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Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing: #5… Book as Event
Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing will be out later this fall with an introduction. And then it will be followed by a book called Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing. But first I wanted to put each myth or “Sacred Cow” up here again as I promised. — The myth of Book as Event, put as clearly as I can. Myth: All books need to be events, need to be something special. Hogwash, of course. All books must be written as well as the author can write the book, but just because the author spent blood and sweat on the book, or the author wrote it…
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Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing: #4… You Need an Agent to Sell a Book
This series of posts will turn into a book called Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing later this fall with an introduction. And then it will be followed by a book called Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing. But first I wanted to put each myth or “Sacred Cow” up here again as I promised. This fourth Sacred Cow article (topic) was published here in 2009. Wow, has the world changed since 2009. Indie publishing was only a glimmer then and traditional publishing was turning ugly, so ugly that at that point, I was about ready to walk away completely and go back to playing…
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Writing in Public: Month One Summary: August, 2013
Month #1 Summary of this Writing in Public challenge. August, 2013 Well, that was interesting for me in more ways than one. First, when I knew I was going to have to give a general summary of the day here, I was conscious of what I was doing most of the time. It didn’t change my behavior in any real way, but I was aware of it more instead of just moving through the day. I also became aware that the stuff I do outside of writing, from the publishing, to the workshops, to sitting in meetings, to working on collectables and other things, takes up about 50-60 hours per week…
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Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing: #3…Rewriting
This series of posts will turn into a book called Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing later this fall with an introduction. And then it will be followed by a book called Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing. But first I wanted to put each myth or “Sacred Cow” up here again as I promised. This third Sacred Cow article was published here in 2010 and I redid it once in 2011, but now it is slightly redone for the world of 2013/2014. However, this third incarnation hasn’t changed that much. On many of these posts it is amazing to me as I redo them…
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Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing: #2
This series of posts will turn into a book called Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing later this fall with an introduction. And then it will be followed by a book called Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing. But first I wanted to put each myth or “Sacred Cow” up here again as I promised. This second Sacred Cow article was published here in 2010 and I redid it once since, but now it is slightly redone for the world of 2013/2014. However, this third incarnation hasn’t changed that much. On many of these posts it is amazing to me as I redo them how…
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Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing: #1
This series of posts will turn into a book later this fall with an introduction. And then it will be followed by a book called Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing. But first I wanted to put each myth or “Sacred Cow” up here again as I promised. This first Sacred Cow article was published here in 2010 and I redid it once since, but now it is completely redone for the world of 2013/2014. On many of these posts it is amazing to me as I redo them how far my beliefs have changed in a few short years. And how far publishing has changed as…
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Day 0… It’s Still July for Me
I figured I had better do a first warm-up post here to explain a few things. — My day doesn’t start until after I get up and right now I’m writing this around 3 in the morning. So August 1st for me will start when I get out of bed. Thought I had better get that clear for those stopping by here and expecting something. — Most of the time I will only have one “Writing in Public” post per day. Sometimes two or more, depending on what is happening. They will always have the little illustration to the right so you can spot them and ignore them or not.…
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The New World of Publishing: Helping Readers Find Your Work
This is the third article in a series. In the first article, I suggested that writers should just stop begging at the doors of traditional novel publishers. I was talking about novels and only novels. In the second article I talked about how a person could make a living writing only short fiction. So now I’m going to go on here for a minute about the value of doing short fiction in this new world. And the incredible value of selling your short fiction to some traditional publishers. It seems to me that everyone out there in blog land yells about visibility. This article is about helping your writing be…
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The New World of Publishing: Making a Living with Your Short Fiction Updated 2013
Way back, over three years ago now, I did a post in my Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing series called “Myth: You Can’t Make Money Writing Fiction.” And then I wrote the basis of this post about one year ago right now. And things have changed so much, I wanted to update this now, and then I will follow this with another short fiction post on a slightly different area of short fiction. But in this post, I want to go after a saying that used to be almost 100% true before four years ago. “You can’t make a living writing only short fiction.” Not so true anymore. Why…
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“Ghost Novel” Writing So You Can See
Numbers of people were wondering exactly what I was writing when I did the ten days of blogging about writing a 70,000 word novel. They were bummed they couldn’t see the final result or I couldn’t even give hints as to the genre. So, taking a page from of a much better writer than I am, (Harlan Ellison, who wrote a lot in public) I figured I would do the same thing I did with the “ghost novel” blogs, only do it for five short stories. And let you all read them as I finish them. I’m thinking about starting this on June 10th and going until the five stories…