Business Musings: What Traditional Publishing Says It Does Best

Once upon a time, a writer taking on a big publisher like that remained secret, partly so that the writer could sell another book. (Even then, the large publisher would often bad-mouth the writer in private to any other publisher who would listen.)

Times have changed.

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Business Musings: Things Indie Writers Learned in 2014

I’d love to say nothing, but that’s not true—if we’re discussing indie writers who have remained in the business for several years. There will always be new indie writers who know very little, and there will always be those with “experience” who turn a year or two worth of sales into a know-it-all platform. However, those indie writers who’ve been at this since the beginning […]

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The Business Rusch: Reality Check

 The beginning of November marks the start of the holiday season here in the United States. Right after Halloween, retailers pretend that they’re helping everyone decide what to buy for Thanksgiving meals, but in reality, they’re trying to get customers into the stores for the day after Thanksgiving or Black Friday. For writers, November 1 marks the beginning of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. […]

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The Business Rusch: Watching The Numbers

 I should never read the comments on other people’s writing information blogs. The comments discourage me, generally for one of two reasons. If the blog is about traditional publishing, and the authors are traditionally published only with no desire to change, I get discouraged at the amount of misinformation. If the blog is about indie publishing, I get discouraged because successful indie publishing writers think […]

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The Business Rusch: Bestseller Lists and Other Thoughts

The Business Rusch: Bestseller Lists and Other Thoughts Kristine Kathryn Rusch On Tuesday, in my morning business reading, I came across a rather startling statistic: the claim that it only took 20,000 sales of paper books to hit the paper bestseller lists. I’m also assuming the statistic means paper; it might mean that it takes 20K to hit any bestseller list, which is still shockingly […]

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The Business Rusch: Smackdown!!!!!

  The Business Rusch: Smackdown!!!!! Kristine Kathryn Rusch   What passes for American journalism these days loves a good smackdown, and a week ago Monday, the Journalists Who Cover Publishing got one.  On that day, some nervous publishing executives, afraid they wouldn’t get a hot deal, leaked to the press that Amanda Hocking, “darling of the indie world,” as one blog called her, was in […]

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The Business Rusch: Pushing The Envelope

  The Business Rusch: Pushing The Envelope Kristine Kathryn Rusch   Monday morning, I ripped off the previous page on my Pearls Before Swine 2011 Day-To-Day Calendar to find Pig and Rat, sitting at a table.  On the table, a steaming cup of coffee and an envelope.  Pig’s hand (paw?) is on the edge of the envelope. Rat asks him, “What are you doing?” Pig […]

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The Business Rusch: Midlist Writers (Changing Times Part 11)

The Business Rusch: Midlist Writers (Changing Times Part Eleven) Kristine Kathryn Rusch When I started this series on the changing times in publishing, I was responding to a cacophony of voices.  Two of those voices were from published writers on the opposite ends of the e-book spectrum—New York Times bestselling author, Scott Turow, president of the Authors Guild, and mystery writer J.A. Konrath who, because […]

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The Business Rusch: How E-Books Will Save Big Publishing (Changing Times Part Four)

The Business Rusch: How E-Books Will Save Big Publishing (Changing Times Continued) Kristine Kathryn Rusch In my very first post in this long series of linked topics, I advised anyone who cared about publishing to keep up with the day-to-day industry news.  I wrote that blog post in my spare time over four days and I noted: “In four days, some parts of the [publishing] […]

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