Writing-life

AWP Conference in ChicagoAt AWP this year, I'm presenting as part of a panel on "The Tech-Empowered Writer: Embrace New Media, Experiment, and Earn" along with awesome writers Christina Katz, Robert Lee Brewer and Jane Friedman. Check them out, really! These three are ones to watch! The panel is on Thursday of the conference (3/1) from 1:30 to 2:45 in Boulevard Room A,B,C, at the Hilton Chicago, 2nd Floor. More info is here: AWP Conference Schedule.

I'll say the names of these three again: Christina Katz, Robert Lee Brewer and Jane Friedman. Outstanding, all! And go here for where I mention Christina's awesome book, The Writer's Workout!

But what I'm really here for is to add more content to the panel presentation so folks can find more links to others I think are doing a great job. I'll be talking about how I raised significant capital for my last two novels This Is Life and Young Junius by doing a highly successful (if I do say so myself) Kickstarter Campaign and a Special Edition Pre-Order event that I ran through PayPal. Both of these really put me in good shape to work with a publisher and to do a lot of the freelancer-comissioning myself! Totally awesome! Of course, none of this would've been possible without the support of my awesome group of fans, the Palms Mommas and Palms Daddies, who I connected with through producing my novels as free, serialized audiobooks (podcasts) that I distributed here and at iTunes. For more on how I did that, see this link and the upcoming online Author Boot Camp class I'll be teaching in April and May. Hurry, just a few spots remain!

So, what other writers are doing awesome stuff?

First, I'll start off with Jeff Shelby, who blogs here about how he set up his eBook Thread of Hope on Amazon's Kindle store and planned a release all on his own. And then guess what? Thread of Hope hit #1 on Amazon!! Yes, it did! Slid right past Stieg Larsson and everything! Jeff tells all in this easy to read and understand blog post about how he listed the book, made it free on Amazon to jumpstart sales, then contacted biggie blogs like Pixel of Ink and eReader News Today to let them know when it'd be free. Next up... well, read it all here. How Thread of Hope Hit #1 on Amazon

Second, let me tell you about Neal Pollack, whose piece in the New York Times Book Review here tells about how and why he decided to leave traditional publishing to put out his book Jewball himself. Neal used Kickstarter to build a source of funding and Createspace to publish the book in Print On Demand format. Know what? Both of these are totally easy to do. Read more about Neal in my post at AuthorBootCamp here.

Mur Lafferty, a fellow podcasting author, really rocked the Kickstarter world and broke the mold when she did this wildly successful campaign. Just look at the funding: 969% funded! Wow!

Want more? Check out podcasts by students of my recent Author Boot Camps and how they're connecting with an audience using just their voice, their words, and a little technology! That, plus more info and lessons from J.A. Konrath, Barry Eisler and Paolo Coehlo are at the site AuthorBootCamp.com. If you're interested in learning how to podcast and release your own eBooks, consider joining me for the online installment of Author Boot Camp in April and May. Filling fast!

D*Con Sigler PartyHey guys, I'm here today with a fresh interview for you, conducted by my fellow podcaster John Mierau. You can find all of John's work here at johnmierau.wordpress.com He's the author of the Serving Worlds Anthology, Last Man Home, Harlan's Wake and Marked Men, among others. Check out his podcast Enemy Lines if you're looking for a hot place to start!

In this interview, we discuss the Kickstarter campaign, the changing face of publishing, podcasting as a means of raising fan interest, eBooks, and much more, including answering fan questions from Twitter! Click here to listen now or download this episode! Rock it, pump it, dig it, and I hope you enjoy!

True fans, you'll love how we crush publishing in this one!

Yes, it's high time I started posting here again. Never fear, I'm back. I have a new short crime story that I plan to share soon as audio and for today, I have this piece on writing that I recently posted here on Scribd.com.

I plan to give you more audio soon. For now, enjoy the read.

          Why We Write

Of course you could go outside. Take the dog and do what any normal person would do on a nice afternoon: go sit in the sun. But there’s something different about a writer. Something else that makes a person sit inside on a beautiful day, wake up and do work on one project or another without any sign of payment.

There are always other things you could do, even ways to earn money. Instead, you sacrifice relationships, push away loved ones and demand time to yourself. You leave friends at the bar, make your life boring in the name of ritual, trying to stay clean.

Others will earn more money doing anything you can think of—hawking cars, making sales, sitting in offices, betting on stocks—and spend free time in excitement, travel, getting drunk, doing wild stunts.

Maybe it’s foolishness. No one says writers are saints, not by a long shot. But you try to survive and carry on, do your level best to make it through another day and come back to the desk again tomorrow.

Who knows if this road is wise? Once taken, there are places to get off. Perhaps you think of them, sitting at the desk on a cold, damp morning. Maybe you even regret. But you won’t think about this when you’re writing.

Today I want to talk about a great new way to publicize your work online, one that's working very well for authors Kemble Scott, Hyla Molander, and today's guest Ransom Stephens: uploading your ebook to Scribd.com. Here, lots of readers can discover your work, "read-share" it via Facebook and generally help you get the word out.

Ransom Stephens uploaded his book The God Patent to Scribd in May 2009 and since then he's seen the book rack up over 19,000 reads and 80+ great reviews. This was enough for the book to get picked up and published by Numina Press (Vox Novus) last December. Billed as "The Scribd eBook Sensation," you can read The God Patent for FREE here.  

Looking ahead to publicizing YOUNG JUNIUS next month around its release from Tyrus Books, I caught up with Ransom to ask a few questions about how I can use Scribd to help: [more after the break]