Should You Go to College?

Commenter anonme offers some sage advice to college-age readers in response to yesterday's post: As someone who holds a useless humanities degree, I am firmly in the "college is a scam" category. With caveats.  If there is some in the audience who are college age, I am going to attempt…
December 29, 20165 Comments

Self-publishing Costs: One-time Payment or Percentage of Royalties?

As an indie author I wear two hats: writer and publisher. These two job roles involve complementary but markedly different responsibilities and mindsets. A writer's job is to produce the best writing possible so that readers will be pleased. A publisher's job is to get the author's writing into readers'…
December 27, 20162 Comments
Author Marketing 101: Social Media Profiles

Author Marketing 101: Social Media Profiles

A friend and fellow writer recently asked for help building his online brand. Since my advice is generally applicable to any author engaged in online marketing--which should be all them--I thought I'd share it here. Profiles Your profile pages on various social media sites are among your most powerful marketing…
August 17, 20165 Comments

Reader Mail: A Self-Publishing Primer

A new reader sends this request for help navigating the radically transformed publishing landscape: First off, I'd like to congratulate you on the success of the book bomb a couple of weeks ago, and I hope you continue to be successful in your writing career. I have a huge amount…
June 21, 2016
Applied Rhetoric: Fun with Trolls

Applied Rhetoric: Fun with Trolls

A close friend and I were discussing the relative merits of dialectic and rhetoric the other day. He spoke of the invective bafflingly spewed against Christians since the Muslim terrorist attack in Orlando and mentioned debating fellow members of certain online communities on the subject. When I advised him that…
June 20, 20168 Comments

Finding the Time to Blog with Russell Newquist

Author Russell Newquist is one of those ultra-productive people who seem to inhabit a time warp where there are 72 hours in a day. Here he shares his secrets for prolific blogging. Sleep is for the weak. I honestly probably don’t sleep enough. I average six to seven hours of…
June 8, 20162 Comments
How to Set the Price of Your Self-Published Book on Amazon

How to Set the Price of Your Self-Published Book on Amazon

Most publishers are pricing their eBooks too high. How much is an eBook worth? Several factors must be taken into account when attempting to answer that question, and the answer can change depending on the book. Consider Amazon Amazon reserves their best 70 percent royalty rate for eBooks priced between…
January 13, 20162 Comments
How to Handle Character Agency in Your Writing

How to Handle Character Agency in Your Writing

Continuing my loose series on advice for aspiring authors, it's time to address a subject that will leave hardcore outliners scratching their heads, but will have organic/discovery writers nodding in commiseration. That subject is character agency. Or, as frustrated writers lament: "What should I do if my characters want to…
December 16, 2015
How to Write an Effective Amazon Book Description

How to Write an Effective Amazon Book Description

Over the past week or so, my friends and colleagues have been helping me to refine the product description for Souldancer. I'm glad for the help, because as I've said here before, a good product description is one of the most vital elements of successful indie publishing. Like all aspects of…
December 4, 20152 Comments

Bradford Walker on Risk and Failure

Writer Bradford C. Walker posted an insightful criticism of "success culture" over at his blog that I deem worthy of signal boosting and comment. Failure has consequences. You have to survive to learn from it, and you have to survive such that you can recover in a timely manner so…
December 3, 2015