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Think Like a Publisher: 2015… Chapter 5: Return on Investment
Chapter Five: Return on Investment As a professional writer, when I am asked by another writer what they would be better off writing, my standard and correct answer is “Anything you are passionate about. Any story that motivates you. Any topic that scares hell out of you or excites you.” And when asked “What’s the best length in this new world?” my answer has been “Whatever length the story demands.” Those are my writer-to-writer answers and they are correct. No second thoughts at all. Those answers come from the art of writing. Those answers come into play for all writers and should be followed where possible by all writers. Those…
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Think Like a Publisher: 2015… Projected Income
Chapter Three Projected Income To actually get a profit-and-loss calculation for a book project, you must now make some pricing decisions and projections of income. Yeah, I know. I know. This is all so new, how can anyone predict how much money they will make on any project? Well, you can’t. Not really. But you can try. And you want to know a dirty little secret. New York traditional publishing can’t predict how much they will make on any book either. But they try. And that’s the key. To really act like a publisher, you need to understand what you are trying to gain. You need to know how many…
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Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing: #9… You Must Sell Books Cheaply
Myths ignore facts. Myths are often beliefs built from fear or past actions. In this series, and in the previous series of Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing, I call the myths that control writers “Sacred Cows.” Writers hold onto myths like lifelines that are keeping them from drowning in a raging river of information. Sometimes sane people in the normal world will follow a publishing myth that makes no sense at all because it has something to do with the publishing business. And they follow the myth without thought. So this new series is an attempt to help the new world of indie publishing with the growing…
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Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing… #6: Put The Book Up and Leave It.
Myths ignore facts. Myths are often beliefs built from fear or past actions. In this series, and in the previous series of Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing, I call the myths that control writers “Sacred Cows.” Writers hold onto myths like lifelines that are keeping them from drowning in a raging river of information. Sometimes sane people in the normal world will follow a publishing myth that makes no sense at all because it has something to do with the publishing business. And they follow the myth without thought. So this new series is an attempt to help the new world of indie publishing with the growing…
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Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing… #5: Printers are Distributors
Myths ignore facts. Myths are often beliefs built from fear or past actions. In this series, and in the previous series of Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing, I call the myths that control writers “Sacred Cows.” Writers hold onto myths like lifelines that are keeping them from drowning in a raging river of information. Sometimes sane people in the normal world will follow a publishing myth that makes no sense at all because it has something to do with the publishing business. And they follow the myth without thought. So this new series is an attempt to help the new world of indie publishing with the growing…
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Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing… #3. No One Buys New Writers
Myths ignore facts. Myths are often beliefs built from fear or past actions. In this series, and in the previous series of Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing, I call the myths that control writers “Sacred Cows.” Writers hold onto myths like lifelines that are keeping them from drowning in a raging river of information. Sometimes sane people in the normal world will follow a publishing myth that makes no sense at all because it has something to do with the publishing business. And they follow the myth without thought. So this new series is an attempt to help the new world of indie publishing with the growing…
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Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing: #1… Can’t Get Indie Books into Bookstores
Myths ignore facts. Myths are beliefs built from fear or past actions. In this series, and in the previous series of Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing, I call the myths that control writers “Sacred Cows.” Writers hold onto myths like lifelines that are keeping them from drowning in a raging river of information. Sometimes sane people in the normal world will follow a publishing myth that makes no sense at all because it has something to do with the publishing business. And they follow the myth without thought. So this new series is an attempt to help the new world of indie publishing with the growing list…
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The New World of Publishing: Some Perspective on 2013
Interestingly enough, 2013 was the second seemingly stable year in the new normal we are all living in the publishing industry. Does that mean that nothing changed? Of course not. Some things changed, but not like 2009-2011. And some things will continue to change. But when you step back and look at the business in general, the changes in 2013 were pretty minor and predictable and normal. So I figured, as I did last year, to try to give a little perspective on the past year from the advantage of watching and living inside of publishing for thirty-five years now. Traditional Publishing In 2013, traditional publishers were in a normal…
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Think Like a Publisher: 2014. Chapter Three: Projected Income
As traditional publishers grab for more rights and become even more difficult to work with, more and more writers are moving to indie publishing. As they make the jump, they ask basic questions on how to do it, how to be treated with respect as a publisher, and even how to do simple things like setting up a publishing business. And questions such as how they get their books into bookstores. You can do that. Honest. I’ll talk all about it in coming chapters. But the key on almost everything these days is that you, the author, are starting a publishing company. An indie publisher is still a publisher, the…
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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…