4 Links To Overcome Publishing Despair

The road to publication is filled with pain and tears… bloodshed… mayhem…. I’m being melodramatic here. Of course, that could just be that I’ve recently read several posts about how painful the publication process can be and how difficult it is to write good fiction. Here’s a small sampling: “This is literally years of work you’re seeing. [...]

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Improve Your Writing with these Editing Tips by Dustin Wax

Sorry folks, but this cold virus is really causing havoc here, so I’ve decided to do you all a favor (read: not write anything in gibberish as that seems to be how I’m speaking today ) and repost Improve Your Writing with these Editing Tips by Dustin Wax. He’s got some great advice I think [...]

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7 Links To Help Every Writer With Taxes

Death and taxes, the two unavoidables in life. Thankfully there are people and web sites out there to help us slot all those numbers in the correct places on the correct forms and keep us from having to visit with a friendly IRS agent because we’ve gotten “creative” with the numbers. Here are 7 links [...]

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3 Rules For Writing A Good Book Review

I blame academia for my inability to fully enjoy movies, television shows and books. Okay, so earning my BA in English isn’t the only reason I find it difficult to enjoy those things. A lot of it has to do with being an Independent Author and valuing well-written stories over flash. I cannot sit down [...]

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Ebook Buyers: Can You Afford To Lose Them?

I recently read a guest post by Chris Keys, author of The Fishing Trip – A Ghost Story and Reprisal!: The Eagle Rises!, about the difficulties of selling self-published books.  According to Chris, he’s only sold about a dozen books.  It seems typical of independent authors, but here’s the catch: I looked for Chris’ book [...]

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Publisher’s Weekly Decision A Wake-up Call

Publisher’s Weekly has announced that they will begin “showcasing” self-published books in a “special” quarterly supplement — for a price. That price includes only a listing and brief book description, no review unless you’re one of the few the staff deems “worthy.” Worthy? I’ve read plenty of highly acclaimed traditionally published books that I found [...]

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3 Ways To Boost Potential Book Sales Using Samples

I was recently browsing the blogosphere for eBooks on self-publishing and blogging when I came across Kristen Lamb’s eBook We Are Not Alone: The Writer’s Guide to Social Media. It sounds like a very interesting read based on the blurb at Who Dares Wins Publishing. Will I buy it? Not without a lot of thinking [...]

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5 Self-Publishing Lessons I Learned From My Toddler

It’s amazing, being a mother of a toddler, how much this little girl has taught me in just the 1 1/2 years she’s been with us. What’s even more amazing is that many of those lessons can be applied to self-publishing. Lesson #1: Anything worth doing takes time. My daughter has been a little slow [...]

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Editing With or Without a Budget

Editing. Possibly one of the most loathed words in a writer’s vocabulary. It’s a necessary evil, but with the right tools and some help from people who understand what you’re doing you won’t need to put it under getting a root canal on your to-do list. The first thing you need to do is to [...]

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Success Feels Like Failure

Last Sunday I had a wonderful thing happen in my absence at church. My mother (who is one of my biggest fans ) took my book to her Sunday school class and, for lack of a better description, “marketed” it. Before the class was over there was a volunteer to write up an article for [...]

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