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Yes, This Post Is About You
Almost every time we post a story or give a “don’t do this” example, we receive emails and phone calls. “Were you talking about me?” Why, yes. Yes we were. Actually, something you did may have reminded us about something someone else did, which reminded us about something else that happened years ago. I’ve been an agent for well over a decade, so I’ve seen …
To Conference We Shall Go!
The American Christian Fiction Writers’ conference (acfw.com) is just around the corner (Sept. 18-23 in Dallas, TX), and I’m seeing increasing buzz online about all the fun attendees are going to have. It’s true, too. Writers’ conferences are a lot of fun, especially those focused on the Christian market. In fact, I’ve equated them to church camp because the feel is very much the same. It’s a …
News You Can Use – Sept. 11, 2012
Never Forget - September 11th
Publishers Forcing a New Genre – Books for 14-35 year olds? Mature themes but packaged younger. Thoughts?
How Much Time is Wasted at Work? – This page and infographic should make everyone pause for a moment. The average worker checks their email 36 times an hour…. Astounding. I would have thought it was more. J
Hats Off to Amazon – Read this article! Mike …
Fun Fridays – Sept. 7, 2012
Amazing musical creation by Mike Tompkins doing a cover of Adele's "Rolling in the Deep." Every sound is from Mike.
Rejuvenate!
By Tamela Hancock Murray
Of late, several popular Christian and secular bloggers have posted about unplugging for a time. I have enjoyed reading their ideas because I realize the importance of rebooting every once in awhile.
Years ago I read an article that said if being laid up with a broken ankle for six weeks sounded good to you, then you are too stressed out. At that moment, I knew I …
News You Can Use – September 4, 2012
Amazon Buys 1,000 Backlist titles from Dorchester - As expected Amazon won the bid for defunct publisher Dorchester. Add these to the 3,000 titles they bought from Avalon in July and you have a serious number of romance backlist titles to offer.
Jonah Lehrer's Plagarism Worse than Originally Thought - Charles Seife analyzes numerous "Wired" articles and the Lehrer's blog and discovers a …
Paid Book Reviews?
by Steve Laube You may have read or heard of the NY Times article where an author admitted to using a now-defunct service that wrote positive online reviews for a fee. Unfortunately I was not surprised. There have been many attempts to game the system over the years. One man bought thousands of his books in various locations to launch it onto the NY Times bestseller list (Read a report about it …
Covering the Cover Letter
This is the last installment of my proposal series. You may think it strange to write about the cover letter last, but usually, it's the last part of the proposal an author writes. Our own Steve Laube has already written about the cover letter here.
His tips are so wonderful that I asked him if I should even attempt this post, but he encouraged me to write from my perspective. So here are key …
What is Your Catalyst?
I loved reading your responses about your catalyst for writing. So may wonderful motivations and stories in the making. Now what I want you to do, is take a look at what you listed as your catalyst and go deeper. And then deeper. Peel back the layers until you find the heartbeat of what is driving you to write. Sometimes its what drives you to write one particular book. Sometimes you’ll find that …