Tag Archives: author

Celebrating the life of C.S. Lewis (11/29/1898 – 11/22/1963)

“Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.”
– C.S. Lewis

On this day, November 22, 1963, the world lost a great man. An infinite voice. An unequaled imagination.

From Wikipedia:

Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963), commonly called C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as “Jack”, was a novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, and Christian apologist. Born in Belfast, Ireland, he held academic positions at both Oxford University (Magdalen College), 1925–1954, and Cambridge University (Magdalene College), 1954–1963. He is best known both for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.

“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.” – C.S. Lewis

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Success Stories – To Self-Publish or Not To Self-Publish…

USA Today Bestselling author, Kelli Maine writes about the pros and cons of self publishing:

Sometimes you have to take the plunge, but which direction do you go? Not too long ago, this question wasn’t considered valid by “the industry”. If you self-published, it was because you couldn’t get an agent or you couldn’t get an editor to buy your book. But today, the game has turned on its head. You don’t need an agent or an editor to get books in reader’s hands and be considered a legitimate author.

While some very successful self-published authors still seek the validity of having their names on a book in Barnes and Noble, know that getting stocked in a bookstore is NOT a guarantee from even the big six publishers. Take it from someone who has a YA published by a big six publisher and zero books in bookstores. They can’t necessarily sell your book to book buyers any better than you could.

With fewer and fewer brick and mortar stores and the ones that are still around carrying an equal number of t-shirts, toys and One Direction dolls as books, there’s an ever shrinking amount of shelf space and if you can suck in your gut and hold your breath, you might be able to squeeze in between Cassie Clare and Veronica Roth.

You can read the whole article HERE.

 

Kindle Direct Publishing Announces Kindle MatchBook

Amazon is officially launching Kindle MatchBook in October.  The announcement on their website can be seen HERE.

According to the announcement, “For thousands of qualifying books, your past, present, and future print-edition purchases will soon allow you to buy the Kindle edition for $2.99, $1.99, $0.99, or free.”

The program is making ebook versions of print books purchased new from Amazon, going all the way back to 1995 when Amazon first opened its online bookstore.  This is great news for customers … and it can be great news for indie publishers as well.

Amazon’s official notice to us authors and publishers:

Kindle MatchBook is an innovative new program which enables you to offer your Kindle book at a discount when readers purchase your print book, so you can sell more books.

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Wait, WHAT? A self-published author turns down a publisher?

Author Aubrey Rose recently wrote a blog post explaining why she decided to turn down an offer from Amazon Publishing’s Montlake Romance imprint.

Why would a self-published author turn down an overture from a publisher?  An offer that included royalties, even?

From her post:

“…Naturally, I was thrilled. A real publisher wanted my work! I chatted with her briefly on the phone and asked her a ton of questions: What kind of cover would they create for me? What promotions would they do? What control would I have over everything? Although I was excited to work with Amazon, I wanted to know that they would treat my book right. She told me my novel was a great read and very clean writing, and that she would love to “partner” with me in relaunching my book through Amazon’s imprint.

However, she couldn’t guarantee anything – from cover image to pricing to marketing…”

Ah, ha!  Well, that’s par for the publisher course.  But wait, there’s more:

“…The advance they offered was less than I had made in my first month of sales. As I looked through the Montlake catalogue, I saw a mix of breakout hits and complete flops, with some recent books that just had the worst covers imaginable for romance. And I would have to pull my book from every publisher except Amazon…”

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Camp NaNoWriMo 2 Officially Starts Today!

If you are a writer – especially one who can’t seem to find the time, set goals, or who suffers from writer’s block – you should head over to campnanowrimo.org and sign up to write during the month of April.  if you’re REALLY serious, make sure you sign up for NaNoWriMo in November!

From the website:

Based on November’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), Camp NaNoWriMo provides the online support, tracking tools, and hard deadline to help you write the rough draft of your novel in a month.

Camp NaNoWriMo was established in 2011 as a project of the Office of Letters and Light, the parent 501(c)(3) nonprofit to National Novel Writing Month and the Young Writers Program. 2013 Camp sessions will take place in April and July.

To find out more, head over to Camp NaNoWriMo‘s “What is Camp NaNoWriMo?” page and get started!