Features

When browsing through books on Amazon or Smashwords it is pretty striking that so many more books have subtitles these days. Why is that? Six reasons halfway to explaining this trend.

1. A self-published book has to explain itself

While bestselling books by authors we know come on reputation, such as “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt (could be about birds, actually is about the life of a boy with PTSD) or “Big Brother” by Lionel Shriver (could be about politics, is actually about morbid obesity), it is more difficult to make a new reader stop and read your synopsis if […]

An important warning about Google Play. From the Kindle Boards:

I discovered this morning that Google had listed my best earning historical romance for FREE. Yes free. They were paying me based on my list price of $5.18 but they have it free. Obviously, to me this wasn’t about the money I was earning from those free sales but the ramifications this might have, especially if Amazon got ahold of that price.

The book came out in 2012 and it wasn’t making me a ton a money, but it’s still my bestselling historical novel right now. I emailed them

Writer Beware has a good post, and a warning, about scams being done by independent editors. With all the talk about big corporate publishing firms ripping people off, there are scams happening on the micro level as well. In this scenario, an editor contacts a writer and tells him/her about all the errors in the book – which the editor likely hasn’t read – only to then offer to fix the book for a fee. It’s sort of like in-person spamming. The editor does this enough times and eventually one person will take the bait.

This is at

David Gaughran has it in for Author Solutions. With good reason – Author Solutions rips people off. They offer marketing packages with huge markups that will likely have very little effect on sales. Recently, I attended the L.A. Times Book Festival and the Author Solutions booth was hocking a book about racial purity. Incredibly disgusting, but all’s well and good for AS because they got their fee.

That said, I think much of the onus with Author Solutions problems is laid at the foot of the writer. Author Solutions may be predatory, but it is not enough to say […]

I recently discovered something that is pretty eye-opening about the state of media today, and into the future. Perhaps I’m late to the game, but I’ve found it pretty amazing. Basically, it’s possible to watch any movie you want for free. I’m not going to link to it because it’s illegal, or at least ethically dubious, but sites like this look like this:

I found it via Twitter. Netflix was trending one day and someone tweeted, “Why is everyone using Netflix when you can just use _____.” The answer is: I don’t know. If you’ve ever dealt with Netflix or […]