Author: Lynne Cantwell

Lynne Cantwell grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan. She worked as a broadcast journalist for many years; she has written for CNN, the late lamented Mutual/NBC Radio News, and a bunch of radio and TV news outlets you have probably never heard of, including a defunct wire service called Zapnews. But she began as a fantasy writer (in the second grade), and is back at it today. She currently lives near Washington, DC. Learn more about Lynne at her blog and at her Amazon author page.

When You Can’t Win for Losing

Come on, admit it – you have award envy. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be able to describe him- or herself as an “award-winning author”? Why, it’s almost as good as “bestselling author,” and easier to achieve. All you have to do is win a contest. And there are a blue billion contests out there. One of those trophies must have your name on it already, right?

Not so fast. There are decent, well-run contests, and then there are people who want to part you from your hard-earned money without giving you much in return. Just like with everything else in this business, you should do your homework before you plunk down your money.

When you’re perusing a writing contest listing, examine these things to make sure you’re not getting fleeced: Continue reading “When You Can’t Win for Losing”

Publish it with PubIt?

For the past nine months or so, I’ve been conducting an experiment. Instead of letting Smashwords handle distribution of my new ebooks to Barnes & Noble, I’ve been uploading them directly to B&N by using PubIt, their dedicated ebook publishing system. The royalty is slightly higher by going directly through B&N (65 percent on ebooks priced at $2.99 and higher, compared to 60 percent when you go through Smashwords). Plus I thought I might get paid faster if I cut out the middleman and uploaded my books directly to B&N. Continue reading “Publish it with PubIt?”

The End of the World

On the 21st of December, 2012, Harried Author got up, put on his dressing gown, and headed down the stairs to get the paper. As he passed his computer, he sighed. His WIP was due to his agent in less than forty-eight hours, but he hadn’t been able to write a word in several days.

He sighed again and fetched the newspaper inside. Then he went to make a cup of tea. As he picked up the teapot with a towel, so as not to burn his hand, the glaring headline on the front page of the paper caught his attention: Continue reading “The End of the World”

Setting the Hook

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about how to craft a news release. If you missed it, you can find it here. And Kat wrote a post about distributing your release, which you can find here.

But writing the release and distributing it are only part of the battle; what you want is to hook an actual reporter, so that he or she actually reads the thing and writes a news story about it. We’ve had a few posts about hooking the media on your story idea – in fact, here’s one. But while theory is nice, I thought it might be helpful to watch hook-setting in action. Continue reading “Setting the Hook”