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November Workshops Now Up
All On Teachable… December workshops will be also up and able to sign up in a few days. And last call to jump into the October workshops this weekend. They will vanish on Monday or so. I initially was going to push back the start date of the November workshops until the 10th, but then decided that the 3rd is fine because most people don’t start workshops for a few days anyway. And the first weeks are normally the easiest. For those who have been living in isolation, the 3rd is the US election. So here is the list of the November and December workshops. I am pretty sure that…
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Very Impressed…
The Covers From the Covers 101 Workshop… The writers who managed to get through to the last assignment of the covers workshop produced some stunning book covers. The Covers 101 Workshop is a step-by-step process workshop in design and layout of covers. I just got done earlier tonight going through Assignment #5 in the Covers 101 workshop (first time it was offered) and basically all were professional covers that would sell books. I showed Kris a few and she just said, “Wow!” A couple writers, as expected, thought they could write sales copy for the back cover without training and failed, horribly, but this wasn’t a sales copy workshop, it…
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Money and Kickstarter Workshops Starting
How To Make Money With Your Fiction Writing… Yup, that workshop starts on Wednesday this coming week. Should be a very interesting one, but don’t take it if you want to learn about advertising on places like Facebook and so on. That is not how to make money past a moment in time, maybe, if you are lucky. We’re not even hardly mentioning that. This workshop is how to make money over the long haul and build the income. If you first thought is that you know how to do that, you really need this workshop. If you first thought is you can’t imagine what we will talk about besides…
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Doc Smith and My Family
Some Strange Similarities… I got to know Verna Smith Trestrail, E.E. “Doc” Smith’s only daughter way back in 1974. Her father had been dead for about a decade at that point and I had never had the pleasure to meet him, but Verna was wonderful. Since Doc graduated from the University of Idaho and the writing group I was in there, and the science fiction club, was thinking of putting on a convention, I suggested that they invite Verna and have Doc be the honorary guest of honor. They went for it and MosCon was born, a great little convention that lasted for years and is trying to make a…
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Dare To Be Bad
A Great Catch Phrase… Following is a post I wrote almost exactly ten years ago. Very little has remained the same in publishing in ten years, and especially through this pandemic, but I figured it would be a good time to bring this forward, touch it up a little bit. Many of you have heard me talk about this concept, and it is an amazingly freeing thing when applied. And my gut sense is that this would be a good Pop-Up topic to really dig into it for those who might need this. Anyway, here is the original post from ten years ago. Dare To Be Bad Kevin J. Anderson…
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Another Go At A Myth…
The Myth: Indie Publishing Costs a Lot to Do… Silly myth, but it is pushed hard by traditional publishing and by those who want to sell all their rights and let traditional publishing keep all their money. And it is pushed by just not knowing or getting information from the wrong sources. Remember, there are always people trying to stop you. So let me detail out the costs here as clear as I can. Let me make a couple of assumptions clear first. Assumption #1… For novels you must have copyeditor, someone who finds typos in your work. This can be a good friend, someone you hired at your library…
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I Shrug At Audio Books
But I Am A Business Person… I know, I know, all authors get all excited about audio books, and can quote the statistics about how it is the largest and fastest growing segment in the publishing world. And they would be right about the statistics. But as anyone who has ever taken a statistics class, those numbers can be used in all sorts of ways. So let me give you some numbers, even real numbers in publishing seem elusive and difficult to get. Many reasons for this, not the least of which is that Amazon, the largest bookseller on the planet, does not release numbers. And traditional publishing often counts…
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New Workshop Coming…
And Other Stuff… Last day of August. Been a long summer, that’s for sure. Actually, a long time since March/April and the start of all this. I went for months this summer (except for the scary trip going up North for moving) with my big adventure each week going grocery shopping. Or maybe running for some take-out pizza. I know for a fact I am not alone in that. Being safe and sane through all this is crazy. I sure thought last May we would be through this by now. Nope. Now I am at least getting out of the building each day for exercise. Who knew by now I…
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Cover Basics
I Got a Surprise Today… With the Covers 101 workshop starting next week, I decided I needed to round out my education a little on what the writers were doing who hired people to do their covers. All of you know I think that is a waste of time and money and can hurt your writing overall, but numbers of writers I know have others do their covers, so I was curious. So I wrote one wrier and asked a favor, if that person wouldn’t mind sending me a blank copy of the contract they use with their cover designer. I got a nice letter back saying they didn’t have…
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Two Cool Things!
Really Worth Checking Out… The first is a brand new series of blogs/articles from professional writer Chris York, who writes mystery and science fiction, but these days mostly really amazing cozy mystery novels under a couple of names. Chris is married to writer J. Steven York and they have been our closest writer friends for more decades than any of us care to think about. Anyone who has come to a major workshop for WMG, either on the coast or here in Vegas, knows Chris. Anyhow, since the beginning of this year, Chris retired from her long-time day job as an accountant for a major hotel and condominium complex and…