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The New World of Publishing: The Impossible is Now Possible
The impossible in publishing really is possible these days. This new world of publishing has allowed a ton of new things to be possible that would have flat been impossible in traditional publishing. And one of the best illustrations of just one of these now possible things just finished yesterday. Kristine Kathryn Rusch, my wife, published the last six books of an eight book science fiction saga, one per month starting in January and ending in June. Now, these are not short books. They range from 60,000 words up to almost 100,000 words long. And they all got reviewed in one place or another and all were up for pre-orders.…
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The New World of Publishing: The Learning Must Continue
Strange world we live in these days. I have run across a number of writers lately that think they have this all down, that they know what they are doing, and they are happy with their sales. And some of them should be, I grant that. But thinking they know what they are doing just sort of makes me laugh. The one thing that is an absolute in publishing and the art of storytelling is that the learning never stops. It’s not even a rule. It’s just a fact. So for a post here, I thought I would tell a story about myself and my golf days that will illustrate…
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The New World of Publishing: Top 10 Reasons Why I Would Never Publish Traditionally
Got an interesting question last week when sitting having dinner with an old friend. He wanted to know why I said I would never go back to publishing novels with traditional major publishers. Now over dinner, with my friend having no background in what was happening in publishing, that question because impossible to answer. So I muttered something about bad contracts and moved on. Now understand, I published over a hundred novels with traditional novel publishers and made my living doing that for a few decades. So why not now? What changed? The industry changed, that’s what. Traditional publishing is flat not what it was when I was selling books…
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New World of Publishing: Failure Must Be An Option
FAILURE MUST BE AN OPTION Part one of the annual setting goals posts. I’ll bet a few of you got very uneasy by me starting off a New World blog post with: “Failure Must Be Option.” This post is a much changed post from 2012 about setting goals. And how to move forward with your writing. And to do that, you must fail, over and over to become an artist in this business and to just survive. And that’s normal and perfectly fine. Let me say this clearly. The reason I am starting right here, talking about failure, is that until you understand failure in publishing, you don’t have a lot of…
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The New World of Writing: Pulp Speed
Pulp Speed I’ve mentioned this concept a number of times on my nightly blog and in the Topic of the Night little sections. But since Pulp Speed was almost impossible in the new traditional world, it belongs as a post in this series. Not at all sure why this idea sort of hits me right. I think because it flies in the face of all the myths. A writer has to have all myths under control to even attempt this. So this post might just make you angry because it hits at belief systems I’m afraid. The second reason I can’t shake this idea is because for all of my life…
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The New World of Writing: Dare To Be Bad
This is another modern major update of a post I did about three plus years ago about a topic that has been talked about in the Productivity Online Workshop. I’ve mentioned this topic a few times before in places, so I figured it would be time to be clear on it again and update this into this modern world of indie publishing. Kevin J. Anderson did a good blog on the topic of taking a chance with your work, about “Daring to be Bad” on a first draft and getting it down. Read his blog here, it’s short. And even though he put it up in 2011, it’s still there and can be…
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The New World of Publishing: The Assumption of Agents
After that head-shaking article by Don Maass, and the funny response by Joe and Barry, I decided it was time to update a post I did about a year ago in this series. So here it is… Among all new writers these days, the myth is strong that they need an agent and that agents are just here and a part of the new book world. It seems to radiate through every word I hear from writers lost in the myths of starting up as fiction writers. It’s like you bought a house and someone is living in the basement and you believe without ever a question that you must…