Business Musings: Licensing Opportunities

I think the moment writers dream of being published, they have the same wish. They want to write the books of their heart. They want those books to reach a vast audience, and they want someone else to worry about doing all the things that turn a book from a rectangular object on a shelf into a vast global empire a la Harry Potter. Most […]

Read Me 16 Comments

Business Musings: Bestseller Lists Again (Or Chicken Little Is Wrong. Again.)

In the middle of February, I saw a tweet from Melville House, an independent publisher in Brooklyn, NY, linking to an article of theirs. I followed the link and saw this title: “Into the Bezosphere: The Washington Post will syndicate Amazon Charts.” I was surprised. I had heard nothing about the Post’s new bestseller list. Granted, I’ve been busy and preoccupied this year. Still coping […]

Read Me 7 Comments

Business Musings: Brand Loyalty 1 (Branding/Discoverability)

Brand loyalty—name loyalty—is something that we writers desire, but it’s not something that we can simply will into being. And it certainly doesn’t come about by bribing your reader.

Read Me 22 Comments

Business Musings: The Importance of Fiction

September 11, 2001 was a Tuesday. Here on the Oregon Coast, as in New York City, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C., it was a beautiful fall day. Sun out, clear blue sky. And horrors, everywhere. I was in the middle—quite literally—of writing one of my Smokey Dalton novels. Set in another terrible time in American history, those books are emotionally dark, hard to write, and harder, […]

Read Me 28 Comments

Business Musings: What Traditional Publishing Learned in 2014

I want to say nothing, but that’s not true. Traditional publishers learned a lot these past few years, and in 2014, started putting their knowledge into action. Over the next few weeks, I’ll do the traditional media thing, and provide you with my own sort of year in review. All of it will focus on publishing and writing, both indie and traditional, and all of […]

Read Me 43 Comments

The Business Rusch: The End of the Unprofessional Writer

On July 24, 2012, Canada’s The Globe and Mail published an article titled, “There Will Be No More Professional Writers in The Future.”  The article cites a number of writers, from the ubiquitous Scott Turow to Ewan Morrison who, The Globe and Mail thoughtfully tells me, is “an established British writer.” Morrison says that the advances he’s received from traditional publishers have been slashed to the […]

Read Me 72 Comments

The Business Rusch: Why Not?

The Business Rusch: Why Not? Kristine Kathryn Rusch On TV’s most popular drama series, NCIS, the main character, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, walks through the office, and if he hears a stupid statement, he slaps the speaker on the back of the head. Now, this is fiction, mind you. In any real office, military or not, he’d probably be fired, brought up on charges, or forced […]

Read Me 85 Comments

The Business Rusch: Slush Pile Truths

The Business Rusch: Slush Pile Truths Kristine Kathryn Rusch Every week, people send me links to various publishing articles/blogs I might not have seen.  I cherish those links.  I don’t see everything, and when I’m under severe deadline, like I have been since March, I have no time to ferret out information unrelated to the current project. But last week, at least twenty people (maybe […]

Read Me 103 Comments

The Business Rusch: Bestselling Writers (Changing Times Part Eight)

The Business Rusch: Bestselling Writers (Changing Times Part Eight) Kristine Kathryn Rusch Every single writer I’ve ever met wants to become a bestseller.  Writers want their work read by everyone from their teachers to the grade-school bully to some person in a small unsung island in the Pacific. The problem is that vision of a bestseller is incorrect.  There is no such thing as a […]

Read Me 12 Comments