The post last week by Linda, Independent Writer? Team Player? Can you be Both? really resonated with me. Photo by Maryann Miller Since I was born on the Fourth of July there has been a strong independent streak down my back a mile wide, and it did take me a bit longer than some others to appreciate the benefits of joining a team. Whether that be a critique group, or even later joining with other authors in a group blog, such as this one, or banding together for marketing and promotions. In some ways, marketing was a little simpler for the author before the advent of the Internet - thank you Al Gore, LOL - and all the social media outlets. If we were lucky enough to have a book accepted for publication, often the publishing house would do the marketing, and we were encouraged to make a few bookstore appearances, but that was all. Of course we all know how different that was for big name authors. For us in the mid-list, we were encouraged to write the next book, respond to fan ...

Photo by Bonnie Burton, courtesy of the Star Wars photostream on Flickr The term ‘stage mom’ provokes an instant, visceral reaction in most of us. We immediately conjure up images of pushy parents, barging into agent’s offices or haranguing a director for more screen or stage time, or else we picture painfully young girls dressed in puffy dresses with make-up. It’s not necessarily a pretty sight. But I have to say, from my years in theater, there is a good side to stage mom-ery. Those are the moms who get up early every day, make sure their child has a nourishing breakfast, drives them to classes and lessons and auditions, and supports them every step of the way in their dream of greatness. As writers—yep, you guessed it—we need to be stage moms for our book babies. We’re the ones who brought them into the world, after all. We’re the ones who have to get them looking their best, make sure they’re ready to go out there in the world, and we’re the ones who have to be thei...

In the first installment on Wednesday we ended the post with the following question and comment: What does a writer do who doesn’t want to hustle – just write? It’s a growing worry for many authors, and it will get worse. Now let’s fast forward to the year 2015. Let’s imagine self-publishing has matured. It’s accepted and respected in the publishing world. A lot of successful self-publishers have begun to ask themselves: what do I really want to do with the rest of my life? Become another J. A. Konrath and work 18/24 to boost my Kindle ratings? Or hype myself perpetually at Facebook, Google+ and Twitter? Or mount a thousand blog tours? Again, do I write or hustle? What happened to my dream of being an author, a person who writes fiction, not advertisements?  Maybe they thumb through that list of literary agents, long scorned. They decide that the traditional publishing route might have some merits after all. Goodbye to hard labour. Let the publisher do the hustlin...

As a writer and editor of novels, I found May’s theme to be challenging. Even after completing a Writer’s Digest course in short-story writing twenty-five-plus years ago, I favored the longer, more complex content of the book-length tale—and I still do, both for reading and for writing.   Recently, however, an author whose fantasy novel I had edited decided to write companion short stories to give her readers some background on the main characters in her published book. The shorts, which range from 30 to 40 pages in length, will be made available to readers who want to know a bit of the back story that led up to the moment where the book started. It was an interesting idea to me, and I found myself quite taken with the history and events that shaped her characters into the beings that populated her novel.   The more I read, the more I saw the value in these peeks into a character’s past—particularly in the case of life forms from alien worlds. Having said that, I believe ...

More and more writers are opting out of publishing via the traditional route: author to agent to publisher to reader. They’re now cutting out the agent and publisher steps and going straight from author to reader. Doing that means authors will have to take on more of the work themselves. Some may opt to hire experts to help: an editor, someone to lay out the book, a cover artist, a printer to produce the book. Even if the writer plans to go straight to e-books and bypass print books, there is still much to do: the layout of the book, a cover artist, an editor, and learning how to create an ebook. And in either case, the author must be prepared to promote the book. On a listserv I follow there’s been a lot of talk about Kindle and raising your stats and sales by offering one book for free. For many authors, that seems to be working. If you don’t have a backlist, it doesn’t work as well, though. So, how do you promote? The same way authors have always promoted. Book tours help. The...

My suspense novel, One Small Victory , has recently been released in Turkey - my first foreign sale.  Dani, our fearless leader here on The Blood Red Pencil, asked how the sale came about, and since that involved some teamwork,  the story of how it happened fits our June theme of teamwork. The book was originally published in 2008 hardback by Five Star Cengage/Gale and had moderate success there. Then I published it as an e-book myself via Smashwords in 2010, where it is available for a number of electronic devices. Later I published it directly to Kindle, and in February of this year a small publisher, Books We Love Publishing Partners, brought out a paperback version via CreateSpace .  Once the book was available in all those formats and venues, the challenge was how to let readers find it in the midst of all the millions of books available for the e-readers.  I joined several online groups that focus primarily on e-books and how to market them. Member...