I keep running across statements saying things like “The average self-published author only sells 500 books in his lifetime” or “The average author earns less than X dollars/euros/pounds a year.” Here’s the problem, and it goes back to the idea of the “long tail.” Average (or arithmetic mean) is a measure of central tendency. It’s…
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Rocky Mountain Writer #128
Teresa Funke & War on a Sunday Morning As a fiction writer, Teresa Funke celebrates ordinary people. In fact, she takes a very unusual approach to her stories—they are all based on interviews with real people. From there, the fiction begins. Teresa Funke’s latest is War on a Sunday Morning. Written for readers age nine…
Pregnant Purple Prose
I once called a writer friend and got the following voicemail greeting: “Pardons begged, we are presently truant and prevented from undertaking dialog with callers at present. After the modulation, please recite your sobriquet and cellular digit-string to better enable us an opportunity to reciprocate the honor of this summons.” The title of this article…
The Business of Patience
This one is about patience. Patience, that is, and hard work. Later this summer, Lake Union Publishing (an Amazon imprint) will publish The Swing of Things. The book represents five years of work by co-writers Linda Hull (former RMFW Writer of the Year) and Keir Graff, an award-winning writer, editor, and big cheese at Booklist. Together,…
Looking Back…Looking Forward
I started to write this post about my first Colorado Gold Conference, and I was struck by how much writing and publishing have changed since the early days of my career. Some things have definitely gotten easier. I printed out the manuscript of my first book on a word processor where you had to feed…