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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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A Good Run
Vegas Strong 5K… Basically three miles. Started on Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas, went for about a mile on Las Vegas Blvd toward the Strip, then headed out into the neighborhoods, ending up back on Fremont Street. About 2,500 people ran or walked for a great cause. This was to honor and help all those killed and injured in the mass shooting on October 1st two years ago. This city is amazing in how it has dealt with that. It started at 8 am, so we left our condo at 7:30 and walked to the race. Very early. For me, this was the first timed run of the fall…
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Pulphouse Workshop
Special Project Day… Spent all day today working on a couple special projects. One we will announce later in the week, the second one I did the How to Write a Pulphouse Story workshop. Kickstarter surveys have gone out and I expect on Monday and Tuesday those who want to take the October special workshop will contact me. If you did sign up for the special How to Write a Pulphouse Story workshop through Kickstarter and have filled out the survey, write me if you want to join into October or November. If you have workshop credit, and want to take an October regular workshop, also write me. For the…
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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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Once Again a Month Flashes Past
October Regular Workshops Start Tuesday… That’s right, this coming Tuesday and Wednesday. And for those of you who want to take the HOW TO WRITE A PULPHOUSE STORY starting on October first, you will get a survey soon, if not already today. Fill it out and get it back to WMG, then this weekend write me saying you wan to take it in October and I will give you the code to get in. This HOW TO WRITE A PULPHOUSE STORY workshop could only be signed up for through Kickstarter Pulphouse Subscription Drive. Sorry. It might be offered again in two years on the next Pulphouse Subscription Drive. Maybe. More…
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Edmund Gosse Explains Things So Well
From His Poem “Impression.” “Too much afraid of faults to be…” And that simple line from that incredible poem describes a great number of the writers I talk with every day. (You can read the entire poem here, published about writing in 1894. Worth the read. And if you could dare to write as ill as some whose voices haunt us still…) But that simple saying of being afraid of faults to be describes why so many writers don’t finish stories. And why so many don’t get their work out to readers or short fiction to editors. That saying a long time ago stopped making sense to me as a…
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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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Losing Weight
Might Be The Hardest Challenge I Have Ever Done… Now, granted, I am being successful at it. Frighteningly slowly and certainly not in a straight down line. But it dawned on me this week that this might be simply the hardest challenge I have ever taken on, and I’ve tackled some big challenges over the years. For three years now I have aimed at a marathon here in Las Vegas. For a year before I moved and also last year. Both previous times (and maybe one other a few years earlier) flat didn’t work because I couldn’t get the weight down fast enough to ramp up the running in time.…