Writers, business plans, and me

The “Publishing Options” series concluded with the third post I did last week, but I wanted to also talk a bit about some of the other business decisions writers have to make. Specifically, about business plans. The vast majority of writers don’t have even an informal business

Read more

Publishing options, Part II

This is the second part of a three-part series on things to consider when deciding how to publish one’s novel. All parts come with a warning: I have next to no personal experience with any form of publishing besides the traditional sort. So read the comments; there

Read more

Publishing options, Part 1

A while back, E. Beck asked for a blog post on various publishing options, pros and cons, and how to decide among them. As always, I have Opinions, but I have to start by pointing out that I have next to no personal experience with any form

Read more

Editors

It’s one month to the official launch of The Dark Lord’s Daughter, and I’m twitchier than usual. The official launch party is at the Red Balloon Bookstore in St. Paul on Tuesday September 5. If you’re going to be in the Twin Cities, check their events page—they

Read more

The Post-Writing Prepublication stage

First, the announcements: The Dark Lord’s Daughter has an official release date of September 5! I got my ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies) last week, and it looks very nice. The cover looks like this: This phase of the publication process was particularly mysterious to me the first

Read more

The Elevator Pitch

As for requests: Elevator pitches, are there different varieties? (Because I’ve heard them described as both one-sentence set-up only, and as three-sentence complete but extremely abridged plot summaries.)        –Deep Lurker My first reaction is that you’re over-thinking this. An elevator pitch doesn’t have rules or even a

Read more

The Back End

One of the things I keep coming back to is the fact that writing, especially writing for a living, is a business. It doesn’t have to be—for instance, people who write fanfiction for free don’t have to worry about that part. But anyone who gets paid for

Read more