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Yeah, I Know… It is…
…Friday Night… Friday night seems to be where my body says, “Just stop.” Did some business this morning, great lunch with friends, home for the Writer Direct webinar, then a nap. Cooked dinner, then another nap, watched a little television and into my office here where I have zero interest in doing anything. Not even up for answering emails or working on the new Kickstarter that is coming in a few weeks. Nothing. However, did get it approved today, so I have the promotions page up. We will be launching on the 28th. It is a total rebrand on my Ghost of a Chance series and you can get on…
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Tech Challenged…
At A Stupidly Basic Level… This year Kris and I will be attending the Licensing Expo as we have always done. But this year both of us will be filming and giving our opinions on things we see like I did last year. We will be posting all this daily in the class ATTEND THE 2024 LICENSING EXPO WITH KRIS AND DEAN. It is on Teachable. So Kris was attempting to show me how we could share files on our phones. Attempt is the operative word. I will get it if I have it written down on a little note card step-by-step. Maybe. I know I did fine last year…
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Fiction Branding… Part 12
The Value of Copyright… This will be very basic in this chapter. Very. And then in another post on branding, I will talk more about estates and so on which is very complex and writers need to think about it. To start off with, many of you automatically defaulted to the… “My copyright has no value. It really doesn’t sell.” The problem is that statement is a belief that has no basis in any reality. Sort of like believing in a Yeti having babies with a an alien from space. It could happen, but more than likely your belief is just wrong. Copyright is a form of property under the…
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Well, I’ll Call It A Day
After 3 AM Right Now… Planned originally tonight to write another article on one of the cool ideas some of you offered up. Plans… You know that word? A delusional look into a future that has no hope at all of ever becoming a reality. Day started with me up ahead of my normal time doing business and workshop stuff. So started off tired. Then off to my PT session. They are getting harder as I am near the end and the docs are pushing me on regaining strength. Oh, joy… Got home, changed clothes and off to have a great pizza dinner with Ron and Lisa and Bridget Collins…
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Anthology Workshop
Only Two Days Left to Sign Up… Anthology Workshop is August 5th to 8th here in Las Vegas at Resorts World. Seven editors, you write five stories to deadlines for anthologies ahead of time, and I will be reading for Pulphouse Fiction Magazine. Writing for these will push you and challenge you, I promise. Plus business talk at night every night. Fee is $900 and we have a room block for $75 per night. More learning than you can imagine and great fun writing for professional anthologies. Fantastic fun! Write me directly if interested. Shutting off sign-ups in two days.
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Fiction Branding… Part 11
Short Fiction and Discoverability… I said clearly in the last part of this series that short stories, standing alone, do not lead to major discoverability in the calculation of 20 to 50. Wow, I really wish they did. However I left the impression that short fiction does not help in general discoverability and that is so, so far wrong as to be funny. Short fiction is a major source of discoverability, just not in the 20 books to 50 thousand thinking. Let me start off with one major thing here that I will talk about later. NEVER PAY FOR PROMOTION OF ANY KIND. You could make that a hard and…
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Questions or Topics?
A Lazy Saturday Night… Since I did not feel up to writing another chapter in the branding book as I had planned to do tonight, I thought I would open this up on this weekend night to questions you would like to have me answer or topics you would like to have me discuss or write a blog about. Email me or put them here as comments. If nothing because this is the time of great forgetting, I will just keep on entertaining myself with things that interest me in some fashion or another. Note: For anyone who missed getting a class or workshop they wanted, the code for the…
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EXPECTATIONS…
A Topic So Large I Have Considered Writing a Book About It… Expectations are both powerful and deadly to writers. But to early stage writers, mostly deadly. A positive expectation can come from experience. For example, back in traditional publishing days, when I was hired by a publisher to write a book, they had an expectation that I could do the job and I had an expectation I could do the job. I like testing myself with writing challenges. I always go into them with an expectation that I can hit the challenge and that gives me fuel to keep going on tough days. When I send a story to…
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Fiction Branding… Part 10
20 to 50 Thinking… And how branding fits with that. 20 to 50 is shorthand for having 20 major books published will make you 50 thousand a year. And if you do a bunch of things right, it often works. But you have to do a bunch of things right. Why 20 Major Books? Ways of discoverability, basically. If you have one book, that book can be found through all the places you have it for sale and that’s it. So say you are wide and have it out in 150 different stores around the world, plus paper through Ingrams. (I am estimating that number of stores by counting up…
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Looking Back…
Doing a Lot of That This Year… Because of the fact that I sold my first two short stories 50 years ago and 40 years ago I was the first to walk across the Writers of the Future stage. Those kind of “zero” year dates will make anyone look around. And, of course, looking back over time can get you that wonderful 20/20 hindsight of seeing mistakes. I got two really good examples of that at the moment. The first one is looking back 50 years at the largest mistake I made in my writing and publishing career. The one mistake of instead of continuing to do what I had…