Archive | Essays RSS feed for this section
My Conan Adventure: Part One

My Conan Adventure: Part One

I have to start this adventure forty years ago, when I was thirteen. That’s when I first discovered Conan. I have to start there because the boy in Vermont reading those books, falling in love with Belît, thrilling to the adventures of the Cimmerian, never would have believed it possible that he’d have written a […]

Read more
Price isn’t the point

Price isn’t the point

Discussions have been raging for a while among self-published authors about ebooks and price points. They break down into three major schools: The Buck Stops Here School. For these folks, 99 cents is the price point. They see a lot of sales of books at that price point, figuring that no one is going to […]

Read more
Swimming Lessons for House Slaves: You can’t make a living swimming

Swimming Lessons for House Slaves: You can’t make a living swimming

One of the myths being purveyed by the seriously entrenched House Slaves—the career House Slaves if you will—is this: “You can’t make a living epublishing.” They’ll cite all sorts of numbers, proving that their income from ebooks is but a paltry fraction of what they make through traditional publishing. To abandon traditional publishing and jumping […]

Read more
When is Crap crap?

When is Crap crap?

In a recent blogpost, J. A. Konrath addressed the fears by some writers that their quality work will sink unnoticed, unloved and (worst of all) unpurchased in the great “Tsunami of crap” resulting from everyone self-publishing. He quite correctly notes that this fear is nonsense and promulgated by house slaves. He suggests that their predictions […]

Read more
Swimming Lessons for House Slaves: No one will swim for you.

Swimming Lessons for House Slaves: No one will swim for you.

Dean Wesley Smith and Kris Rusch have done some great posts about the economics of digital publishing and turmoil that the independent publishing revolution is causing among writers. As brilliant as the essays are, and they really are must-reading, the comments readers have posted in response reveal two things. First, there are a lot of […]

Read more
Homeland Security Services

Homeland Security Services

I’ve not been blogging much in the last two weeks, but I have a good excuse. Much better than “My dog degaussed my thumbdrive,” or whatever the kids say these days. Here it is: I wrote a novel. This novel is really important for a number of reasons that I’ll go into below. First, let […]

Read more
The Lessons of Phoenix Comicon

The Lessons of Phoenix Comicon

Phoenix Comicon was, as always, a wonderful and classy experience. Matt Solberg and his organization run a fantastic show which has grown like topsy. Each year more and more people show up, and each year I do better and better selling books and other items from my table. I gave my 21 Days to a […]

Read more