Business of Writing

Branching into Other Genres

May 15, 2015May 14, 2015Business of Writing

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’ve mentioned earlier that I’m branching out into another genre. This isn’t resulting from boredom with my current genre. It’s not even purely a commercial endeavor. No, this is an Attack Novel. The story rose up and demanded I write it. Its incessant nagging started two years ago, and the fact I ignored its demands demonstrates my stubbornness and focus. It’s zombies. It’s more than zombies, of course, but drilling it down to its core…yeah, zombies.

The book is a cozy treatment of zombies. Zombies with off-stage violence. Zombies with no profanity. Is there an audience for this? Who knows? I was attacked.

Then I realized that my team might not really be onboard with zombies. Does my cover designer do zombie covers? Does my cozy editor do zombie books?

It’s good to make sure everyone has experience producing the new genre if we have a team that works with us on a different one.
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Still Grateful to be an Independent Writer

May 8, 2015May 2, 2015Business of Writing, Publishing Changes

by Mike Martin, @mike54martin

I have often seen articles that talk about the best and the worst aspects of being an independent writer. Usually their central theme is that we should stop whining and be grateful that we are allowed to write at all. And I usually end up agreeing with them. That doesn’t mean that I am going to stop complaining about having to do everything myself. Insert Big Sigh here. But it does remind me that I have been given a great gift and that there is a universal truth that says whatever we are grateful for we get to keep. Therefore I am grateful to be an independent writer.

I’m grateful to be a writer at all. I was grateful when I was a freelance writer and getting paid much less than less than five cents a word to produce keywords and SEO content. I was grateful when I was a ghostwriter and speechwriter and it meant that I would write and someone else would literally get the credit. I was grateful when I sold my very first piece for $25 and decided to quit my job so that I could focus on my writing. I wasn’t grateful to be very broke and very much in debt for the next three years, but now I’m grateful to have survived that experience.Continue reading

Why I’m Serializing Fiction on My Blog

May 4, 2015May 2, 2015Business of Writing

By Joanna Campbell Slan, @joannaslan

Building Blog Traffic

Reviewing all the blog posts I’ve done over the years, the one that garnered the most attention was a serialized short story I’d done with my sister bloggers at Killer Hobbies. That got me thinking. What if I wrote a short story by myself and offered it in serialized installments?

Other Goals

Better yet, what if I wrote the story in real time? The idea held a lot of appeal. A serialized story would engage more readers and get them to sign up as blog followers. They might even want to tell their friends about my work and suggest that they check it out. Best of all, eventually I would have a new product that I could bundle and repackage for sale.Continue reading

Self-Publishing a Series after Its Traditional Start

May 1, 2015May 1, 2015Business of Writing

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

My self-published Myrtle Clover series started out as a traditional release through Midnight Ink. They published the first book in that series before deciding against a second book in the series. That’s when I got my rights back (well, the ones that I could get back), and self-published the rest.

Now I’ve got the Southern Quilting mysteries which will be dropped by Penguin after the upcoming June release of book five in the series. I’ve gotten those rights back and will be embarking on the same process soon.

These were good decisions for me and for my series. But there have definitely been some bumps in the road.Continue reading