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
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
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
Most of the people I know who are working online are selling hot air. In other words, they fill people with hope, motivation and inspiration. They get them charged up and excited. They tell them “You can do anything you want, if you just BELIEVE in it!” They say, “Just follow your passion and the
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.
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
Stumbled across this fun site tonight: it’s basically a book about how to draw camels: http://howtodrawcamels.com/ Except, that’s not all. The author does a bunch of interesting stuff, and some important social work, in Western Africa. But rather than starting a personal blog about himself or his projects, he chose to do...
It’s important to get a lot of reviews on your book’s sales page. But it’s even better to get blurbs from famous authors, or authors of other books. I’m going to teach you a free and easy secret to getting blurbs for your self-published book. Are you ready? Here it is: ASK This isn’t advice
I tell my book cover clients to get a lot of feedback – especially when they’re starting to commit to an idea I disagree with. Authors can often get too close and personal with their covers; they stare at the options for hours, making decisions, slowly forming a bond that is hard to break. Which
I wrote an article for ALLI about book editing that got posted with the title Do Novice Authors Really Need an Editor? It’s stirring up a lot of debate, because it suggests that some authors may be better off not paying for an editor. However because the article was too long, a lot of the
Recently I’ve seen some articles circulating about “Book Cover Clichés” which put a handful of book cover designs from the same genre together to point out the similarities. The point of such articles, I infer, is to shame those cover designers who went for the easy, the obvious, the “cliché” designs instead of...
A few years ago I put out a package of DIY book cover templates in Microsoft Word and revolutionized publishing with a how-to guide to designing amazing book covers in an easy to use program you’re already familiar with. But it took me a while longer to figure out how to customize your front cover
