a sprint!” and this statement often leads to a discussion at least as heated as whether quality and speed are mutually exclusive or whether there needs to be one or two spaces after a full …
Calling a Rabbit a Smeerp is one of the items listed in the the Turkey City Lexicon in the section about worldbuilding in science fiction and fantasy. It is phrased in terms of making reading unnecessarily hard for readers by adding “unnecessary” strange names for the sole purpose of ramping …
I get asked quite a lot of questions by people who want to self-publish but have no idea where to begin. Here is a list of some points to consider: 1. Educate yourself. No, don’t google “self-publishing” because you’ll come up with a lot of mis-information spread by people who …
People are constantly surprised to hear that Amazon doesn’t take up the lion’s share of my sales. They often ask how to get sales on those other platforms. Of course I do not have the definitive answers, but here are some thoughts about selling on other platforms. It’s a big …
