Sanderson’s Law

Sanderson’s Law

Authors are just as prone to cognitive dissonance when received wisdom about the publishing industry is challenged, as this series of tweets demonstrates. That tweet is not a statement of personal preference or opinion. It is based on objective market data. As of this writing, the top three books in…
December 12, 201719 Comments
A Deal They Can’t Refuse

A Deal They Can’t Refuse

Bradford Walker offers some sound advice to media conglomerates who are overzealous about guarding their IPs. Yesterday I posted Razorfist's recreation of a lost episode of The Shadow radio show. In the video, he mentions that he's gotten nastygrams from the IP owner, Conde Nast. The now-infamous Axanar incident shows…
November 2, 20174 Comments
Work for Hire Pros and Cons

Work for Hire Pros and Cons

Over at Walker's Study, Bradford Walker informs authors about the pros and cons of work for hire projects. Here's Bradford: I'm talking about this because, if you are at all serious about paying bills by writing fiction, then you're going to consider taking Work For Hire contracts. That's you as…
October 14, 201711 Comments
How to Polish Your Prose

How to Polish Your Prose

In the latest installment of Geek Gab: On the Books, I draw from my editing experience to offer writing advice to aspiring authors. How do you avoid the most common writing mistakes made by new authors? How can authors identify and break bad writing habits? Why does second person POV…
October 5, 2017
Authors: Control Your IPs

Authors: Control Your IPs

Author Kristine Kathryn Rusch hammers home the importance of intellectual property rights and observes how decades of tradpub conditioning has left most authors woefully inept at controlling their IPs. I wrote the following sentence to someone who wanted to take my entire IP in a series for a pittance: I’ve…
September 21, 201716 Comments
The Thinking Man

The Thinking Man

Bradford Walker contrasts the thinking man's pulp hero with the more familiar Man of Action over at PulpRev.com. The Fighting-Man is the default protagonist, but there are other archetypes. They arose out of defining themselves against the Fighting-Man, often in the form of a tradeoff: he's really good at (X)…
September 12, 20175 Comments
DBZ Syndrome

DBZ Syndrome

Author JD Cowan warns writers against making the same mistake with superpowered heroes that Toriyama did with Dragon Ball Z. There's always been a problem getting superpowers across in fiction. For instance, Superman has almost no defined limits to his abilities, which is fine for a Superman tale but it…
September 7, 201711 Comments
The Story of a New Author

The Story of a New Author

Ultra-prolific indie author Dean Wesley Smith, he of Pulp Speed fame, tells the story of every debut tradpub novel you see advertised in Locus or Publishers Weekly. Here is the story… — Author spent years wanting to be a writer. — Author rewrote that “special snowflake novel,” following all guidelines,…
September 5, 201713 Comments
Amazon Keywords

Amazon Keywords

Author David J. West, a.k.a. James Alderdice joined Daddy Warpig, Dorrinal, and myself on Geek Gab to discuss his new book BRUTAL and share his Amazon marketing secrets. In this episode, you will learn: How to pick Amazon keywords to successfully market your book Whether indie authors can benefit from…
August 28, 2017
Reader Mail: Writing Resources

Reader Mail: Writing Resources

A reader writes: I've been reading the exhortations of John C. Wright, Sarah Hoyt, you, and others for some time about the creation of better art; the coining of the term "Superversive" on L. Jagi Lamplighter's blog felt like a much-needed call to rise up from prison.  Indeed, Daddy Warpig's…
August 24, 20172 Comments