Monica Valentinelli's Blog: booksofm.com, page 119

This Is Not Another Amazon Post

If you haven't heard, there was a bit of an awkward business kerfluffle between Amazon and MacMillan this past weekend. No, I am not talking extensively about it other than to say that I believe we are seeing the result of what happens when people are anxious and start to panic. E-Books are a hot topic, but if history holds true, it will take years before the technology is standardized, affordable, stable, and readily accessible to everyone (including libraries). If you're curious, Lilith...

Calculating the Cost of an E-Book

I've had a lot of positive feedback from my previous post entitled Weighing in on E-Books, so I wanted to talk about ways to calculate the cost of an e-book.

First, let's pull some arbitrary numbers. (And by arbitrary, I mean that these are not precise figures.) Let's say that we paid our author $3,000 for their novel that was 100,000 words in length, which is the equivalent of about 3 cents per word. Then, let's say we paid an editor a flat rate of $1,250 to edit the novel and an artist $500 ...

New Guest Post on Apex: Discussing Rape, Incest and Abuse in Horror

This week, I offered the folks over at Apex Book Company a blog post entitled, "Why Do Some Horror Authors Write about Rape, Incest and Abuse?" This was a sensitive topic to write about, and I found out after the article was published that I made a slight oversight in the post.

My goal for this article, was not to provide a definitive "answer" on this subject, but to facilitate discussion and to get people really thinking about writing for "shock" value or how they might address serious...

Do You Need to be Heard, Or Do You Need an Answer?

One of the things I'm beginning to find pretty frustrating, is the need for people to publicly rant about something that they haven't tried to resolve on their own. From misprints to crappy downloads, it seems like ranting about bad business experiences, politics and other frustrations is the "thing" to do. The trouble is, there's this little link on most websites that offers you the ability to "contact us."

I often have to quash the internet myth that once you post something online —...

Weighing in on E-Books

It's been really interesting for me to watch the complex discussions about e-books online, because I work for a digital publisher. My company provides digital sheet music files to our customers and there are a lot of similarities between our industry and the publishing industry. However, books have a broader market than sheet music does, in part because more people know how to read text than music.

One of the biggest challenges that I see is two-fold: one, inconsistent pricing models and two, ...

Marathon Wrap-Up and a Quick Look Ahead

First of all, marathoners — I owe you an apology. I had a summary post written (I really, really did) but somewhere in between plowing full steam ahead to 2010 and my WordPress updates I lost it. I'd like to share with you some closing thoughts on the Marathon.

For me, December was a kick start to re-focus my efforts on my fiction. While I didn't accomplish as much as I would have liked, I did get a lot of filing done (phew!) and I was able to take enough of a breather to simplify the story...

"Brand" Mistakes You Don't Want to Make

One of the things that I find really interesting, is how many authors and publishers treat their public relations and marketing channels. (This can include reviews, interviews, appearances, etc.)

The "old think" was that PR was something you needed to pay for. You'd incorporate your PR with your marketing, and you'd work with other "paid" professionals like reviewers or reports to see what fit into their schedule. The "new think" is that you, as an author or publisher, can leverage a lot of f...

Day 28: Removing the Obstacles

Well, we have just a few days left in the December 2009 Writing Marathon. Some of you are chugging along reaching those goals; some of you are simply writing a little bit very day. For me, this has been a very up-and-down sort of a month. November was extraordinarily busy for me and December proved to be even busier. Halfway through the month, I realized that there were obstacles in my path that were getting in the way of my ability to focus. Here's just a few of the things that were driving ...

Day 20: What's Your Mantra?

We're two-thirds of the way through, and from what many of you have been sharing, this has been a "busy-insane-nutso" month for many of us. Still, regardless of whether or not you've written or revised one chapter or several, there's something we can all learn from being this busy. Sometimes, in order to write we need to shut off our brains and just put our fingers on the keyboard. (Like Yoda says, "Do or do not, there is no try.")

I love the idea of being surrounded by clean, simple mantras ...

Day 15: On Dealing with Insecurity

If you think about it, writers, artists and musicians have everything in the world working against us — because conventional wisdom tells us we're not "supposed" to make money doing this. We're supposed to suffer, because that's part and parcel of being an artist.

Many writers that hear this message get discouraged, and often take it to heart by worrying about "only" getting published through this channel or that, or by giving away their work for free because they don't think they'll ever be ...