On April 2, 2009, I began what I called an experiment. I decided to write an entire book, section by section, online every week. It took me 18 months of weekly posts to finish the book, which is called The Freelancer’s Survival Guide. By that point, I had thousands of weekly followers who came here […]
Continue ReadingThis week, I finished reading a bad book by one of my favorite authors. Well, “finished reading” isn’t accurate. “Paged through the last half” is probably better. The book was astoundingly bad. The author decided to go 50 Shades of Grey on me when she’d never written more than a fade-to-black sex scene before. But […]
Continue ReadingIt is the last day of February, 2013, and by now, traditional publishing should have mailed its holiday cards with the gleeful misquote attributed to Mark Twain on the cards’ interior: The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. Not that there were actual news reports of the death of traditional publishing. But if you […]
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 […]
Continue ReadingWriters believe that all editors are created equal. They also seem to believe that all editors are gods. Greek or Roman gods, gods of myth, gods who are spectacular one day and horrible the next. Not Coyote, necessarily, but Athena one day and Ares a day later. One day brilliant, the next trying to start […]
Continue ReadingI keep storing up links and information to share on this blog. I always imagine those bits of found knowledge will become a column all by themselves, but some are too short and self-explanatory for that. Others simply reinforce things I’ve discussed in previous blog posts. So, I’ve decided to do an information round-up this […]
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 ReadingI spent the holidays seeing movies. I expected to relax. I did not expect to find a blog topic, but I did. Two of the movies I saw, Jack Reacher, and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, came from books. Both films had a different approach to the book’s fan base. In one case, it might […]
Continue ReadingIf you’re a regular reader of this blog, you probably think I make a business decision every time I sit down to write. You might assume that I have audience-tested my ideas and have planned my next works in excruciating market-approved details. And if you think any of that, you would be wrong. When I […]
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 Reading