If you’re an artist, author or entrepreneur, you’ve probably heard of Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art and more recently, Do The Work. His books have become manifestos for creatives because they rephrase the artistic life in terms of battle and violence, and help people overcome their fears, doubts and worries. According...
I’ve been noticing a trend for awhile. I’ve commented on it before. At first it was subtle. It began with the explosion of “Lifestyle Businesses” – a few guys quit their jobs and told everybody else, “Hey, you guys should quit your jobs too, it’s awesome!” They set themselves up as...
In most regards, I think authors and artists have a lot to learn from the young entrepreneur crowd chilling in San Francisco and Silicon valley. They are reckless overachievers and productivity chasers with their eyes on the end goal. They are developing “minimal viable products” to test out the market and then...
I stayed up late to watch the Alliance of Independent Authors’s Self-Publishing Advice Event with Mark Coker (founder of Smashwords). His advice for ebook publishing success resonated with me, because so little of it was about marketing your book. Indie authors perversely focus on marketing, social media, and “getting the word...
Caffeine is my drug of choice. While I highly recommend substances like mushrooms, Ayahuasca and marijuana every once in a while, as a radical rediscovery of your life’s purpose, most days all I want is to get more done. I drink a lot of green tea. I’d love to take more Modafinil but it gives The 3 secrets to book marketing, and...
When I was younger I was obsessed with personal enlightenment. I studied philosophy. I wanted to understand Everything. Mostly, being a highly emotional and overly sensitive person, I needed to process my emotional ups and downs, my broken hearts, and my metaphysical experiences (I’ll save those for another post). I studied theology and...
I’ve been reading a lot of books about creativity. All of them deal with the struggle of the creative life: art is WAR. Creativity takes effort. We have to fight through it. REAL art is about emotion, struggle, anxiety. Real art is about passion, True experience. Real art is Creating Something New – it’s a The 3 secrets to...
Given my decade of living overseas and moving around pretty regularly, I didn’t think relocating to Tainan (Taiwan), a city I’ve already lived in for many years, would eat up too much of my productivity time. It only took a day to find an apartment, another day to pick out and order furniture. What I The 3 secrets to book...
Growing up near Portland, Oregon, son of ex-hippies with New Age beliefs, I was raised to believe in following my passion. I read The Alchemist and Jonathan Livingston Seagull and the Celestine Prophecy. Way before The Secret brought positive intention and manifesting desires to everyone, I stewed in the Northwestern liberalism that demanded I...
Your blog thrives on content. If you have an online business of any kind (including promoting your art or writing), you need fresh content so that Google, and potential fans, can find you. But writing it all yourself is tiresome and you have to think of new ideas and catchy headlines, and hiring someone to The 3 secrets to book marketing...
Websites for self-publishing authors can be divided into two camps. 1) Those offering authors services They write posts to get you to buy their book formatting, book conversion, book covers, author websites, book marketing, etc. 2) Blogs run by indie authors themselves These are full of tips and tricks and useful content. They teach you The...
I always tell authors creating a book that they can layout their interior book format in Word, and do a pretty good job, and most people won’t be able to tell the difference. Except, it’s tricky to learn how to do a good job, put everything in the right place. It’s also common and general The 3 secrets to book marketing...
