A couple years ago, I told people I planned to write fiction, and give away a bunch of short, free books, to see which performed the best. Now that I’ve actually put some out, though not exactly as intended, I’m able to start seeing some interesting things happen. Firstly, though all are pretty similar, in pretty similar categories, with similar …

I started publishing fiction this year, and I’m still just getting my feet wet. After the first 3 months in KDP, and after a bunch of work, effort, time and money spent promoting my book launches, I’ve gotten really lazy (in my defense I was finishing my PhD) and I wanted an easier way to reach readers. This was actually …

For several years I’ve been thinking about holding writing retreats or author-training events in beautiful, inspiring locations around the world. Now that I’m finally finished with my PhD (wahoo!) I’m ready to get started. Ideally I would sell spaces and split amazing AirBnB rentals, to at least pay for my own costs -and I might do that later as well …

I’m not a big believer in print marketing materials, nor writing/author conferences (to promote your books) because: It’s a lot of time, money and effort and requires you to manually hand out your materials (and usually to other authors, not readers!) There are much better ways to market books, for much less money. I’ve been to lots of writing conferences …

I saw this infographic today, made by Alexi Maxim Russell, about the Six Types of Writers. Great, I thought – I like cute and fun online Facebook tests about writers that momentarily distract me from the challenges of writing. I was asked, “Which one are you, so I searched.” Here’s the problem, these aren’t the six types of writers, these …

So my books are doing pretty good; I’ve moved Shearwater to permafree and got over 5,000 downloads this month. But that made me realize I was probably missing a MAJOR opportunity to connect with those readers, so I checked my back copy (the material at the end of my book) and found it seriously wanting. I also realized, most of …

When I finish my PhD, I’ll finally be able to use my love of research to write about truly interesting things. One my next projects will be “Paid to Create” – which, originally was going to simply be about how to make money with your creativity, kind of a practical manifesto for this blog. However I’m realizing that won’t satisfy …

I see a lot of authors asking for feedback between a few cover design choices. This always has mixed results, since people on Facebook don’t know anything about book cover design, they probably aren’t your target market, they probably aren’t ideal readers of your genre, and they aren’t designers. So what inevitably happens is, authors think, “The results are pretty …

In this post I’m going to share some things that are on my mind, based on my mood, given my current state of media consumption. Let me preface this by saying I just watched The Danish Girl, which was excellent, and I’ve been researching for my PhD thesis, which makes me feel both the brevity of life and the importance …

Recently I wrote a post about how it doesn’t make sense for me to market your books for you (or even hire virtual assistants to help you do it). But that doesn’t mean VA’s aren’t crazy useful, if you hire your own. Authors always complain about book marketing because they just want to focus on their writing; and it’s true, …