Writer Beware: Oyster, Scribd and Smashwords

There is a new website called Oyster that, like Netflix, offers a service for a monthly fee of $9.95: eb00k lending.  After doing much research, I discovered how an indie publisher can list their book on the site and receive money every time a book is “rented”.  However, there are some things to think about before

“This Broken Earth” – 1 Year Anniversary

One year ago today I released the first part of my post-apocalyptic novel about faith, This Broken Earth on several digital outlets. All three books as one compendium is available for .99 cents on Kindle, Nook, and iBooks. It has been a year of experiments, small successes, and hard lessons learned. When I originally released

10 Things I’ve Learned About Being a Novelist

  It has been a year and a half since I started this blog, and I thought I would write a retrospective about some of the things I have learned about writing novels and the publishing industry in general that would be some good knowledge for people just starting out.  This post is intended for

Using Scrivener and iBooks Author to Create an iTunes iBook

As many of you know, I absolutely love Scrivener, which is in many ways so much more than a word processor.  If you are a do-it-yourself publisher and just want to publish a book through iTunes, you will need a couple of things first: An iTunes sales account.  Sign up here. Scrivener for Mac or

E-Publishing Predictions for 2013

Today I received an e-mail update from Mark Coker because I am a Smashwords member (that is, I have published to Smashwords and they see fit to send updates my way about their company).  Mark Coker, president of Smashwords.com, which is a wonderful vehicle for self publishers to publish their work for free in every format

6 Thoughts on Sending Query Letters

Today I wrote up a query letter as a proposal for This Broken Earth, and sent it to about 40 different literary agents to test the waters about the book and hopefully get one of those fish to bite.  I neglected to realize that most of them would be out for the holidays, and so

Handing Out Promo Cards at Conventions

I have a wonderful friend who has agreed to hand out promo cards for my new book (which is free) at Dallas Fan Days this coming weekend.  I am blessed with such wonderful friends who would hand out a hundred or so cards to various celebrities, published authors and convention goers. I created this promo

KDP Select: Read the Fine Print

  Amazon Kindle is a great format for publishing a novel, as I have much experience uploading my work to them for publication through digital channels.  I also have published my books through Nook and on Smashwords.  However, Amazon wants exclusivity if they are going to enroll you in KDP.  According to their FAQ page:

This Week’s Round Up: Information and Inspiration

This week we have some very good information about self-publishing and two stories that are posted here simply for inspirational reasons.  We all need that.  I love these inspirational stories.  Sometimes it’s the only thing I need to get back on the horse and dig the spurs in. 1.  Alan Finder over at the New

Scrivener 2: Even More Bells and Whistles

As most of you know, I write long form texts on Scrivener because it is probably, in my opinion, the best word processor software a novelist could ever use.  A few days ago, I updated to Scrivener 2 and found several features that were even better than the original. 1.  Exporting to OpenOffice and Word