(a/k/a Marketing is Worth it!) Yesterday, Isaac and I spent the day calculating royalties for all of the Emerald authors. Our books earned over $6000 for the last 4 months of 2020, with sales throughout the USA, in bookstores, via Kindle and internationally in Europe, Great Britain, Canada, and India.
Inspired by the upcoming Cup & Quill workshop on writing, I pulled out a copy of Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. The advice that just shines through the page in her conclusion is about writers making ourselves vulnerable. How does this translate on the page? Create imperfect ("embarrassing?") characters. Make
There are so many pieces that go into creating a book, beyond just the text and narrative. When you are submitting a book to an editor or publisher, make sure you have thought about the following pieces: Copyright page table of contents About the Author: a professional bio of you
Thought I would share what I instruct my undergraduate history students to do in their writing. I think that particulars and specificities help historians make arguments and tell stories. Here they go! Use the past tense to describe historical events. Ensure your statement is specific. Never use such phrases as:
This is one of the hardest questions to answer since it's never done. A book can keep going and going... and going. For years. In fact, full disclosure, I just submitted my "Revised" manuscript to an academic publisher. The project started in 2007, dissertation defended in 2012, pages first submitted
https://www.reddit.com/r/selfpublish/wiki/index I always refer to this list just to check if a company is on the author beware list. The resources here for writers are outstanding. Emerald Books Gray Fox Walks: an artistic children's book celebrating the natural world The Brass Starling: mystery and magic in 1910 Manhattan
For some reason, our new years are always filled with autobiographies. I think we've done four of them in December and January alone! We love making these family volumes to bring people closer and help them share the stories of their lives. These books become family treasures, and it is
Focus is my January word. My daughter taught me about the "flow state." When I think about the work of writing and editing, I think about two kinds of focus: There is the necessity to just focus on one thing, the task at hand. For that, I use one of
I keep saying I'm shocked but not surprised about today's attempted coup d'état. What a time to be a historian. I see resonances of this event in the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 and the attempted fascist coup in France on February 6, 1936. I know that democracy will prevail.
The Demon's Gift is a free novella set in the Willow Locke world. It's been really cool to expand the world of the novel and write in a different style. It's a gritty, noir story featuring a hard-boiled cop struggling to hold onto his sense of morality. I like writing
