Other Stuff

This week I published a side project – a book I hadn’t planned to write but developed in under 1 month – as a way to test out some things. I was motivated to write it because a group of my Facebook friends were putting a joint promotion of productivity and time-management titles. I didn’t have one of those, but …

I made ebooks for a client recently – the ebooks came out at 15mb. I’ve never paid much attention to file size, but she pointed out that, if you are participating in Amazon’s 70% royalty option, they charge a fee per MB every time your book is downloaded – right now in the US it’s $0.15 per MB. Check the …

For a lot of authors, “book marketing” still means something like advertising or publicity. In other words, you put something in front of people that tells them about the book, and that they should go buy it. Here’s why that doesn’t work: People need repetition before they notice, then take action. So they’ll need to see whatever it is you’re …

I’m at the airport in Houston, waiting for my connecting flight back to Portland (after spending a few days talking about book marketing in Cleveland). Since I can’t get much work done on the road, I just watched the new Houdini mini-series starring Adrien Brody. It shows Houdini in a mostly sympathetic light: he’s a struggling self-starter, and entrepreneur, a …

It’s 4:54am in Cleveland, and I can’t sleep. I elected to stay in a youth hostel and it’s quite nice, but my sole roommate has been coughing all night like he has some 18th century affliction. I had hoped to get a solid night’s sleep but now I’m in the common area, in the dark, alone with my thoughts. I’m …

I’m at a writing conference, and during just about every session, authors keep asking the same questions. And they aren’t looking for answers. They are looking for permission not to give a damn about their readers. They ask stuff like “I know I’m supposed to use Facebook/Twitter… but do I have to?” They say stuff like “I just want to …

A million dollars is not a lot of money. It sounds big, but it can be broken down. Viewing it in smaller numbers makes it easier to wrap your head around how you can generate that amount. For example, a million dollars is only 1000 people giving you $1000 dollars. 1000 x 1000 = 1,000,000 Let’s say you run a …

I spent the last four days in Portland attending the World Domination Summit (a congregation of people living remarkable lives in a conventional world). It’s my second time – immediately after the first one I attended (2013) I bought tickets for myself and my mother to return this year. Since I wrote a little about my experiences last year, I …

I scouted out Tattoo parlors today, determined to get a tattoo and catch up in the Unconventional Race (a scavenger hunt activity) but ran out of time before the Portland Spirit Cruise. I was going to post a long, brilliant, witty and insightful post about taking big risks, always choosing to participate, and why getting a tattoo just to win …

Recently this blog wandered into uncharted territory. I thought I knew something about blogging from a handful of earlier blogging failures. I had a plan and knew a lot about how to do things the right way, some of which I’ve implemented into Creativindie. But because it’s not my main business or a source of revenue, I’ve also been kind …