When Amazon announced that indie authors other than Hugh Howey would be allowed to offer their e-books on pre-order, the timing couldn’t have been better for me to give it a try. I was in the midst of planning my next book release. The description was ready, the categories and keywords chosen, and I’d just sent the final draft of the manuscript out for copyediting. Continue reading “What You Need to Know about Amazon Pre-ordering”
Author: Laurie Boris
Laurie Boris is a freelance writer, editor, proofreader, and former graphic designer. She has been writing fiction for over twenty-five years and is the award-winning author of four novels. She lives in New York’s lovely Hudson Valley. Learn more about Laurie at her website and her Amazon author page.
Cross Training: It’s For Writers, Too
Before a series of accidents and injuries took me out of the game for good, I was a competitive runner. Not a very good one, because my choice of parents gave me tiny little legs and a lack of speed, but I enjoyed lacing up my sneaks and getting out on the road—the discipline, the feeling of accomplishment, the community. Then, somewhere around the death of disco, those experts in the running community began sounding a drumbeat about cross training. If all you did was run, they said, it increased your chances of getting bored, getting burned out, and yes, getting injured. So, along with running, I played racquetball. I race-walked. I took up yoga. I swam. I lifted weights. Not only did this stave off my eventual need to quit the sport, it helped me segue into different activities that kept me fit and generally sane without the need to sign half my income over to physical therapists and chiropractors. Continue reading “Cross Training: It’s For Writers, Too”
Keep Writing, Keep Improving
Like a number of my author friends, I took a good long inventory of my publications when Kindle Unlimited went live. There are, and probably will be, so many variables to the success of this program, and I’m leaving those for the other minions to write about. In fact, Lynne Cantwell wrote a really good article about KU recently. But I needed to make some calls about my own participation. Did I want to move any stories back into KDP Select? Move any out? Write a couple new ones for the program? A tough call, because recently I’d spent some time and energy prepping three titles for Smashwords and their online distributors. Continue reading “Keep Writing, Keep Improving”
What One Persistent Bird Taught Me about Book Promotion
Some of you might know that for what seems like the last three months, a male cardinal has been smashing into my kitchen windows. Repeatedly. When he’s not hurling his tiny body against the glass, he’s staring up at us, glowering, as if we should do something about his problem. Or at least make him some coffee. We have named him Napoleon. I’ve tried every remedy friends have suggested to get him to stop doing this, but every morning there he goes, flinging his little body at his own reflection, thinking it’s an intruder threatening his domestic bliss with Mrs. Napoleon. Since he doesn’t seem to be going away, I figure that perhaps he’s here to teach me a few things, such as: Continue reading “What One Persistent Bird Taught Me about Book Promotion”