Recently, I was invited as a guest on an episode of The Merry Writer Podcast, the long-running, writing-related podcast recorded by Ari Meghlen and Rachel Poli.
Our topic was “How Do You Talk About Your Writing To People?” Those who know me know that it’s both a subject near and dear to my heart and something I struggle with on an almost daily basis.
A subject that pops up from time to time in self-publishing circles is pricing. How much is too much? Is there even such a thing as too cheap? Do readers treat free books differently than they would books they have to buy? And is there even such a thing as a consensus opinion these days?
The truth is that there are a lot of factors that go into a pricing decision and many of those factors are external in nature. With the release of The Italian Screwjob somehow only two weeks away, I thought I’d take you all on a quick trip through the modern day theme park ride that is my strategy for pricing.
Lately, it feels like all I’ve been doing is counting down to releases, announcing promotions, and kvetching about the year 2020. As much fun as all of that is for me, my goal with this blog was to have a mix of book updates AND writing-related thoughts. I’m not big on giving writing tips, because…
As you may have heard, I’m releasing a book, See These Bones, in just under three weeks. In a perfect world, that would involve a single step: click publish and you’re done.
This is not a perfect world.
For the past month, work on my other books has taken a back seat to preparing for my book launch. I’ve covered some of those details already, from the cover to the live-action book trailer. Today, I want to talk about the book itself and what it’s taken to get it ready for release. I also want to discuss the pricing, which is a way more complicated subject than you’d expect.
Late August is upon us, and if there was any good and justice left in the world, I’d be unveiling the cover for See These Bones and talking about the forthcoming release.
Narrator: There was no good and justice left in the world. Both had taken an ill-timed vacation to Mars. Don’t nuke Mars, Elon!
Instead, I’m still where I was last month, which says dire things about my anticipated fall release. In lieu of shiny book-related treats to share, I decided to instead whip up a guide to self-publishing, leveraging my vast stores of non-existent experience and a passing familiarity with the general concept of humor.
As one of the many residents of “Writer Twitter”, I participate in a fair number of writer-centric hashtag games. Some are great ways to introduce yourself to fellow authors, some provide an opportunity to dig into what makes your manuscript work (or not work), and others are just there for silly fun. Last week, #TheMerryWriter…
It’s been more than a month since I posted the final installment of my short story, The Stars That Sing. Now that the dust has settled, I thought it would be fun to do a quick retrospective. What went well? What went poorly? What is the sure-fire secret to overnight internet fame and success? I…
“In a field / I am the absence / of field. This is / always the case. Wherever I am / I am what is missing.” – Mark Strand, “Keeping Things Whole” In art, there’s a concept called negative space. Negative space is the space that exists around the subject. If your artwork…
“Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.” -Samuel Beckett After a month in which I wrote almost nothing, I thought it would be appropriate to focus this blog post on the value of writing less. By that, I don’t mean writing breaks. I mean giving your words, your characters, and your…
See These Bones Status: “Done” (136,344 words) After somewhere between seven and nine months of writing, I finished the first draft of See These Bones last night. I then imported the manuscript into Calibre, converted it to mobi format, dropped it on my Kindle, posted a quick Facebook status update to crow about being…
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