July 2011
28 posts
8 tags
Consistency Accomplishes the Impossible
Considering the lesson of the Aesop fable, The Tortoise and the Hare, I found that the trait of consistency really is a winner. With consistency, a writer moves toward that book contract or best seller list, despite backsets and dry spells.
Although I never gave up, I treated my career like the hare, running full speed and allowing distractions to get me off course. This resulted in a string...
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My novel, "Cicada," is getting some great customer...
Check it out!
“Cicada” at Amazon
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Dishing it up with Robert Browne
Today I’m thrilled to be dishing it up with thriller writer extraordinaire Robert Browne. Robert is an AMPAS Nicholl Award-winning screenwriter who ran screaming from the movie industry and jumped into writing novels. His first novel, KISS HER GOODBYE, was recently produced in Chicago as a pilot for a CBS Television series tentatively titled THE LINE, by Sony Pictures and Timberman/Beverly ...
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Looking for a Great Place for Book Reviews?
Check out Teen Book Reviewer’s YouTube channel. He’s a terrific book reviewer and gives very thoughtful and insightful reviews. :-)
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How 3,000 Copies of My Book Found Their Way from...
The story of how Wild Child, one of my first novels, was published is almost as wild as the story itself. The idea for the book came to me in a dream. I started madly writing it down the next morning, and couldn’t stop. In 40 days of frenzied typing at the keyboard, I finished the entire book. The first literary agent I sent it to was Laura Rennert, at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency in...
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Borders Failure Is a Small Part of Bigger...
Today I was on NPR’s Morning Edition, offering my take on the Borders’ liquidation. Click here to listen. Many of my colleagues insist Borders’ failure had nothing to do with e-books. Yes, bad management played a big role here. Borders has been a weak player for years, and it’s survival of the fittest out there. But even Barnes & Noble is scaling back their...
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The Law of Supply and Demand and the Increase in...
I began offering Kindle versions of some of my books when CreateSpace initially offered their Kindle Conversion service for the low price of $69. This service is for books already published using CreateSpace so my lone book with Lightning Source had to be converted by another service. I choose to use eBook Architects for that project and while it cost more, the results were excellent and I...
I
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My novel, "Cicada," is now available at Barnes &...
Cicada at Barnes & Noble
Cicada at Smashwords
See the book trailer here…
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My novel, "Cicada", is now available on Amazon!
I’m so excited to share with you all that my novel, Cicada, is now available for purchase as an e-book here on Amazon! Paperbacks will be available for purchase next week! :-)
If you haven’t had a chance to view the book trailer, you can find it here…
Thank you! :-)
This Tumblr is My Last Horcrux...
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Self-Published in Seattle
If anyone is still unconvinced that attitudes toward self-publishing have changed, an informal meeting with a group of Amazon CreateSpace authors during BookExpo in May offered still more evidence. The three authors we encountered at the CreateSpace booth showed that whether you’re a businessman looking to document your entrepreneurial history, an artist investigating a new medium, or a...
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Win the Ultimate ePublishing Package!
BookBaby is hosting an e-publishing package giveaway!
Go here to enter the sweepstakes.
Good luck!
5 tags
Dynamic Pricing: What it is, and What it isn't
Dynamic pricing is a buzz-phrase making the rounds of publishers at the moment as they begin to get their arms around the opportunities inherent in the agency model. They are aware that Amazon does a lot of pricing automated by algorithms and some of the more creative and tech-minded thinkers are wondering if publishers need to employ technology in a similar way.
Read the rest of the article...
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Writer's Digest Competitions!
Writer’s Digest sponsors several writing competitions annually. To read more about their competitions, click here…
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Bestseller Karin Slaughter: 6 Things You Should...
Following the debut author breakfast at ThrillerFest, bestseller Karin Slaughter (Fallen) took to the stage and delivered her trademark brand of frank, useful (and often hilarious) publishing advice. Here are six stirring truths about the publishing world from her talk.
Article by Zachary Petit
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The Tsunami of Crap
Some people believe the ease of self-publishing means that millions of wannabe writers will flood the market with their crummy ebooks, and the good authors will get lost in the morass, and then family values will go unprotected and the economy will collapse and the world will crash into the sun and puppies and kittens by the truckload will die horrible, screaming deaths. Or something like...
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Spam Clogging Amazon's Kindle Self-Publishing
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Spam has hit the Kindle, clogging the online bookstore of the top-selling eReader with material that is far from being book worthy and threatening to undermine Amazon.com Inc’s publishing foray.
Thousands of digital books, called ebooks, are being published through Amazon’s self-publishing system each month. Many are not written in the traditional sense.
...
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The Three Planks of Your Author Platform
The word “platform” became forever linked to the word “author” for many of us when the world of Web 2.0 became a part of our everyday existence. Publishers, marketing experts, and publicists introduced us to the concept of the author platform. In short, it is all the elements used by authors to reach the book-buying public. It’s the foundation of your brand. Before the internet, platforms...
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Update on the Process of Publication of "Cicada"!
Tonight I’m excited to give everyone an update on where I am with the publication of my Young Adult novel, Cicada. Late this afternoon, I got an email from my book designer with two files attached of the digital version of my book…one for Nook and one for Kindle. Cicada will also be available in print, which I’m really excited about—not only because it makes the novel...
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Publetariat Dispatch: How to Sell More Books on...
In today’s Publetariat Dispatch, Savvy Book Marketer Dana Lynn Smith shares tips for raising your book’s visibility on Amazon.
A good way to sell more books on Amazon is to increase your book’s visibility in the Amazon.com search results.
Click here to read how to increase your book sales on Amazon…
Article by Dana Lynn Smith
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Publetariat Dispatch: E-book Self-Publishing...
In today’s Publetariat Dispatch, indie author LJ Sellers offers an overview of options for DIY ebook publishing.
For the second week in a row, Publetariat member L.J. Sellers garners a featured article spot for a post from her member blog. This week, L.J. offers a survey of ebook self-publishing options.
Read the rest here…
Article by L.J. Sellers
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Happy Independence Day, Peeps! (Click for... →
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Indie Author Breaks the Million-Sold Mark
I usually ignore the Kindle Newsletter, which is delivered about once a month to my e-mail. I’m glad I checked it today, because the news is pretty great for self-published authors. According to Amazon, self-published author John Locke just hit the million-sold-mark. “As of June 19th, John Locke has sold 1,010,370 Kindle books using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). The Kindle...
WatchWanna see my playlist for “Firefly”? These are the song that give me inspiration while writing the sequel to “Cicada”.
:-)
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Attack of the Self-Publishing Memes!: A Guest Post...
Barry Eisler has posted a number of smart comments on this topic here and on a few other blogs, too, and I asked him if he’d mind pulling them together in a single post. It was either that or another online conversation, and since we can’t seem to do those in under 10,000 words and both have books to finish, this seemed the better bet.
Read the entire article here…
Post by...
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CreateSpace: Free Webinar, "An Introduction to...
What factors are important to you when deciding how and where to purchase an ISBN? What are the advantages of a free CreateSpace ISBN over purchasable options? In this webinar, CreateSpace and special guest Rebecca Albani from R.R. Bowker will answer those questions and more. You’ll learn what ISBNs are and why they’re important for your book, plus we’ll also discuss where U.S. based authors...
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Novel Rejected? There's an E-book Gold Rush!
Sonoma, Calif. — In the winter of 2010, the cheerfully effervescent romance novelist Nyree Belleville suffered the same fate as many a scribe — she was dropped by her publisher. The most any of her 12 spicy romances, penned under the name Bella Andre, had earned was $21,000.
She was, in her Cali-girl vocabulary, “bummed.” She was 36. She had two young children, a husband and a little house...
