No Titanic Tickets for Traitors

No Titanic Tickets for Traitors

Now that the Death Cultists are feeling their oats over slaying their orange bogeyman, they're planning an unprecedented sacrificial orgy to appease their gods. In their primitive cosmology the only explanation for their 2016 defeat is infidels angering the spirits with their -isms, so atonement must be made by offering…
January 19, 202116 Comments
Aspirational Marketing

Aspirational Marketing

Most folks in newpub unconsciously stumble out of the gate by calling themselves "indie authors". I know I did. But newpub means more than writing. If you go indie, you accept all the responsibilities of an author AND a publisher. As a result of indies' author-centric focus, a lot of…
January 18, 20214 Comments
Newpub Marketing Manual

Newpub Marketing Manual

Embarrassing admission time: I have a chronic case of Boomer tech when it comes to social media. Longtime readers know I relentlessly advocate for elevating publishing out of the oldpub tar pits and into the newpub promised land. I'm the first to ditch obsolete publishing bromides and embrace newly emergent…
December 18, 20202 Comments
The Big Four

The Big Four

A predictive model is only as good as its results. That means a reliable way to assess the value of a business strategy is to look at the projections made by people who employ that strategy. If their predictions based on a given model consistently pan out, it's a good…
November 27, 202010 Comments
Hanging by a Strand

Hanging by a Strand

 A venerable bookstore that's served New York for 93 years may become the Death Cult's next sacrificial victim--by ritual suicide.On Friday book-loving New Yorkers got a shock as the city’s largest bookstore — The Strand — announced that it risked going out of business. A post on Twitter from the…
October 29, 202018 Comments
The Editor Defined

The Editor Defined

Publishing is an old industry that's assembled its own internal lexicon. As you'll find with any trade, publishing jargon can be difficult for laymen--and even authors--to decipher. A widely misunderstood term is the deceptively simple title of editor. When most people; again even some authors, hear the word "editor", they…
August 20, 2020

No Future for Oldpub

Pulp Speed exemplar Dean Wesley Smith isn't exactly bullish on oldpub's long-term prospects. Most writers who break into traditional publishing are done in two books. Maybe three if they are lucky. And when I say most, I would give a conservative guess of 95%, more than likely closer to 99%.…
July 7, 20209 Comments
Neo-patronage

Neo-patronage

Imagine that you're an artist of some sort desiring to make a living through your art. In the case of novelists, this used to mean seeking approval from an agent and then an editor before landing a book deal with one of the big New York publishers. That publishing model…
June 8, 202010 Comments
How Amazon Cut Your Royalties Under Your Nose

How Amazon Cut Your Royalties Under Your Nose

Since the dawn of KDP, indie authors have been questing for the newpub holy grail: that magic formula for earning a living on Amazon. If we rendered KDP in visual terms, it would look like the Valley of the Kings or the Dakota Badlands, with hopeful authors digging away like…
May 14, 202010 Comments
Danger With Opportunity

Danger With Opportunity

One danger that dissenters from Death Cult dogma should regularly remind ourselves of is that the Cult is now the mainstream, so most folks don't share our views on pop culture. Keeping tabs on reactions to my Pop Cult exposé, I've been surprised to see how many ordinary Conservatives--even devout…
April 27, 202018 Comments