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It strikes me that in long essays, certain facts get lost. I wish to break them out here. 1) The purpose of writing for commercial distribution (electronic or print) is to make a profit. This means you have more money coming to you than you have flowing away from you. As with any business, you […]

There’s a stigma to self-publishing, and we all know it. Why? Because, in the past, self-published books have sucked. A lot of self-published work today sucks. And when I use that word, it’s a technical term. Face it, most self-published books are a pig-in-a-poke. Looks good, but you can’t be sure. If it’s a physical […]

One of the things that keeps being bruited about in this discussion over digital books and pricing is a question of how much digital books really cost. The base cost of a book, of course, determines its final price. Repeatedly people have come out and said that the production costs of an ebook is fairly […]

My post yesterday, Authors Can Be Stupid: Please Feed The Authors, can seem to have been rather unsympathetic to authors who are caught in the Amazon-Macmillan fight. They could very well be in a difficult position, and panic can be expected. I have no idea what percentage of sales go out through Amazon, but it’s […]

I’m not going to name any names, but as we move into the digital era, there is a spurious argument that gets brought up from time to time by authors who really ought to know better. It pretty much points out that a) most of us are not good dollars & cents kinds of folks […]

The latest issue of The Secrets newsletter is up and available for subscribers. In this issue I go through all the parameters of how to create a likable character—someone the readers warm to fairly quickly and consistently. It’s one of the toughest things to do in fiction, and writers always run the risk of becoming […]

I am not referring to the rainstorms lashing Arizona, though I could be. Weird thing, rainstorms in a desert. Having grown up in New England, I’m used to rain. The ground usually soaks it in. Not here. The ground is like adobe brick, so the water sheets off. Now I enjoy hydroplaning down the highway […]