Today when it is pouring rain outside, I mull about what makes books special, which is very difficult to define. For the vast majority of people, the magic doesn’t lie at the sentence level. Good sentences simply communicate meaning. Once they do that (and they *must*), they add little extra…
Earnings by authors. Articles like this one that came across my feed today make me angry. You know the routine: a writers organisation reports on a survey of writers. It concludes that authors make [insert absurdly low income] per year and they couldn’t be expected to live off that amount….
As the world turns to dust, I finished narrating another backlist book! Yay! Only two more to go. All shall be revealed in November, which is when the last book covers out of ACX Royalty Share (don’t use this, grasshoppers, just don’t. Seven years is a verrrrrry long time). It’s…
As the world slowly turns to shit, I received another box of books to be sold as signed copies within Australia. I now have at least one copy of the entire Ambassador series. I sell them at $22 each which is $5 cheaper than the regular POD price, so if…
Today I want to talk about back matter, because it seems that far too many self-published authors don’t know and understand how super-critically important it is. So what is back matter? Simply put, it’s the stuff that comes *after* the main body of the book. Stuff like About the Author…
The Ebookaroo newsletter just went out. I also just made live the Kickstarter for Expendable Heroes. It’s available in ebook, audio, paperback and hardcover. Both the paperback and hardcover have colour illustrations as chapter headers. These are exclusive to the campaign. Even if you buy them later from my website,…
Let’s talk about how to give books away. Hang on, I can hear people say, giving books away is easy. People always want free books. Tell me how to sell them instead. Well, yes, yes, and no. Giving away books is not as easy as people might think. Making a…
OK, I’m going to call it: the days of the old indie author model are over. The days of selling purely on Amazon are over. It used to be that you could put up a book, choose KU or wide, advertise a bit and work your way up. That model…
King Charles. Seriously. Every now and then we post something on social media that blows up. It’s never about our books, of course. Seriously, if you’re on social media hoping that a “Buy my book” post of yours will go viral, STOP IT. No one wants your book spam. I’ll…
Sales are crap right now. “It’s the Amazon boycott!” people will say. “People don’t realise they’re not hurting Bezos, they’re hurting us poor indies!” I’m rather ho-humbug about this. Sales are crap *everywhere*. This is not unexpected. If you as much as point at people’s financial security, their jobs, their…
