Business-savvy authors must learn to recognize and avoid a wide variety of scams and legal but inappropriate publishing deals. Some of the most dangerous ones remind me of my law school contracts professor’s warning that “a person can make as good a deal, or AS BAD A DEAL, as (s)he is able.” Some publishing offers are very bad deals indeed. Not all…
Category: Blog
Voices in Your Head: How Audiobooks Can Improve Your Writing … by Richard Rieman
Do you hear voices in your head while writing? It can be a very good thing. As a veteran audiobook narrator, I am always impressed when the writing just flows smoothly without choppiness or a staccato pattern. Write Music The late, great author and writing coach Gary Provost says reading your written words aloud will…
It’s Not All Hearts & Flowers – History Sucks Edition
First off, happy, happy Valentine’s day! Now let’s quit the mushy stuff and focus on writing. How does what happened yesterday affect your story? I’ll give you two examples to consider. Example #1 – You based a story in Southern California in 1979 with a teen girl as your protagonist. A coming of age story….
Volunteers Make it Happen At Colorado Gold
We’re seven weeks into the year, and workshop proposals are rolling in. Our selection committee is keeping busy reading through all the outlines, doing their best to decide which proposals will make it onto the schedule in 2017. Like the rest of the conference staff, the proposal selection committee is made up of volunteers. And…
We Disrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Program
One of the things I keep hearing is that Amazon is disrupting the publishing business. That disruption is what allows independent authors like me to make a living in a field where – in the past – only a handful of superstars could quit their day jobs. I’ve been looking at this for a couple…