Should you advertise your book? Probably not. I’ve never been a big supporter of running ads to my books because: A) It’s easy to spend lots of money without seeing results. B) I didn’t think it would work on stand-alone novels. Most of the people making serious money with ads have a completed series –
A day or two ago I made a self-publishing video and went down the rabbit hole of publishing options and why NOT to use ingramspark to publishing your book. Then today I got this email: I heard that IngramSpark is an aggregator distributing novels at different platforms like Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble Press… I
This week I’ve been revising some old posts, and generally feeling down about everything. Most of the time, I’m just complaining about expensive publishing solutions and urging authors to take matters into their old hands. But then a potential client told me he was in talks with a (vanity) publisher and wanted to get my
I ended 2021 with some weird posts about the general apathy most people are feeling towards the new year. We’ve been burned before. Maintaining hope for positive change in the face of practical concerns takes more effort. One of my favorite phrases, from Moby Dick, is the call to “Lower the conceit of attainable felicity.”
I’m watching “Genius” on the National Geographic channel; a dramatic representation of the life of Einstein. It’s fun. Einstein is portrayed as the kind of crazy, self-destructive genius we love to watch. He fights with teachers. He’s careless with women; both charming and confident but casually distant about...
I started this post years ago as a series of rough notes, and I’m attempting today to make it make sense, because I think the topic is crucial, even if I can’t explain it as clearly as I’d like. It started from a presentation on discontent given by Chris Guillebeau. If only X, I’ll be
Matrix 4: Resurrections doesn’t deserve a movie review, for many reasons: it’s not that interesting, or enjoyable – almost as if it’s consciously and deliberately avoiding the point of the cinematic experience as entertainment. It is not entertaining. Luckily my wife and I were the only ones in the theatre so we could...
A few years ago I was in Bali when I got pitched a full-time, $200K/year job in New York managing a creative team to turn a book into a video game. The author had won seed funding and had money to burn, but no idea how to make it work in reality; and he knew
Nearly 2 decades ago, only a few streets over from where I live now in Tainan, Taiwan, I had a panic attack about my future. What will I do when I’m OLD. What am I building and creating that will actually last; rather than all my efforts consumed in fire. I could argue, looking back,
I don’t think it’s unusual for anybody to feel like the last two years haven’t been great. I generally agree with the sentiment, if all you’re doing is surviving, that’s enough. I also don’t think we always need to productivize our creativity. There’s a perversion in the modern compulsion to Always Be...
I feel like I’ve discussed this ad nauseum, but it was probably tucked into some broader concepts and it’s a HUGE issue. So I wanted to share a very relevant, crucial bit of advice that might make everything easier. What’s backstory? Backstory is usually the deeper, poignant scenes that reveal character motivations. A lot of...
FIRST CHAPTER MISTAKES What follows are some insights I’ve collected, after providing feedback on hundreds of first drafts. I’ve tried to only share general examples that I notice frequently in the majority of inexperienced manuscripts. There is nothing implicitly or inherently wrong with any of these: they are simple, common...
