Early in the morning last week I arrived to the Philadelphia International Airport for my 10:15 a.m. flight to Columbia, Missouri only to find out that it was delayed. Thanks a lot, Southwest! Anyway, on my way to my departing gate I happened to pass this sad sight. So what was behind the curtain? One of the CEOs [...]
When it comes to thriller writers, Harlan Coben is definitely at the front of the pack. And to help promote his new YA book Shelter, he wrote a little piece for the Wall Street Journal on the three steps to becoming a great writer. Will they guarentee every writer success? No, of course not. Still, [...]
I’m back from visiting Columbia, Missouri and the Hint Fiction Art Show (well, I actually came back earlier this week), but before I do a post about all of that I want to talk about the different kinds of reviews out there in this crazy world wide web of ours. First, though, I want to preface this [...]
For the longest time I made it a point to keep my eye on the publishing industry. Besides keeping up with the GalleyCat and Publishers Weekly feeds in my Google Reader, every Monday, like clockwork, I checked out the new fiction reviews from PW, seeing what was getting the starred reviews and who was publishing them [...]
My friend Nick Kaufmann just did a blog post (or LiveJournal post, which is like a blog wannabe, right?) about some shady shit happening in the publishing world. Here’s some of the post: I was recently contacted by the former book review editor of the Rocky Mountain News about working for the new review website she started, where [...]
Out of all the movies he’s starred in and all the charities he’s donated to and all the organizations he helps, Matt Damon is probably best known for his performance in Team America. But this past Saturday he was down in Washington, D.C. speaking on behalf of teachers everywhere. He was the only celebrity who appeared at [...]
At what point is it acceptable to raise the price of your ebooks? This is the question I’m now struggling with. As this recent article on ebook pricing shows, there are ten rules as found by Vook: 1 Zero variable cost means it’s okay to significantly lower prices to maximize revenue. 2 Optimal pricing is [...]
I have to be honest: I’m getting a little sick of social networking. I could handle Twitter and Facebook just fine (well, I mostly ignore Facebook), but now Google+? As I probably mentioned before, social networking can be a double-edged sword for writers. Sure, you can connect with other writers and readers, but it’s a [...]
Yesterday GalleyCat posted this video from author ReShonda Tate Billingsley about the “Not-So Glamorous Life of a Touring Author” and it got me thinking about the mini Hint Fiction tour back in November. How I think from the outside book tours seem like the coolest things in the world, but in reality they’re a big pain the ass. [...]
