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 …
Cora Buhlert tweeted a link to a very interesting article in the German magazine Spiegel Online. The article is in German, but I found an English article about the German article, with some of its own conclusions. This is not a translation, rather a commentary. Unlike the English article, I’m …
Anyone who knows me will also know that I’m not a great fan of romance. I’ve read a good deal of it (eons ago) and while I don’t hate reading it, I find other genres much more interesting. But I think to be able to write contemporary romance is a …
I’ve reached the goal of having a decent stable of books. Having series with good presentation (cover, blurb, sample) is important. Few people start selling out the gate with just one book, so I wrote some series. This is still ongoing. It was my aim this year to spend more …
I’ve been selling books at conventions as bookseller on and off for many years. In the pre-ebook age, this meant lugging heavy books around, sending them via mail to a distant convention, and even finagling them, like 100kg worth, onto commercial flights without paying for freight. I’ve flown internationally with …
