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Shared Worlds
SHARED WORLDS: What Are They, How to Do Them, and Why… This is a one-of-a-kind class. Not a workshop, not a lecture, not a study along. For years now, Kris and I have tried to figure out how to teach shared worlds as a topic to writers to get the most benefit for writers. Both of us have written in so many shared worlds, we couldn’t begin to count. From the major shared worlds of Star Trek and Star Wars, to the more subtle shared worlds of say the WMG Holiday Spectacular that we are running through Kickstarter right now. And everything in between. There are thousands of reasons indie writers…
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One Mentor Spot Left for 2020
Doing 2019 Still… I had five people take me up on me helping them by being a mentor in 2019. I am basically a cheerleader, someone they have to check in with each week, talk about the ups and downs. I answer questions when asked, give opinions on covers, read stories, and so on. In essence, I am there. And I am not really going away from those that I have been helping just because a year of time ended. A couple of the people started late, and one has pretty much vanished due to health issues. I hope that person will return later. So I figured I could handle…
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REALLY FUN PROJECT!!!
WMG Winter Holiday Spectacular… We just launched it on Kickstarter. Every day from November 28th to January 1st you will get an original holiday story in your inbox. Automatically. Stories by some of the top writers in short fiction. And all edited by Hugo Award winning editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Here is Kris talking about it. (Might have to click twice.) vYou want to see something new and innovative for indie publishing, take a look at this. You want to see something really innovative that is only possible with indie publishing, take a look at this. And yes, we know it is close behind the Pulphouse Subscription Drive, but…
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Sales Numbers
Some Interesting Comments… A number of posts back I talked about the difference between indie writers and traditional publishing writers. Not one person thought my sales numbers of over forty thousand for the traditional published author were too high. No one even questioned them. (They were far too high for 2019.) But wow did I get a lot of people objecting to around 50 copies a month average sales for indie. I understand that. I was doing a comparison on two books between the two types of publishing. And I used the word average, but so many writers don’t understand that term when it comes to sales. So let me…
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October Workshops Starting
Plus the How to Write a Pulphouse Story October… If you signed up for that workshop through the Kickstarter and want to take it in October, write me at once. If you have workshop credit from the Kickstarter, you can use it against these October workshops if you want. We will have everything out later in the week as surveys get back in. The Regular October workshops are starting and for a few of these, this will be the last time they are regular workshops with homework. They are headed to classic status. However, if you are a lifetime subscriber, you can still send in the assignments on those. But…
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Interesting Discussion
Strangely Enough, With a Book Agent… Civil as I could keep it on my side. Honest, I was a good boy, for the most part. But my normal blunt self. (And no, I will not tell you who I had the discussion with.) Something came from this discussion that I thought I had better remind folks about here. If you have a friend who is looking at a book agent, ask these questions of that friend… One… Have you done a credit check on the agent? Two… Will the agent automatically, for all clients, split payments from all publishers, meaning the publisher sends out two checks and two sets of…
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Licenses Are Not The Ends of Roads
Today I Got a Lot of Questions… After yesterday’s post, a number of the questions I got privately had the subtext that a license has a one-time-and-out thinking. Nope. — You license your novel to your own corporation. It is your corporation so you license everything inside that copyright to the corporation. It must be in a contract, so you make sure the contract can be cancelled if you want at any point, but you license the novel to your corporation. — Your corporation then licenses out things like electronic books to all the places, paper books, audio books, translations, and so on. Money flows into your corporation. — Say…
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Playing with Numbers and Math
I Am Not An Accountant… But I am doing my best to understand this for writers. So this is me, talking to myself, and most of you will just read this and go, “What the hell is he talking about?” That’s fine. But in essence what I am talking about is in a licensing business, copyright valuation will play a very important part. And I will be talking about this often over the coming year in the Licensing Transition workshop on Teachable. (Lost half of the writers reading this with the term copyright. (grin)) So bear with my very simplistic, non-accountant way of saying this. Okay? I am not even…
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Up Early for an Outing Tomorrow
With the Romance Workshop… Kris is taking the entire romance workshop on a field trip tomorrow. The mystery workshop in May went to the Mob Museum and this group gets to go to the Springs Preserve, and I’m going along because I am a member there and love the place. So got to be up early for me, so nothing tonight except to say there are seven more videos posted in the Licensing Transition and sign-ups for that are still open if interested. And sign-ups for the two Great Challenges are also still open. Lost two more writers this week, so far. And I am caught up, basically, on my…
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Romance Workshop Going On Here Now
And I Am Recording Kris’s Lectures for the Study Along… I realized tonight how really good these Study Along workshops are. Kris does a ton of videos about books on her reading list, then assigns stories, and I record her lectures from my point of view on a topic. And if you are taking the Study Along, you can turn in a story by the deadline and I will read it. First assignment of the Romance Workshop Study Along I ended up with 12 stories I will be reading over the next day or so. And just tonight I gave out story assignment #2. And the best deal is the…