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Writers of the Future Deadline
Before October 1st… The quarter is over on Friday, the last quarter of Volume #39. So you have until Friday to get your stories in. Not only does Writers of the Future pay 8 cents per word, but if you get in the book you get a free trip to Hollywood, a free week-long workshop taught by top writers, and nifty prize money if you win one of the top spots. That speaks nothing about the fantastic awards show. Stunning, just stunning. And no worries about me already seeing the story. I am the editor. I will know your name if you win. But Jody Lynn Nye and a cast…
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Some Updates and Other Fun Stuff
First Practice Run… Actually, no real running, only 2.5 miles of walking because no one cared that the course was short. For me, the practice came at getting up so early to go running. It was fun. First real run is Sunday, with an actual 5k course and timing bibs. I figure this coming Sunday will set the mark for the slowest of the year as I do more and more running and the weight drops over the fall. That is the plan, anyway. (grin) Publishing Fun… I spent most of today laying out the next issue of Smith’s Monthly. I do all the covers, all the layout, and, of…
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Last Two Days of September Workshop Sale!!
This Ends Sunday Evening… So just over 24 hours left in this one. All October Regular workshops are available. And the new Study Along classes. And three new classic workshops that used to be regular workshops. So if interested, go to WMG Teachable. Find the class you are interested in, hit purchase and then on the next page put in the code: SeptemberRegularSale50 Hit apply and you should have the class at 50% off. Here are the October Regular Workshops. Six weeks long and I reply to all assignments. Class #31… Oct 4th … Covers 101 Class #32… Oct 4th … Heinlein’s Rules Class #33… Oct 4th … Writing into…
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Writers of the Future Contest…
You Might Be Eligible And Not Even Know It!! And if you are eligible, you should enter every quarter without fail. Okay, I have been around the Writers of the Future contest now for 39 years. I was the first person across the stage to get my award and my first story has been in print in Volume #1 for this entire time. At Pocket Books, we patterned the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds contest on Writers of the Future and I edited that for ten years. I became a judge for Writers of the Future after we stopped the Star Trek contest. Now, I am responsible for putting the…
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Regular Monthly Workshop Sale
Last Full Week of Every Month… Can’t believe it is the last full week of the September already. Wow. The sale code to get everything 50% off on WMG Teachable is SeptemberRegularSale50 Just hit purchase on anything you want and on the next page put in the code and hit apply and your choice will be 50% off. NEW STUFF BEING ADDED… October regular workshops are being added and will all be up in a day or so. I will do a list here, but for the next few days you can still get the active September workshops and I’ll work with you to get caught up on the first…
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Why Do We Do Kickstarters?
I Got That Question Today… The question sort of caught me by surprise, to be honest. First off, surface reasons. 1… It gets new books to readers ahead of the publication date and at a discount. Fans of a series or a writer enjoy that. I know I do, which is one of the reasons why I back so many campaigns. 2… It gets our work out to readers we might never find and they might then buy more of our work. This is called discoverability. 3… It is amazing promotion and advertising and you don’t have to pay for it. In fact, if you do it right, you get…
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Bestselling Books
Quick Post After The Earlier Sales Information… Remember, that dozen copies sold information came from a trial from a president of a big five company under oath. What he said was that half of all the books published by the big five traditional publishers sell under a dozen copies. So let’s look at that from other data sources. Here is another piece of data I found quoted from different studies. The average number of copies a book sells is 250 from the big five traditional publishers. Assuming everyone knows the definition of average. Now when you average in Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Koontz and the other hundred top sellers, plus…
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Another Interesting Bit of Information…
Again Out of the Hot Sheet and New Sales Studies. 30% of traditional publishing sales comes from front list, meaning the new books they put out. 70% is now coming from the backlist. (Remember, they buy all your copyright for the life of the copyright and they can do what they want with it.) But breaking down that backlist number, 30% of it is what they are calling “newer backlist” meaning originally published in the last five to ten years. 40% of the sales are coming from older backlist (because books are still new to readers who have never seen them). Traditional publishing is learning slowly that books don’t spoil,…
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What a Number… Shocking
WHY WOULD ANY AUTHOR GO TRADITIONALLY PUBLISHED?? In the trial going on between the publishers and the government to stop the merger of two of the big five publishers, this information came out, reported on the Hot Sheet. Let me quote this exactly… “During the trial, a couple of depressing statistics were shared: of the 58,000 trade titles published per year, fully half of those titles “sell fewer than one dozen books.” (Not a typo, that’s one dozen.) More broadly, 90 percent of titles sell fewer than 2,000 units. Even a small advance of a few thousand dollars would not earn out at standard royalty rates.” Seriously?? I knew it…
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The Buffet Challenge
Going To Be Fun and Take Time A while back I talked about trying to visit every buffet in Las Vegas and start or write a short story in each one. And also talk about the buffet in articles and blogs and put all the stories and articles together in different books. I said books (plural) for a reason. Wow, just wow are there a lot of buffets in Las Vegas. From high-end to just regular ones. I have started the research and just making a list of them seems overwhelming. Numbers of top-ten lists, but that mostly just focuses on the really high-end ones. I got a new iPad…