Book Review: Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success by Mark Coker

4 things I loved and 2 things I hated about Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success by Mark Coker: Loved: 1. The book contains lots of good information about the indie ebook market. Coker cites statistics based on a study of thousands of indie releases. It reveals interesting stats both big and small such as the average word count of best selling indie ebooks and the average profitability of different price points, among many others. 2. There are many general strategies for marketing an ebook touched …
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Book Review: Empty World by John Christopher

Empty World puts forth its own subtle spin on the post apocalyptic genre. It focuses on the loneliness of the main character, Neil, as the people around him die off en masse. This genre seems to be dominated with either zombies, graphic disease deaths or groups of grizzled men wielding machine guns, so it was interesting to read something a little understated in this setting: just a lonely kid in an empty world. Something about the setup of this particular empty world captured my imagination. …
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Book Review: Maybe We’ll Have You Back: The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star by Fred Stoller

Fred Stoller’s primary passion in life seems to be self pity. Entire chapters of Maybe We’ll Have You Back are dedicated to the minor disappointments of: 1. Meeting a famous director at a mall, setting up that he would send her a demo reel of himself, sending it and nothing coming of it. 2. Eating breakfast with Quentin Tarantino among a big group and having to deal with Tarantino not recognizing him or saying he wanted to work with him some day. These kinds of …
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Why Being an Indie Author is Awesome Part 1: Control Over Your Own Content

Sometimes we worry too much about the way we’re “supposed to” do things instead of the way we’ll get the best results. If you ask most people how they think you’re “supposed to” get started as an author, they’d tell you that you’re “supposed to” send out queries, get signed by an agent, snag a publishing deal, get a sweet advance, and then sit back and get paid whilst becoming a household name. That’s how you’re supposed to do it, right? I say: Screw …
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