I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve managed to attend three writer’s conferences over the last five years. Despite all the advice that I attend as many as possible in …
Mechanics of a Viral Video by Donna K. Rice
My son, Joe, is an aircraft/diesel mechanic. I wouldn’t have thought my writing and his work would ever converge. Silly me. I learned the power of a viral video …
Weekly Spark: Losing Colors
Here’s your next sci-fi story idea: what if humans only interacted with one another electronically, never face to face? Conversations would be held via video forums. Doctors would examine you …
Social Media Cleverness and Fun
I was perusing She Reads–a great book blog, by the way–and came across the humorous tweets of general market author, Deanna Raybourn. Man! I wish I could tweet funny stuff. …
To Go Indie or Not To Go Indie
The world of publishing is in an upheaval.
Amazon, the “book” web site we all used to peruse for our books is doing all they can to command the publishing world.
They say they believe books are to be affordable. They claim to care about both the reader and the writer. But not much at all for the publisher.
So there’s been price wars between the Big 5 and Amazon. With Barnes & Noble somewhere in the middle.
Word is traditional publishers are trying to preserve literary excellence. And trying to uphold the hardback.
Of which they’ve been trying to do since 1939 when the paperback started taking over publishing.
So it’s price v quality again. The aristocracy – the hardback v. commoner – the paperback.
Publishers are being swallowed up like minnows by big fish Hachette, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster and Penguin Random House and Macmillan.
While they are trying to hold onto the old way of doing things — or so it seems — Amazon continues to innovate.
Recently, they came up with Kindle Unlimited. For $9 a month, you can borrow all kinds of books. But the Big 5 have been excluded from this feature.