Every morning, I read two or three newspapers on my iPad. One of those papers, The Los Angeles Times, has continued to showcase an editorial about the “death” of the self-published author. (I refuse to link to this thing; look it up yourself if you’re curious.) Okay, the article’s not really the death of the […]
Continue ReadingCaught you, didn’t I? You’ve been looking at your numbers again. You’ve been reading those doom-and-gloom articles about the fact that online sales are down for indie writers. You’ve read those silly year-end blogs by people who have not a clue about how business works who predict that Amazon with either shut down its Kindle […]
Continue ReadingProbably the most popular blog post I’ve written in the Business Rusch series appeared in May, 2011. Geared toward traditionally published writers and new writers coming in, “Writing Like It’s 1999” explains how the many truths of publishing from the last century are no longer truths, but myths. The post gets reprinted often. It’s part […]
Continue ReadingFrom 1991 to 2009, my entire career was about the failure to get my books to the readers who wanted them. Every week, I’d get a letter or an e-mail from a fan: Dear Ms. Rusch, Did you know that the fourth book of your Fey series is impossible to find? Do you have an […]
Continue ReadingI should never read the comments on other people’s writing information blogs. The comments discourage me, generally for one of two reasons. If the blog is about traditional publishing, and the authors are traditionally published only with no desire to change, I get discouraged at the amount of misinformation. If the blog is about indie […]
Continue ReadingThis week came the news that Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program will offer its content providers a 70% royalty on all sales made in India—provided the content providers go with Kindle Select only. For those of you who don’t know, Kindle Select requires exclusivity from anyone who joins it. You can’t market your work on […]
Continue ReadingI started this small series on deal breakers two weeks ago, in response to Novelists, Inc’s request for an update of an article that I gave them last August. I thought such an update would be easy until I read the article itself. Then I realized just how much had changed in the last year. […]
Continue ReadingDean Wesley Smith and I have spent a good part of this summer teaching, as well as talking to other professional writers. One thing we discuss is the history of the business because it helps us understand how we got to where we are. In the beginning, publishing was a handshake operation. Writers and publishers […]
Continue ReadingIf you read mainstream publishing news, like I do, occasionally your head will explode. Or you’ll run around in a panic, turning into one of those long-haired barefoot New Yorker cartoon characters, carrying a sign saying that the world is about to end. For many in traditional publishing, the world is ending. Their clout is […]
Continue ReadingIn the traditional news cycle, politicians, major organizations, and anyone with a PR brain dump stories into the week before Memorial Day (and sometimes the week after) in the hopes that no one will notice. Generally speaking, no one does notice because most of America is focused on the three-day weekend and the unofficial start […]
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