Category: publishing

What Struggles Do Aspiring and Published Nonfiction Authors Face?

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time on planning. Like a lot of writers, I set out to simply write. My degree in magazine journalism turned me into an editor as well as a writer.  And when I was asked to edit a book for someone, I became a book editor as well as [...]

Monday March 26th, 2012 in Author Coaching, Platform, Promotion and Publicity, Proposals, publishing, Publishing Industry, The Business of Writing, Writing Coaching | 2 Comments »

Should You Add Bells and Whistles (like Apps) to Your Books?

I read this recent post by Seth Godin, and it got me thinking about all the different possible things we authors can now do with our content.  Then I thought of an ebook recently published by Julien Smith, The Flinch. It’s free and there’s not much to it but great content. There’s so much great [...]

Wednesday December 28th, 2011 in Book Marketing, E-Books, publishing | No Comments »

Amazon Takes on the New York Publishing Houses

I read something interesting today in the New York Times. It seems Amazon.com has decided to enter the publishing game. Not only does the company now provide aspiring authors with the ability to self-publish POD and e-books–and to read them not only on a Kindle e-book reader but also on the new Kindle Fire–but has [...]

Monday October 17th, 2011 in Print-on-Demand Publishing, publishing, Publishing Industry, Self-Publishing, Traditional Publishing | 1 Comment »

Hard Work Pays Off

Today’s post truly comes from my own experience. I’m here to tell you that hard work pays off. I landed a traditional publishing deal! Whoo hoo! Not only that, the publisher, Writer’s Digest Books, is happy–no thrilled–with my platform, which has been 8-10 years in the making. I often speak about the fact that it [...]

Friday July 8th, 2011 in Author Coaching, publishing, Traditional Publishing | 2 Comments »

Why consider seeking a traditional publishing deal

Aspiring authors ask me the same questions all the time: Why would I want a traditional publishing deal? What does a traditional publisher have to offer me? These questions are coming more often in the wake of stories about indie e-book authors making a mint. My answer to why someone might want a traditional publishing [...]

Friday May 13th, 2011 in publishing, Traditional Publishing | 2 Comments »

Amanda Hocking and Barry Eisler Chat about Publishing

Literary agent Ted Weinstein, who I have the pleasure of seeing each year at the San Francisco Writers Conference, has done us all a favor and gotten Amanda Hocking and Barry Eisler together to chat about publishing and their recent decision about how to publish their own books. They’ve compared indie publishing to traditional publishing–of [...]

Thursday March 31st, 2011 in E-Books, publishing, Publishing Industry, Self-Publishing, Traditional Publishing | No Comments »

Hocking signs 4-book deal so she can be a writer

After I published this post yesterday, today I saw this article announcing that Amanda Hocking had, indeed, signed a four-book deal with St. Martin’s Press in New York, reportedly for $2 million. As she said in her blog, she’s a writer: “I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling emails, formatting covers, [...]

Friday March 25th, 2011 in E-Books, publishing, Publishing Industry, Self-Publishing, The Business of Writing | 1 Comment »

Will you pick yourself or wait to be picked?

In a recent blog post, best-selling author and marketing expert made this statement:”No one is going to pick you. Pick yourself.” He was talking about the fact that authors and musicians are making millions without so-called “gatekeepers.”  and that the gatekeepers–”the pickers,” as Godin called them–are losing power. He stressed that most of us want [...]

Friday March 25th, 2011 in Blogging, publishing, Publishing Industry, Self-Publishing, Traditional Publishing | No Comments »

Self-Publishing E-books Takes Time Away from Writing

I said it yesterday, unless you have a huge platform, are paying someone to do your promotion for you, have hired a design team (an editorial team is assumed), and use some sort of support service for your publishing process, as an indie publisher–e-books or print books–you will not necessarily have more time to write. [...]

Thursday March 24th, 2011 in Author Coaching, E-Books, publishing, Publishing Industry, Self-Publishing | 1 Comment »

Do You Need an ISBN for Your Ebook?

In yesterday’s post, my expert guest blogger, Sue Collier, discussed whether or not writers planning on self-publishing their books should purchase their own International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs). As I explained, I asked her to address this issue because I plan on self-publishing a few books, and I wanted to understand the issue more completely. [...]

Friday March 11th, 2011 in E-Books, publishing, Self-Publishing | No Comments »