Month: October 2012

Indie News Beat: All the Fun of Frankfurt

The Frankfurt Book Fair is one of the highest-profile fairs on the calendar. But now it’s been a few years since the meteorite of self-publishing hit the world of books, just how well are the mainstream dinosaurs coping with avoiding extinction?

Finally, they appear to be accepting that Indie Authors are here to stay. Writing for paidcontent, the interestingly-named Laura Hazard Owen began her report with the book-with-the-unmentionable-title, which, somewhat worryingly, is being held up as the perfect example of the self-published goldmines that potentially await the mainstreams. Of course, now that E. L. James’s trilogy is rumoured to have sold over 50 million copies, big-hitting mainstream people are lining up to point out that she couldn’t have done it without them, and that thanks to Random House, her “relatively modest success” was turned into a “maelstrom of money”. Continue reading “Indie News Beat: All the Fun of Frankfurt”

Avoiding Self Publishing Calamity

Author Lenore Skomal

by Lenore Skomal

17,500 readers uploaded my Kindle version of Bluff, my debut novel, thanks to the free giveaway promotion KDP Select offers. That was the count halfway through day three of the promotion.

I wish I could have enjoyed that number. But I couldn’t. I was too busy panicking about the fact that so many people had downloaded an unreadable version of my book.

Unreadable you say? How could that be? Especially with the previewer that KDP offers to check your Kindle file after it’s uploaded. I would have said you’re right about that, except now I know different. Uploading a file to Kindle isn’t infallible. Continue reading “Avoiding Self Publishing Calamity”

Bob Hammond, Author at Large

Hi everyone. I’m Bob Hammond. You probably know me as the author of international runaway bestselling series such as Fifty Shades of Twilight and The Hunger Game of Thrones. I’m kind of a big deal.

I’m here because I care about people—little people like you. Also, I lost a bet to Hise, but mostly, the caring thing.

The upshot is that I’ll be putting my very valuable expertise and experience at your disposal for as long as it takes for the check to clear. You’ll be getting tips and access to insights from a Diamond-level member of the Very Prestigious Author’s Association (VPAA). Don’t bother trying to look up the VPAA, you can’t. You don’t look them up—they look you up, and then only if they’re interested in you. And they’re not. Continue reading “Bob Hammond, Author at Large”

NaNoWriMo Survival Tips

Okay, folks. You’ve heard your friends talking about this NaNoWriMo business. That it’s supposed to be SO much fun. That this wicked awesome month-long writing exercise put on every November will rev up your creativity and caffeinate your muse or whatever else you call that clump of ganglia that drops words into your brain and out your typing fingers. Yeah. It’s fun. I’ve done it five times. You watch the little thermometer fill up as your word count rises. You get scared and want to pump more stimulants into your body to keep up with your friends. They all seem to have cooler titles than yours, fleshed-out plot descriptions….heck, some of them even have PLOTS. And you, you pantser, all you have is an idea that came to you while you were out shopping for Halloween kiddie kibble. Urged on by all your writer friends on FaceTwit, you sign up. And then the panic starts. Fifty thousand words. Thirty days. You do the math. (Seriously, you do it. I hate math.) How the heck…? With a spouse? Kids? A job? And if you’re American, with all the little frilly white things you need to make to go over the Thanksgiving turkey’s feet? What’s up with that, anyway? Decorating a dead carcass with lace garters? No wonder the rest of the world hates us. Continue reading “NaNoWriMo Survival Tips”