Writing is an impossibly complex activity. Writing, revising, marketing, and the many other activities involved are impossible for one person to master. While trying to make progress through such uncertainty, many authors adopt mistaken views of their fellow writers. Some view other writers as customers, and try to sell them their writing. Worse, some writers […]
Recording An Audiobook With A Narrator
I’ve written previously about my experiences recording an audiobook myself. Like most things with self-publishing, there were tons of things to learn and ways to improve the process. I’ve recorded two non-fiction books and used AI to create an audiobook of my novella Merchant Magician (with Amazon’s virtual voice). Most authors hire a narrator to […]
Dimensional Traveler Audiobook Released
The audiobook of Dimensional Traveler has gone live. This was an interesting project. A LitRPG book, Dimensional Traveler, has been the most successful of my books to date. LitRPG and Progression Fantasy are HUNGRY subgenres of Fantasy. Its success encouraged me to take the step of working with a professional narrator, David Winter. The ‘blurb’ […]
Funny Blog Post Series on Book Pricing
Lyndon Hardy is a physicist who wrote a well regarded fantasy series years ago that treats the magic system in a rational, scientific way (he was doing this long before anyone else). He seems to have continued the series (after an almost 30-year hiatus!), perhaps in retirement. On his blog, he writes his investigations where […]
Block Fast, Mute Often
Online communities have been vicious places since they first appeared. I’ve been a part of them for decades, and flame wars and nastiness are still as common as they’ve always been. Half-hearted attempts to encourage civil interaction inevitably take a back seat to growing a community’s user base. The reasons for this have everything to […]
Vanity Presses
For writers, one of the most universal pieces of advice you’ll receive is to avoid vanity presses. What Are They? Historically, a vanity press was a scammy company that pretended to be a publisher, “accepted” an author’s book, then sold them copies of their own book. Whereas legitimate publishers would pay authors royalties, vanity presses […]
Many People Providing Advice Are Liars
Whenever someone posts advice online or writes an advice book, people bend over backwards to believe them. Any questioning of the advice’s validity is done hesitantly. Audiences desperately offer gurus the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this has led to widespread deceit in the advice giving business. John T. Reed famously went through “Rich […]
Wacky Writing Idea #19: Fantasy Novel Focused On The Patron Instead Of The Adventuring Party
For this, and any other Wacky Writing Ideas, I happily release them into the wild for anyone to use. If you like the idea and want to write it up, do so with my blessing! If you want to change it or use it for something else, have at it! If you really want to do […]
Babelcube: A Service For Translating Books
I’ve been using Babelcube since October 2023, and have been waiting for my translation projects to be wrapped up so I could post about my experiences. The current state seems to be as good as it’ll get, so I’ve decided to pull the trigger and write about my experiences. The Good Babelcube has been operating […]
My Experience At My First Book Signing
I had my first experience running a book signing a couple of months ago and figured it was worth writing up the experience for other authors to consider when preparing for their own signings. I’ve been a customer of “Allison The Bookman” since I was a boy (over 40 years). They’re a local bookstore that […]