Category Archives: Musings

Authors: 6 Reasons You Have to Be on Goodreads

Books by telmo32 (flickr.com)This past Saturday at BAIPA, I led a roundtable about the reasons that every independent author and publisher (as well as every “dependent” author) needed to have an active presence on Goodreads.com. It was one of three roundtable sessions at the time, and I assumed that most BAIPA folks (who are pretty savvy) would already know most of what I had to say. I was surprised to find that not only did they not, but they were very hungry to hear about the world’s largest book review site

Because they all found the material I presented to be helpful, I thought I’d share my major points here. This is why you have to be on Goodreads: Continue reading Authors: 6 Reasons You Have to Be on Goodreads

Getting Grammatical: What's the Big Deal with the Passive Voice?

An author I work with recently asked me, “What’s the big deal with the passive voice?” My first instinct was to answer, “Well, would that question have made as much sense as ‘The big deal with the passive voice is about what?'” Three things stopped me:

  1. First of all, that’s a very New York Jewish sentence construction and so I didn’t want to dis my forebearers
  2. Second of all, it was snarky, which isn’t a great way to communicate anything
  3. Third, she’s a bright, articulate, and talented writer who deserves a better answer.

So I thought I’d give it here. Continue reading Getting Grammatical: What's the Big Deal with the Passive Voice?

Rest in Peace, Sir Terry. You’ve Earned It

As you probably know, Sir Terry Pratchett died today. His is a great loss to the world of letters — but I still can’t think about him without smiling.

I can’t help but think that he’s got Death chuckling. In small caps.

He was a very funny writer of wildly amusing fantasy novels, and so it could occasionally be easy to overlook how profound some of the ideas were that he was exploring in his books.

Here’s one of my favorite bits, a piece from one of his wonderful Discworld novels, Witches Abroad. It focuses on the nature of narrative: Continue reading Rest in Peace, Sir Terry. You’ve Earned It

How can I promote my book for free?

How Can I Promote My Book for Free? Bookstore by Natalia Romay; used through a Creative Commons License
Image: Bookstore by Nataia Romay. Used through a Creative Commons license

Every author wants to know how to get the word out about his or her book — and most are frightened that it’s going to cost an arm and a leg. To be honest, the most effective marketing that an author can do doesn’t involve paying money. Just lots and lots of time and effort. So not free, really, but no-cost, at least!

Reach Out (and Touch Somebody’s Hand)

Before you hire a publicist or start looking at paid ads on Facebook, Goodreads, Google Adwords, Bing, Twitter, etc., be sure that you have done everything that you can to let the appropriate people know about your book. Contact all of your friends and family, obviously, and encourage them to share the information about your book with everyone they know. Send well-crafted, focussed press releases to newspapers, magazines, and radio stations that might be interested in your subject. Continue reading How can I promote my book for free?

How Much Money Can a Self-Publisher Make?

More retro clipart at http://www.clipartof.com/Here’s a question I’ve been asked a number of times: What’s the average income from self-publishing a book?

My answer isn’t necessarily a terribly helpful one. It truly depends one what you mean by average — do you mean the total amount earned by the number of authors (the mean), or do you mean the amount that the average KDP author/publisher earns (the median)? Continue reading How Much Money Can a Self-Publisher Make?

Lady Blues Theme Music: Love & Remember (vocals by SackJo22)

Lady Blues coverSo, I’m in the process of wrapping up post-production on the audiobook of Aaron Paul Lazar’s Gus LaGarde mystery, Lady Blues: Forget-Me-Not. The book concerns itself deeply with memory and lost love, and so when I was looking for vocals for the theme music (to go over the opening and closing credits), I had a hard time — until I came across an amazing set of a capella scat recordings on ccMixter by an artist known as SackJo22 called…. Well, called “Love & Remember.” I dropped the vocals over my backing track, moved them around to hit the right rhythms, added some reverb… And that was it. They were perfect.

I’m using the recordings under a Creative Commons license. The originals are here: http://ccmixter.org/files/SackJo22/31172

Please check out some of her other recordings, and tell her how amazing you think she is!

The link to Aaron’s wonderful mystery is here: http://www.amazon.com/Lady-Blues-forget-me-not-LeGarde-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B00IS6EXG0/?tag=stillpointdigital-20

How Long Can Video in Ebooks Be?

Video PixelsEnhanced ebooks have been a cause of much excitement over the past few years — and with good reason. One of the things that an ebook can do that a paper-and-ink book can’t is to add embedded video and sound. (There are many other ways to enhance an ebook— but those are the most common enhancements.) Here’s a chance to make the book something truly new!

At Bay Area Independent Publishers Association, we have a group that is meeting regularly, discussing enhanced ebooks, led by a long-time digital publisher, Joe Sinclaire. One of the members of that group recently shot me an email recently asking about how long a video she could reasonably add to an ebook — two minutes? Five minutes?

Here’s my answer: Continue reading How Long Can Video in Ebooks Be?

New Joseph Campbell ebook: Oriental Mythology

Oriental Mythology
Just wanted to pass along an announcement from Joseph Campbell Foundation about the formal release of Masks of God: Oriental Mythology, the newest ebook in the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell! It’s a project that we’ve been working on for more than a year, and are pleased to see come to fruition.

The ebook, the first release in a digital edition of the Masks of God series, explores the evolution of the myths of the Middle East and Asia from the dawn of history up until modern times, looking at how they have changed from country to country and millennium to millennium, and how they’ve remained the same.

The ebook is currently available only on the foundation’s website, JCF.org, as a thank you gift for donations of $9.99 and greater. Continue reading New Joseph Campbell ebook: Oriental Mythology

From BAIPA Audiobook Presentation

Here are are the PowerPoint slides for the presentation that Becky Parker and I gave at BAIPA today (and the audio files, since the audio was on the fritz!): Continue reading From BAIPA Audiobook Presentation

1 Thing That SHOULDN'T Go at the Front of Your Ebook

InterrobangSo I’ve written about what you should put at the back of your ebook. Over on LinkedIn, Denise Wakeman raised the issue, sparking an excellent discussion. (She suggested a great possibility that I hadn’t thought of: an opt-in link for your newsletter/mailing list.)

The discussion then turned to what should go at the front of an ebook.

You know those pages at the front of a print book that get lowercase roman numerals instead of regular arabic page numbers — the boring stuff that you usually flip through so you can start reading? That’s called the book’s front matter.

Now, tradition has set the front matter of print books fairly rigidly for a while now. According to my trusty Chicago Manual of Style, it runs something like this, with each item given a separate page or section: half-title page, series title or frontispiece, title page, copyright page, dedication, epigraph, table of contents (TOC), list of illustrations, list of tables, foreword, preface, acknowledgements, introduction (unless it’s part of the body of the book). Then you get, you know, the book. (Except for the title page and copyright page, these are all optional, by the way.)

In an ebook, where navigation can be non-linear, we often move some of the less essential, bulkier bits (i.e., TOC, lists of illustrations and tables) to the back, trusting that the reader will be able to find them easily using the Contents button. (I often link to the appropriate entry in the list of illustrations from the image’s caption.) The half-title page (the one often signed by authors and gift-givers) has been jettisoned. Not too many ebook signings.

You’ll notice, however, that there’s a commonly used section that’s missing from that list, and it became a major topic of debate in the LinkedIn discussion: blurbs. Continue reading 1 Thing That SHOULDN'T Go at the Front of Your Ebook