Control. It is at the heart of any negotiation. All business owners want to control as much about their businesses as possible. We all know that you can’t control everything in life. That rule also applies to contracts….
Continue ReadingThis poor-poor-pitiful-me attitude has become the norm in the publishing industry right now, and I’m really tired of it.
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Writers miss opportunities all the damn time, because writers are hard to reach. I don’t know why they think they need to be hard to reach, but they are.
Continue ReadingI’ve been watching the reactions to John Scalzi’s 3.4 million dollar book deal with great interest. If you’re not familiar with this particular news story, it might be because you have a life, and because you were doing something with your family on Memorial Day weekend instead of watching the publishing trades. But this one […]
Continue ReadingTechnically, I’m supposed to be on hiatus from writing, blogging, social media–you name it. I’m resting. I finished The Anniversary Day Saga on Saturday. My first readers have the final two books. I have a lot to do on the project when they finish, plus copy edits, and proofs, and all that fun stuff. But […]
Continue ReadingWriters are lucky. Our various communities share information. Some of those communities are online, and some are in person. They’re all subject to horrid infighting (I think writers love to fight more than they like to write), but they can also be very supportive as well. Observant writers will note that we all seem to “grow up” with the same types of writers. And by “grow up,” I mean that new writers will find communities of other new writers and befriend those writers. You might be different ages, but your careers will start at the same time.
Continue ReadingWMG Publishing has Discoverability, the book based on the posts I was writing from November to April, on the schedule for the fall of 2014, which meant I had to get off my butt and assemble those posts into something coherent. I write the pieces, and then I build the bridges to hold them together. This post is one of those bridges…
Continue ReadingI was a bit stunned at the response to last week’s blog, not because the response was negative—it wasn’t—but because so many of you said that you had no idea that writing was a career choice. On a gut level, many of you knew that some of us had made careers as writers, but over […]
Continue ReadingBefore I start this blog post, let me thank everyone who contacted me in one way or another over last week’s blog. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the response. Since I was teaching, I was unable to respond to the comments, but I did read all of them. And now I’m […]
Continue ReadingOn Monday, I spent an hour talking with a very knowledgeable business reporter who works at a well-known business daily newspaper, one you probably read. I didn’t exactly speak to her on what’s called “deep background,” but that ended up being my function. She had found a blog of mine that pertains to an article […]
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