So, I’ve just spent the past two blog posts talking Brandon Sanderson’s Kickstarter as a game changer in the publishing industry. I know that my posts inspired a few of you to take our free class titled “Kickstarter Best Practices for Writers.” I also know that many of you looked at my posts and mentally […]
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In early January, I arrogantly wrote a post about the year ahead, reminding writers that this was an election year, so they needed to plan for a sales slowdown in the fall. I even said I wasn’t sure if the election would have repercussions in the spring and summer, since I was expecting a protracted […]
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I’m sure you’ve all gotten the question lately: How are you going to survive as a writer with the crisis in the publishing industry? Every news outlet —well, at least every news outlet that reports news other than the latest virus statistics—has done at least one story on the decimation of the publishing industry. And […]
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A fascinating thing happened in the two quiet weeks of the holiday season. Dean and I worked on a publishing challenge, and we learned something by doing so. We always learn when we teach. Always. And Dean loves challenges. Me, not so much. I set my own writing challenges because if someone else tells me […]
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Recently, a couple of my writer friends announced their “book birthdays”—the day their book got published and/or became widely available. I love that phrase “book birthday,” because it is so appropriate to the way we should be thinking about a book release in the modern publishing era. In fact, we should call it a book […]
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At the beginning of this month, Dean publicly announced what the attendees at our Master Business Class already knew: The 2020 Master Business Class will be the last one. The Master Business Class was designed in the height of the disruption almost ten years ago now, when professional writers started scrambling to catch up with […]
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I knew, when we planned this year’s Business Master Class, that bringing in a representative from the Global Licensing Group would be essential for the business-minded writers who were attending. I did not realize how essential. One of the reasons it was so essential was Deidre Manna-Bratten herself. She came in as prepared as a […]
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I never meant to become a public speaker, although I did train for it. I was in competitive forensics (public speaking) in 8th and 9th grade, although I transferred over the debate in high school. Even though I went to State both years (once with a poem I wrote myself), I didn’t like memorizing and […]
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As I’ve worked my way through this series, I’ve panicked many of you. I’ve panicked myself. Switching your focus from being a writer of a few books to running a business based on licensing is a lot of work, not just mentally, but with time management and yes, with money management. If you haven’t read […]
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In the middle of September, an article on Medium.com went viral. In an article titled “How To Lose A Third of A Million Dollars Without Really Trying,” the writer managed to blame everyone but herself for her stunning ignorance of the business of writing and publishing. I wouldn’t normally link to that kind of ignorance, […]
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