Bestselling horror writers James Thorn asked for some design feedback on a logo he’s making. Something kind of scary, like this one from American Horror Story. This was his first attempt: Not bad, I can see what he’s going for. In general, bevel and inner shadow should be avoided. They look cool and 3D,
I’ve written a lot about book marketing. Some people read my books and learn how to do it right. Other people are lazy, so they just wait for any old offer to appear. Something I see being done far too often, is the invitation to write a guest post for a small blog with low
I don’t remember exactly how we decided to move to Prague; we were in Bangkok talking to Simon Whistler (Rocking Self-Publishing Podcast) and I’m tired of Taiwan – mostly because, I need to be surrounded with people excited about similar projects and there are extremely few self-publishers here. And now suddenly it’s...
The world is changing quickly, and a large part of that change is the shift from standard 9 to 5 career jobs to life-affirming, self-fulfilling creative small businesses. But the edge between creative expression and commercial success is a harrowing journey demanding delicate and dangerous balance. Can our love for creation persist amid client...
This year I met a lot of people who are making Tshirts. Why Tshirts? Because creative people who can draw cool things have trouble selling just arts or prints. Tshirts are wearable art, and people like to wear cool/indie/artsy shirts that stand out. First I met the TeeSpring guys. TeeSpring is like Kickstarter – crowdfunding
I just clicked on a few goal-setting articles like this from Facebook, and they sucked. So I wrote my own. For me, and a lot of other people I know, 2014 was a solidly mediocre year – some growth, some sales, some new experiences, but also a lot of mediocrity and boring stuff. That’s not
I used to be a copious journal writer. I still am, but now it’s all digital in a text file, and I never go back through it. I can’t pick it up like I can with notebooks and flip through, rediscovering my younger self. Instead, as of 2014, I have Facebook’s “Year in Review.” At
I’ve known I needed to be using SlideShare for some time, but haven’t mustered the motivation to complete the labor intensive task of making Powerpoint presentations. If you’ve never heard of SlideShare, it’s like YouTube for Powerpoints. It’s automatically connected with LinkedIn, so you can publish your...
Earlier this year I spoke at the Author Marketing Live conference in Cleveland about book cover design and book marketing. Today Jim at AMC sent me the video – which is not publicly listed and not supposed to be given away for free – but he’s letting me share it with you. I’m an awkward,
Christmas is coming! You need to buy something that literary genius in your family will love, but they are so hard to please. You can’t go wrong with something that encourages them to finish their book, and tells them that you support and believe in their dream. Here are some gift ideas, ranging from silly
Today I read two articles. The first is the plagiarism case indie author Rachel Ann Nunes raised against Tiffanie Rushton, an elementary school teacher. Tiffanie allegedly took Rachel’s self-published book, added some sex scenes and republished it as her own. Rachel has already spent $20,000 in court fees and is using PRweb.com to get the...
Just saw this on Twitter: Medium is appealing to Nanowrimo authors to boost traffic. That in itself isn’t a big deal. Around 400,000 writers participated in Nanowrimo this year. That’s an easy, clear target. I appealed to some of the same target with my 30 covers in one day stunt. And we put out a
