Contemplating my mortality and being obsessively organized, I have given considerable thought to what happens when I die. Having dealt with our parents’ deaths has reinforced the need to think about the logistics of dismantling the detritus of a lifetime. There are special matters that must be addressed upon a writer’s death. If you are a traditionally published writer, you have a contract with a publisher and an agent. In the digital age and with self-publishing, the list is a little longer. 1) How will your outstanding royalties be paid? Are they paid into a business account or a personal account? Will that account be closed? If the payments are direct deposited, the executor of your will must change the bank account information for payments. If the account belongs to a corporation that will remain intact, the payments can continue as is. 2) Who will you give access? If you self-publish, make certain you leave instructions as well as your sign-on and passwords fo...

Terry Odell, Mark L. Lefevbre of Kobo, David Boop I had the great fortune of winning one of two Kobo scholarships to a local writing seminar that took place last week. I'm sharing tidbits I picked up—the conference was focused on the publishing business, and inspiring aspiring authors. (I'm sure there's an editorial term for that last phrase.) I'm also recapping more sessions at my blog , which will be ongoing. For me, the experience was especially eye-opening because although a writer is a writer, we're not running in the same circles, and there are different approaches. These seminars were organized by a group of Science Fiction and Fantasy authors (with one romance author as a speaker), and their roads to success take different paths than mystery and romance authors. We tend to measure our success by our Amazon rankings, or royalty checks, so meeting these "successful" people whom I'd never heard of (nor had they heard of me), was...