This has been an interesting week for me. It’s snowing in Oregon, I’m nostalgic; Obama just gave his final speech. The future is uncertain but we need to decide the world we want to live in and take action to make it a reality. 2016 was a year of big wins and first for
I really thought I was going to make it this time. I put my book Guerrilla Publishing up for preorder a few months ago but haven’t had time to work on it. But I pulled things together in the last few days, was *mostly* finished editing it, and tried to upload it with 4 minutes
This is my first year of publishing fiction – so I concentrated on building a big list and was very careful with what I shared. However, now that I’m focused on my books generating income, I’m prepared to promote other (talented) authors in my genre to my list, in exchange with them promoting my books
Advertising doesn’t work that well anymore. People resent it. Or, maybe that’s not exactly true, but let’s say conversion is down. For many businesses, advertising doesn’t work as well as it used to. People want truer, more authentic experiences. So the best way to reach customers is to put a piece of content into the...
It’s already 2017. I didn’t do a “yearly wrapup” for 2016 like I do sometimes. The last month of 2016 flew by and I still feel overwhelmed with projects. I felt like 2016 was a lot of waiting and working, without seeing major results. My income went way down, as I spent most of the year
This is an interview with indie author Chris Fox, a fantasy novelist and YouTuber who has been killing it for years and is a self-publishing legend. It’s part of an online Q&A we did on Facebook, and I’ve reposted the answers here so they can help more indie authors. There’s a lot of valuable content
Working with writers, one issue pops up often – authors don’t know which of their three dozen book ideas they should start working on. Or they get distracted and want to be working on a new one before finishing the old one. So they often ask, How do I know which book idea will be the
I’ve been meaning to share a book launch checklist for months (years?) but this question popped up in one of my private Facebook groups and I thought I should answer. I am releasing a book soon but still don’t have the comprehensive “what that should entail” list. I’ve been starting to line up advance reviews,
One way to find more reviewers for your book is to look at what’s selling in your genre, see who has reviewed them, and then reach out to those people. When I started publishing fiction I did my own research. It’s easy: you just go through all the reviews, and copy down any contact information.
In one of my private Facebook groups, an author is asking whether he should change his author photo and use initials for his author name – to be more gender neutral. His books aren’t selling as well as he’d like and he’s wondering if this will help. If your books aren’t selling, first you need to
It’s December, and I’m on a cruise ship cruising the Atlantic (with surprisingly good wifi). We’ve been in Europe three months and are heading back to the Americas. We left from the Canary Islands, the night sea is dark and the steam from the boat is white. There’s a very Titanic feel. I’m hoping to
Years of publishing has taught me that a book written and published quickly can be just as good (or better) than one that took ten years to polish. Even though I have a PhD in Literature and spent nearly a decade as a book editor, I’ve seen far too many beautifully edited books fail; I’ve
