Other Stuff

  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 me, but a lot of …

  RESULTS: The winner is Lauren Smith, who writes historical romance (and an upcoming dragon shifter). Thanks everyone for entering, I’ll link to your articles and try to drive some traffic. I plan to do more writing contests like this in the future!   For the past 10 years I’ve been helping writers publish and promote their books. While I’m …

There are some benefits to doing preorders on Kindle, but the main drawback is you can’t get reviews posted on a preorder book until after it’s live. Or can you? Actually there’s a way around this: Set up the book on Createspace also. Publish it to Amazon. But then, upload a new interior file and don’t approve it. The print book …

Recently on Facebook some virtual assistants (VAs) and personal assistants (PAs) were asking about how to get more work, or what they could do to grow their business. I’ve also talked a lot about using VAs, and have one right now, though I usually haven’t been good about having a clear strategy of things to do that will actually help …

I started publishing fiction this year, and I’m still just getting my feet wet. After the first 3 months in KDP, and after a bunch of work, effort, time and money spent promoting my book launches, I’ve gotten really lazy (in my defense I was finishing my PhD) and I wanted an easier way to reach readers. This was actually …

For several years I’ve been thinking about holding writing retreats or author-training events in beautiful, inspiring locations around the world. Now that I’m finally finished with my PhD (wahoo!) I’m ready to get started. Ideally I would sell spaces and split amazing AirBnB rentals, to at least pay for my own costs -and I might do that later as well …

Recently I wrote a post about how it doesn’t make sense for me to market your books for you (or even hire virtual assistants to help you do it). But that doesn’t mean VA’s aren’t crazy useful, if you hire your own. Authors always complain about book marketing because they just want to focus on their writing; and it’s true, …

All rules are meant to be broken, and I won’t swear that I never use these fonts (I even included some in my genre-based lists of fonts you CAN use). But you can only break the rules if you learn them first. If you’re not a designer, steering clear of these overused (and gag-worthy) fonts is the safer bet. I …

Today someone involved with a prestigious writing retreat requested to join my Facebook group, then immediately spammed us with a last chance offer to join an expensive online writing course. Technically, she was offering something that could have appealed to writers, so I felt bad for deleting the post, but on the other hand… you don’t join a Facebook group …

When I talk about what authors or artists need to do to sell their work and earn more money, a common response is “It’s not about the money for me. I’m in it for the joy of creating.” This is what I hear: “I don’t care if anyone likes my work.” A lot of creative people will say they agree …