Dasher was drunk, and he was being an asshole again. “I raise you, ten gingersnaps and three candycanes.” We were playing Texas Hold’em. There was a six, four, three and two showing. Dasher looked over-eager and pleased with himself, so I was pretty sure he had the straight. Normally I might have just given in,
Tonight after reading some of Gary V.’s new book Jab, Jab, Jab, Punch I followed his advice and searched Twitter for “book cover design” – by way of which I discovered Alastair Humphreys’ invitation for someone to redesign his book cover. I wasn’t familiar with Alastair so I would have passed the opportunity...
On my book cover design site, I sometimes offer to do free makeovers for indie authors – on the condition that I get to make what I want, and that they don’t get much say in the creative process. It’s fun for me and often takes less than an hour, and if they like what
I have a suspicion, or maybe more like a prejudice, that all the best writers and artists are introverts. We are proud and independent, we like to spend time on our own with our own ideas, we excel at keeping ourselves entertained with the creative production of our own worlds. I distrust extroverted writers and
I tend to make business cards when I’m just starting to write a book. The reason is, every time you talk to anybody about what you’re working on, it may sound dumb or just be an idea and they will forget all about it. Unless you have a business card. In which case you can
This article is older, make sure you read this new one about a more recent press campaign. I just finished a rather long post on book advertising – in it I mentioned a mediocre book promotion blog making a lot of money on book advertisements. I was curious what sort of traffic they get so
I’m a casual browser of book marketing and promotion sites. I also deal with a lot of authors asking about book promotion companies and services. In general, I say to steer clear. Paying someone else to market your book is a losing gamble, and you’ll very rarely make even a fraction of your money back.
I used to be a full-time editor. Since then, I don’t often read amateur/mediocre books. I rarely have time to read as it is, so I only read brilliant, perfected writing. Unless I’m helping somebody out with a review, cover, or something else – in which case the book may be suffering from common rookie
If you’ve published a book, you probably already know that reviews are essential to sales: having a bunch of reviews on your Amazon page should be your #1 pre-marketing goal. But recent book review scandals have made everybody skeptical and overly prejudiced against paid book reviews. Paid book reviews – it is assumed – are...
Recently a lot of my authors have been sending the printing requirements for the small presses and publishers they’ve signed up with. These are author services companies, that usually charge a huge up-front fee (average $1000 for ebook publishing, $3000 for ebook and POD print book). But since these publishers and small presses have...
Developing my own philosophy of Creativindie and working on a manifesto for this site, I’ve been reading all the books on creativity that I can find. Some offer valuable tips. Others are inspirational but mostly useless in terms of making your own success through creative talents. These books range between academic researchers with real...
I know one of the biggest challenges for writers is A) coming up with creative ideas for their writing and B) going back through their writing to self-edit, rewrite, improve and restructure. These are vastly different skills which need vastly different mind-sets. But there’s a simple and easy trick you can use to switch between
