Other Stuff

I’m up to almost 10,000 signups on my email list – that’s a hefty amount, worthy of celebration. Except that, using MailChimp, I’m paying $80 a month, or $960 a year. I only send emails once a month or so, when I’ve finished some big project worthy of sharing or have a new book out. Also, so far I’ve been …

This weekend Portland will be taken over by around 3000 people leading unconventional lifestyles for the 4th annual World Domination Summit. If you’re attending, you may want to read my 8 Tips on Preparing for WDS. The official WDS website has lots of information about the schedule, activities and meetup, but my guess is more than half of the attendees …

You need to share interesting, valuable content on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and other social media sites. Pictures get liked, shared and retweeted more than any other content. But where can you find awesome pictures that are relevant to authors that you can share to gain more followers? Right here! I’m going through my book, Write, Format, Publish, Promote and using …

If you’ve read any of my articles on book cover design, you already know I don’t agree with the standard rules most indie authors keep reciting. They say stuff like: use bright, bold colors use big, clear fonts that can be read even as a thumbnail don’t use white covers because they disappear on Amazon Today I’d like to tackle …

I’ve used PayPal for about a decade, and since all my businesses are online, I figure I’ve paid about $20,000 in PayPal fees. Recently I opened a new account for my wife, linked to her bank account in Taiwan. It worked fine for a little while, then Taiwan decided it couldn’t let PayPal accounts be linked to just any bank …

This past month I’ve been thinking big and buying up online platforms related to publishing and book design. My little blog gets some traffic, and my book cover design business is doing fine – I just want to be a bigger player. A couple weeks ago I found a little blog network for indie authors – it had a website …

This is a guest post from my friend Sean, who’s an expert on writing books by dictation. I asked him to send me some more information, since using dictation to write books is potentially much faster and may help avoid writer’s block. Simply put, Tonguenastics™ harnesses the power of your tongue and the spoken word instead of traditional typing to …

I’ve written before on the cult of failure; but in case you’re new here, let me lay it out: The “follow your passion” paradigm leads some entrepreneurs to success, but most artists and authors to failure. Passion may be a necessarily ingredient IF you have a strong business idea and a product. But if all you have is passion, and …

You’re writing a book. You want to make sure you do the marketing part right so people know about it, buy it and read it (so that they can rave and tell their friends about it). You know having a “Social Media Strategy” is important, so you might be thinking about setting up a special Facebook page for your book …

A lot of indie publishing gurus talk about being an Authorpreneur or Entreprenauthor – basically referring to the importance of treating your writing and publishing as a business. But something real entrepreneurs are very familiar with is the guy going through the motions of business without actually doing anything. Trying to act like a ‘real business’ and getting everything done …