Why Do You Enter Writing Contests?
A couple of weeks ago, someone (I won’t name who because I don’t want to embarrass her) asked me what score I’d received in a writing contest. I didn’t want to answer at first. I worried about making...
View ArticleDo You Want to Be a Famous Author?
Every once in a while, I come across an article about figuring out our goals as an author. Heck, I’ve written posts along those lines. As we learn more about the industry and grow as authors, our...
View ArticleNeed to Decide on a Path? Know Your Goals
I’ve written several posts about how we have to figure out our goals. Do we want to be famous? How can we prioritize fast, cheap, and good? How important are bookstores to us? I touch on the subject a...
View ArticleWhen Should We Start Building Our Platform?
In my post about book pirates and plagiarism, I mentioned that book bloggers and reviewers are now more wary of debut authors, especially those who are self-published. I don’t blame them. Some people...
View ArticleGoogle’s Fickleness: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
If one thing is constant with Google, it’s that they always change. Over the past couple of years, they phased out most of Google Friend Connect and stopped supporting Feedburner. However, I realized...
View ArticleBranding 101: What Is Your Brand?
Yeah, yeah, I can hear it now. “Ugh. Not more branding stuff. What if I don’t want to be a brand?” I hate to break it to you, but you already have a brand. So does your kid’s soccer coach, your...
View ArticleHandling Readers: Expectations and Disappointments
Most of us suffer from self-doubt in some way. Those of us doing NaNoWriMo might have reached a point in our story where events aren’t playing out as cool as they seemed in our head. Or maybe NaNo’s...
View ArticleThe Pros and Cons of Writing Contests
The other week, my friend Janice Hardy emailed me for insight into a question one of her blog readers had about writing contests. She wanted to turn the question into a blog post on the pros and cons...
View ArticleBranding 101: Do You Have a Tagline?
Even though I’m not a big fan of Facebook, I’ve been spending more time there lately. A major reason for that is I’ve discovered some fantastically helpful FB groups. One of the best is Facebook the...
View ArticleEbooks: What We Buy vs. What We Read
Between the rise of self-publishing and the agency pricing settlement, the industry is struggling with how to price ebooks. Before the settlement, many self-published authors enjoyed the attention...
View ArticleAll About The Money: Authors, Readers, and Ebook Prices
The publishing world has been abuzz with the results of the 2014 Digital Book World (DBW) and Writer’s Digest Author Survey. Headlines scream “Most authors make less than $1000 a year.” Numbers taken...
View ArticleKnow Your Goals: Artist-Author or Professional-Author?
The headline of this post isn’t a trick question. There isn’t only “one right answer.” As writers, we’re allowed to have different goals. Some might dream of money, others of making a difference in...
View ArticleIs Hybrid Publishing Always the Best of Both Worlds?
I’m going to admit right from the start that this might be a controversial post. My goal is to explore issues while not “bashing” specific groups, but we’ll have to wait and see if I succeed. We’ve...
View ArticleAre You Living Your Dream?
I needed to write the last couple of posts about finding a good editor and what it takes to be a good editor because I’ve seen and heard too many horror stories from authors who were misled by...
View ArticleShould We Learn to Write Series?
Many books recently on the bestseller lists have been part of series. From the Divergent series to the new cliffhanger and serial books, series are a popular trend. But what if we don’t naturally...
View ArticleBlogging: Tips, Tricks, and Knowing Your Goals
I’ve been in a website/blogging mindset this week because I ran my “A Newbie’s Guide to Building a Self-Hosted Blog or Website” workshop on Tuesday. So a couple of interesting posts about blogging...
View ArticleIs “Do What You Love” Good Advice?
In the U.S., it’s the season for students to hear graduation speeches pushing them to make a difference and live life to the fullest. In the last decade, there’s also been a motto-type saying...
View ArticleThe Value of “Crap” Jobs
In my last post, I asked if “do what you love” was good career advice. We had a fantastic conversation in the comments, discussing everything from the costs of doing what you love to the danger of...
View ArticleThe Future Is Here: Self-Publishing and RWA
Most of us have probably had the experience of watching kids grow up at a distance. When we see young neighbors, nieces or nephews, or friends’ kids only occasionally, we notice the changes since our...
View ArticleLessons from RWA14: Techniques for Sales Success
This past weekend, author Hugh Howey posted about Liliana Hart’s self-publishing method, which she calls “5 down and 1 in the hole.” Liliana presented in several workshops at the RWA Annual...
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