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I Feel Bad For New Writers… Part 8… Myths
Massive Numbers of Myths on Both Paths… I say this little introduction to each new parts… New fiction writers coming in now are really torn between all the myths and hype of traditional publishing and all the myths and hype of indie publishing. But as I said back in the first post of this series, the paperback era of big publishing is pretty much done, and the distribution of fiction is changing over to the electronic era of indie publishing, with indie writers in charge. These kinds of major shifts in fiction distribution to the readers has happened four major times through the history of this country, with each new…
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Interesting Reaction…
…To the Free Promotions Post Last Night. Writers will pay more thousands of dollars than I want to think about to take a class on how to do paid ads on Amazon and other places from writers who have been around a year or so and have a “system.” And then spend more thousands on the ads. And then spend even more to fly to 20 to 50 Conference to learn even more methods, secrets, and systems of how to promote and make money without doing the work. Yet Amazon and the other places have free tutorials on how to do ads that work on their own site. Tutorials are…
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Number One Continues…
Twenty-four Hours Later From Last Night’s Post… For the last 40 plus hours, my novel Kill Game: A Cold Poker Gang Novel has been #1 in the free books on Amazon, as well as a bunch of sub-categories for mystery. Normally a book with a Bookbub promotion like this hits near the top or the top for a few hours and then fades off. Lots of books have churned under my book in the last almost two days, but none have knocked me off the top spot yet. It will happen shortly, when the Bookbub promotions hit on Monday morning. But what a fun run. And yes, the free part…
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Promotion and Sales Package
PROMOTION AND SALES PACKAGE OFFER FROM WMG PUBLISHING INC. As a one-time offer, limited to only ten, WMG Publishing Inc. will be offering to put together an entire sales package for one of your books. A holiday offer to the writers who have supported our projects and workshops over the years. This package will be put together by the entire team at WMG Publishing. And yes, I will be helping as well, even though I don’t work officially at WMG. The idea of this is to help you (or whoever you buy the package for) set up a sales and promotions plan for a book, with all the ingredients needed…
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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…
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The New World of Publishing: Maybe You Wrote a Good Book
This is sort of a continuation of the last promotion post, but a ton of words shorter I promise. And if you haven’t read the comments on the last promotion post, I would suggest you do so. Some wonderful discussion there. I saved this part of the promotion post to stand alone because I knew if I didn’t, it would get lost. So here is my thesis statement: Maybe your book is selling because it’s a great book. Not because you promoted it. I know. Shock! Am I trying to tell you that good storytelling sells? Yes, I am. Because readers have this scary ability to hear about and go…
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The New World of Publishing: Promotion
I actually should do this under the “Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing” series of articles, but decided that since so many newer fiction writers have bought into the myth of promotion, hook, line, and sinker, this should go here along with the “Seasons of Publishing” article I just did a week or so ago. I understand I am going to step on a few feelings (called land mines) with this post. If this makes you angry, come and talk to me when you have over a hundred novels published and been making your living with your fiction for over thirty years. At least get past your anger enough to…
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The New World of Publishing: Blurb Writing
As I said in the first post of this short series, I will take a few areas of publishing and compare them across, from indie to traditional. The differences, the beliefs, the myths, and how things are actually done. The first post I did on editing and proofing, and I’ll do another on cover design, plus other areas that are common between the two forms of publishing. One area per short post. But for this second post, it’s time to talk about blurb and promotional writing. As I start this, a bunch of writers are coming into town to attend a “Pitches and Blurb” writing workshop here. It’s a four-day…