Creativindie Get paid well for the creative work you love to do.

If you’re thinking about becoming a writer, you might be asking yourself whether you’re “Good Enough” to go professional. The short answer is YES, because quality doesn’t matter. Let me explain: Readers read for content, not quality.  Yes, it needs to be clean and edited enough not to be distracting. I shoot for less than 1 typo in 10,000 words …

We spent the last two weeks in Castle Rappottenstein, Austria. It’s hard for either words or pictures to do the experience justice, so in the post I’ll also share some of the less obvious benefits of hosting writing retreats in castles. But first, here’s a video tour with some last minute Nanowrimo tips.   I don’t always do Nanowrimo, and …

We’ve been in Burg Rappottenstein for a few days and we love it. It’s an enormous 12th century fortress; it’s comfortable and we’re all getting a lot of writing done. We’ll make a video soon and will share it with the #nanowrimo community, but for now here are some pictures and an introduction to my guests.     Guestlist Jay …

  What’s Pronoun and what does it matter? Today was supposed to be the day I share testimonials from students and start wrapping up my course launch – but instead it’s important to comment on what’s going on with Pronoun. If you haven’t heard of Pronoun yet, it’s an ebook distribution platform like Smashwords and Draft2Digital. It’s not perfect, but …

This week I’m launching my new program, Guerrilla Publishing – which I’ve built over the last year while travelling full-time. I made a free “Bookselling Bootcamp” challenge while staying at the 5 star Regent Hotel Montenegro (I wanted to be comfortable going into Nanowrimo, and I also did a 2-week sugar fast). But I realized I hadn’t published anything on my …

  Porto and Harry Potter This month we’ve been travelling through Portugal, seeking out JK Rowling’s favorite writing spots for inspiration. Rowling started planning Harry Potter in Porto, and it’s easy to see the connection. The university students wear black capes, and Porto is home to the “most beautiful bookstore in the world” – Livraria Lello. You may not know this, …

Last week I got the chance to chat with literary agent David Fulgate. I always appreciate David’s advice on publishing because, even though he makes his living representing traditionally published authors, he recognizes that in some cases it’s better for authors to self-publish. The insight I gained from him a few years ago was this: Unless you’re getting an advance of 100K …

There are some interesting discussions that are happening right now. I’m going to massively paraphrase the situation as I understand it, without naming any of the main players involved.     The story goes like this: Some people are cheating by uploading large collections of recycled content and getting people to click through to the end of the book, or …

UPDATE: Amazon got rid of Createspace altogether, so KDP print is your only option now. Sometimes it will flag things for issues, several times, but if you keep uploading it, the document might get approved (still buggy, as of 2019). Also, the cover generator rounds to the nearest 10th page I think, so it’s not as accurate as other tools. Also, …

Last night I searched for how to fix a boring book, because I was stuck and frustrated. I’ve been procrastinating for weeks and just couldn’t get into the flow… which is totally normal when you’re in the middle of the book and realize you don’t have enough story to get to the end. I was inspired by Chuck Wendig’s article, …