Writing Aids

“The Book Designer” – blog about book design

Leave a Comment / Publishing Business, Writing Aids / By / June 28, 2011

Having trouble figuring out book format, terminology, typefaces, etc.? Want to know about some of the perils and pitfalls to avoid in designing a good book? I was directed to this site by a tweet from The Passive Voice (another great blog to follow, incidentally, regarding the publishing business in general). Take a look. Some great articles there. The one on 7 Things You Can Do Today to Improve Your Book Design is pertinent for many self publishers. But there’s a collection of other articles there, including a nice one on fonts, and another which walks you through print book terminology, …

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#YAsaves and the Wall Street Journal

Leave a Comment / Publishing Business, Writing Aids / By / June 7, 2011

Well, while Robin and my little drama was unfolding (thanks again, all, for the outstanding support!), I completely missed the other big news in reading and literature. On June 4th, the Wall Street Journal published an article by Meghan Cox Gurdon about young adult literature. Her take? That YA lit has over the last few decades become something dark and potentially harmful to teens reading it. The whole article is worth a read, if you haven’t yet. Try not to knee-jerk about it, as you do: look at it from the perspective that this woman is concerned about our youth, …

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Begun, the publishing war has…

Leave a Comment / Publishing Business, Writing Aids / By / May 12, 2011

Who can resist quoting Yoda? OK, back to a more serious note. When Dean Wesley Smith commented a couple of months ago that he saw a war in publishing on the way, and sides already forming up, I really wasn’t sure. I mean, I saw folks who didn’t want to believe things were changing as fast as they were. And I saw a lot of folks still stuck in the “Writer’s Digest” myths. But I sorta thought that people would gradually catch on, and writers would settle into a new world of putting their own stuff up as ebooks and …

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Guest Blog at “Mythos of an Indie”

Leave a Comment / My Writing, Publishing Business, Writing Aids / By / April 25, 2011

J.E. Medrick invites some of the writers for the “Twelve Worlds” anthologies to do a series of interviews and guest blogs over on his site. Mines up now – actually, has been up a few days now, and I’m a little late getting the word out over on my own blog. 😉  Been a busy week though. I wrote about dreams, and how giving up old dreams can be a big factor in the decision to go indie writer, or not. And how it behooves the indie writer to find new dreams to dream…  Upbeat stuff, take a peek!

Interviewed by BCWoods

Leave a Comment / My Writing, Publishing Business, Writing Aids / By / April 6, 2011

A little over a week ago, writer and fellow Twelve Worlds contributor BC Woods asked me if I’d be interested in a long interview-slash-discussion over on his blog. He presented a list of topics he wanted to talk about that looked really interesting, and he complimented me outrageously, so I said “sure”.  😉 I have to admit, I was really curious walking in how a co-written Google Docs article would feel. I’ve been listening to Joe Konrath talk about using Docs for real time collaboration between writers on new fiction, which sounded pretty amazing. He obviously enjoys working that way, …

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Publishing is not a Lottery

Leave a Comment / Publishing Business, Writing Aids / By / March 31, 2011

Joe Konrath ran an interview with Mark Coker of Smashwords the other day. Great interview. Super comments thread. Well worth reading, even the comments, as there’s a lot of meat and Mark takes the time to go in again and again to address various issues folks have had. But there was a repeating strand of thought in the comments, about trying to break down the “odds” of self publishing vs traditional publishing. The thought seemed to be that someone could somehow do the math and show the odds of any given book making as much or more self published as …

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