All Blog Posts Tagged 'publish' (157)

I’ve been working feverishly lately trying to finish IMAGINATION by November 30^th, but alas, it doesn’t appear that is going to happen (I’m about a month from completion). Between the damage from Superstorm Sandy and my wife’s cancer, my priorities have changed a bit. Had I finished the book on time it would have been a year to the day that I wrote the first sentence. When I first conceive of the plot of IMAGINATION (What if everything we perceive, all that we experience, is just…

When you buy a book especially on the internet, what do you look for? Is it the cover that attracts you? The reviews? The description? The key to selling books is to have all three of these as plus’s. A good cover, good unbiased reviews, and a blurb that makes people want to look at the book. With ebooks, a consumer can’t take it off the shelf and feel its texture, skim through the pages, get a sense of the thickness and how long it will take to read. They must rely on the free sample pages…

I finally received the insurance check to fix the damage left by superstorm Sandy. Though, I count myself among those lucky enough to still have their home, the storm did a bit of damage to the roof, gutters, and some interior stuff. A power surge blew my computer, erasing countless scraps of ideas and phrases. I know I should have backed them up, but I had so many I thought I take a full day to do it. That day won’t happen now. I also lost more than two weeks of marketing online, which as…

It’s been two weeks since my last post and I’m still at a loss over the destruction caused by hurricane Sandy. Though I was away on vacation at the time of impact, I had relatives that were evacuated from New Jersey staying at my house so they surveyed the damage for us. We sustained some minor roof and siding damage and lost power for five days, which resulted in us having to throw away all of our refrigerated food. We were lucky. Sometimes it takes something as powerful and tragic as a…

When I first started blogging I wrote about the dumbest things. I wrote egotistical articles about how cool I was to write books and have people admire me; basic self-serving crap.

Then I started into the indie revolution in book publishing and my content changed. I spent a few months blogging about the nuts and bolts of writing, editing, designing a cover, and publishing an ebook from scratch. And lo and behold, I started getting followers. As I continued to blog every other day…

All good things come to those who wait, isn’t that what they say? Patience is a virtue? And I totally agree. And I’ve been patient, Lord, I’ve been. But how long can I keep it up? Writing a minimum of three hours a day, everyday; marketing and promoting at least an hour a day, more if I don’t write as much, jotting down notes on napkins, and bits of paper. And it is paying off, as anyone who reads my blog or follows me on social networks knows. I have sold thousands of ebooks and given away…

I’ve been doing the interview thing again and recently I was asked something that I hadn’t been asked before. The questioned posed to me was, “what do you hope to achieve with your writing?” Now, I had to think about that one for a bit before I could give a response. For you see, I’m actually not looking to achieve anything with my writing except to provide people with entertainment. I’m not looking to win any big awards (though I’m not opposed). I don’t think I’m going to get rich from this…

As my latest novel, IMAGINATION nears completion I am beginning to feel antsy to start a new project and my thoughts are edging toward what I should write next. In other words, who should I become for the next year? I’ve had a good time being the characters in IMAGINATION, but it’s time I put them to rest and create someone new. Should I become a psycho killer like in FROSTPROOF, DEGENERATES, and PULP? Or should I become a traveler of time and space, like in DREAM TRAVELER, AFTER, and SILENT…

I generally feel the urge to blog about every two or three days, but for the last several days I’ve been silent. There’s a reason. It started with my wife having sharp pains in her side. She, being a tough woman, tried to ignore it and refused to go to the doctor even at my urging. Finally, on Monday she went. To make a long story short, three hours later she was getting prepped for surgery for an emergency appendectomy and I was sitting in the critical care unit waiting room. It was late…

Well, here I am again at that crossroads where I need to do something to push me beyond the steady, but stagnant sales of the last month. It appears blogging and posting on free sites has worn thin and most of the people who I got interested in my books have already purchased them. So, what do I do next? I already invested $100 bucks into a KND book of the day sponsorship for DROP OUT in November, and I have two more sponsorships with Kindle Boards Book of the Day in December, one for AFTER…

Wow, I’ve surpassed the two-hundred followers mark on my blog! I want to thank all who follow me especially because I know you follow this blog because you want to. I didn’t go to any threads just to collect followers to have high numbers. I painstakingly wrote my articles and promoted my blog to writers and readers. Very few of you who follow me are my personal friends, although I’d like to think that everyone who reads my stuff is a friend. You all know what I mean, I didn’t solicit you. I…

No, mind my isn’t in the gutter right now, I’m talking about how hard it is to sell books. I’ve been writing since I learned how to hold a pencil, I’ve won contests, had a top NY agent, and have written and/or published a dozen novels. People ask me where my ideas come from and I can’t give them an answer. All I know is that ideas for stories DO come and the urge to capture them on paper is overwhelming. I’ve been known to jot down notes on whatever I can find, tiny pieces of scrap paper,…

Nook just unveiled its new tablet today. Watching the interview on CBS this morning with the president of the company he was asked if he thought traditional paperback books will disappear in thirty years. Although, he wouldn’t give a definitive answer (because Barnes and Noble still have over 600 bookstores nationwide) it was apparent that he thought so. Though Barnes and Noble have outlived most retail book outlets, I do believe those days are numbered. Getting into the ebook revolution by…

After almost eleven months of continuous, daily writing I finally wrote ‘The End” on IMAGINATION. Well, I don’t actually write those words since it’s not industry standard anymore, but I did write the final, conclusive last sentence of the novel. Ah, what a feeling! This being my eleventh book, it still never ceases to amaze me how a story can take on a life of its own. If I were to look at my original notes on the concept for the story from last year and compare it to what I actually…

Ebooks are forever. Think about this sentence for a moment. You write a novel, get it formatted, have a nice cover made up, get an ISBN, and then download it onto Kindle, or Smashwords, or any of the hundreds of ebook distributors, and poof, it’s available globally to anyone with an ereader. Not only that, it will be available until the end of time. That means fifty years from now if I want to show my great grandchild one of my books, all they’ll have to do is type in the title and, poof…

It used to be that an aspiring author would write a novel and then painstakingly send out SASE’s (remember them) hoping to land an agent. If the author did land an agent, then the author would hope for a publishing contract. If by miracle of miracles the agent actually sells the book, then eighteen months later it comes out in the bookstore (remember those) and the author starts doing a grueling schedule of signings hoping to recoup more money in sales than the advance received.

The…

I recently read an article about a company that would give your book a review for a price. They claim that the reviews aren’t biased and the reviewer will be honest if they didn’t like the book. Now, I know hundreds if not thousands of these companies exist so I’m no dummy, but it seems to me that it would be bad business to give an author a bad paid review especially if the author has several books under his belt and may use the service again. This leads me to the conclusion that investing…

There comes a point in every artist’s career where he must decide what his talent is worth. When I started publishing on KDP I was just starting out in the ebook revolution and like many writers, thought nothing would come of it. People would scoff and say that I’m not a ‘real’ writer because I never published traditionally. Well let me tell them something, I had an agent and wasted four years trying to make it as a ‘real’ writer. Four years waiting for some suit to decide my future, hoping…

I’ve been thinking about hiring Smith Publicity when I’m finished writing IMAGINATION and have spent the last few days researching them and all they do. If I do sign with them it would mean huge exposure by the ways of television and radio interviews. For some authors they have gotten over fifty interviews. The question is will the royalties made by more exposure offset the costs of a major publicity firm? I haven’t contacted them yet so I don’t know what they charge but I’m…

Nobody ever said it would be easy. Nobody ever said it was always going to be fun. Nobody promised me that after spending twenty-plus years holed up in my office writing novels that anyone would ever read them. Nobody promised me anything would ever come of my writing and yet I still do it. Day after day, year after year, I sit in front of this keyboard and tap out the characters and worlds inside my mind. To date, I think I have more than sixty unique, fully-fleshed characters in all twelve…