POD and Self-Publishing

Books vs Kindle

Let me share a couple of potentially links to start out this month. The first is an interesting account of how one self-published author is now making $1200 on his books, mostly from Kindle. Per year? No! You might look at this, raise your eyebrows, and think that $1200 sounds like a pretty good month to you. But this figure is not sales for a month. Wow! That’s a really good week. But, no...

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Supplementing Your Fiction Habit

Write...For Hire!

What do you think of when you hear the term write-for-hire? Do you envision yourself going door-to-door, trying to drum up work from your neighbors? (“Hello, my name is Janice, and I’ll be happy to write that Christmas letter for you!”) Or do you see yourself standing on a street corner, wearing a placard that reads, WILL WRITE FOR FOOD? The concept is similar. The term write-for-hire basically means that you get hired by a...

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Bookclubs

Book Club Contests

The contest between the book clubs last month was to spread the word about TBCN. Contestants were also asked to visit author book club pages and encourage them. Congratulations to Faith in Fiction book club on winning the grand prize, which included twenty-five copies of Deadly Ties by Vicki Hinze and twenty-five copies of Carmel by the Sea Sandi Bricker. Sandi even threw in a few copies of...

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Word For Words

Flat Screen, Flat Scene: The Role of Tension and Conflict

I recently read a scene in the first draft of a novel where a thirtieth-birthday dinner was to end in conflict. It didn’t. The scene was well-written, but the encounter was flat as a newly tarred driveway. Why? No tension. A scene can lack tension for various reasons. In this case, none of the characters was allowed to react when the protagonist is unexpectedly reminded that he was away on business while...

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