Business Musings: AI: The Year in Review Part 9

I used to train radio news announcers. I trained them how to read live and on air, a skill I learned myself while still in college. In 2021, I took a voiceover class from an impressive-as-hell studio here in Las Vegas, with the full intention that I would somehow get my books into audio. I had hoped to hire a voice actor or two, or […]

Read Me 2 Comments

Business Musings: Exclusivity in 2022 Part Two

The previous post discussed some of the ways to use exclusivity to benefit an indie publishing business. I especially focused on how to think about a short-term exclusive project. The problem comes with long-term or even permanent exclusivity. Normally this business blog is from the writer’s point of view. But it’s always important to understand the overall picture before we take the writer’s eye view […]

Read Me 4 Comments

Business Musings: Audio (2020 in Review)

I have courageously decided to review the year 2020 in publishing. Courageously only applies to me because I actually dread looking at the numbers or the things I remember. 2020 has made me skittish and has forced me to believe everything is a disaster, even when it isn’t. I have already logged a few blogs in this series. I’m writing them and posting them on […]

Read Me 2 Comments

Business Musings: The Future of Audio 2019

Surprisingly, for me, one of the best panels at the Business Master Class this year was on audio. We’ve done audio panels in the past. They’ve dealt with audio books, podcasts, and a whole variety of audio options. Except that in the past, there weren’t as many audio options. The game changer for indies was Audible’s ACX. In the beginning, it was truly wonderful, because […]

Read Me 13 Comments

Good Diving News

I finally got word from Audible that the audio version of the long and mighty Renegat, the next book in the Diving series, has gone into production. Jennifer Van Dyck will be reading the book, which is good news, since she’s done most of the series. I’m told Audible will have the audio version done in time for the September 17 release date for The […]

Read Me Leave comment

Business Musings: Audio (Planning For 2019 Part 4)

Initially, I started this post as a highlight reel of things that we need to pay attention to in 2019, but which I don’t have the time to explore deeply. I started with audio, and although I don’t have the time to explore audio deeply even in this post, just explaining where we are took more words than I had planned. (Please note that I […]

Read Me 16 Comments

Business Musings: Expand Your Target Audience 2: Slow Growth (Branding/Discoverability)

  Writers always believe that they can become a bestseller if they only goose their sales properly. I actually had a brand-new writer scream at me once about this very thing. Back in the early days of Amazon’s Kindle, she had “sold” 50,000 copies of her only novel by giving it away for free. “I’ll take my 50,000 sales over your sales any day,” she […]

Read Me 9 Comments

“Overworked,” Diving, And More!

A new mystery story, an audio book, and some deals. Take a peek!

Read Me 4 Comments

Business Musings: Translations

One of my writerly email groups opened a thread on translations this week. In particular, the group wanted to know about Babelcube, a website where writers and translators can meet and, with luck, work on a project together. On one of my panels at MileHiCon, I had discussed having your books available in other languages. I had mentioned that publishing your own translation was an […]

Read Me 32 Comments

Retrieval Artist Update #3

In April, I went over A Murder of Clones, and fixed the ending. Then I started what I was calling RA 11. I finished it yesterday. The book is now titled Search & Recovery. Today I go over the book I initially thought would come next—The Peyti Crisis

Read Me 6 Comments