Jami Gold's Blog: Jami Gold, Paranormal Author, page 28

Thursday Thoughts: 5 Lies Writers Believe That Are Holding Them Back

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As I mentioned last week, my current burnout level means that I’m trying to reduce the amount of time this blog takes while still ensuring that I’m sharing good stuff with you all. *smile*

If you missed the announcement:

Starting next week—and continuing at least for June, July, and August—my blogging schedule will be as follows:

Tuesdays: New blog content like usual. Thursdays: Sharing other content: guest posts, rerunning older posts,...

Why Every Author—and Reader—Should Care about #Cockygate

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With a name like #cockygate, it’s no surprise that the recent trademark brouhaha would elicit some snickers. Put together with the fact that it’s coming from the often-maligned romance genre or that it’s mostly involved self-published authors up to this point, and some are far too quick to dismiss the situation.

Some, I’m sure, wish I would stop talking or tweeting about it, bored by the details. They can’t understand why I care so much ab...

Writer Burnout: How Do You Deal?

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I’ve written before about the problems of burnout, but gee, the topic is still relevant because those problems don’t go away. In fact, if we don’t deal with burnout, the problems are likely to get worse.

As writers, we can burn out in many different aspects of our lives. We can experience it personally, day-job professionally, writing-wise, publishing-wise, or all of the above.

In other words, it’s more of a surprise if we never burn out....

Drowning in GDPR and Privacy Policy Notices? Should We Send Email Too?

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I spent way too much time this past holiday weekend cleaning up tons of emails asking me to “verify your email subscription” or notifying me of an updated privacy policy. I know I’m not the only one. *smile*

We can all thank the European Union’s (EU) new GDPR rules going into effect last Friday for the deluge. Although privacy policies and being transparent and respectful with others’ data are good things, the deadline has caused last-minu...

How to Track and Fight Bad Trademarks — Guest: Kevin Kneupper

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Heads up: You’re going to want to bookmark this post. *smile*

A few weeks ago, I wrote about #cockygate, which highlighted a few of the mistakes made by an author attempting to trademark the word cocky. The worst issue is that she acted like she owned the word, when in fact, trademarks only allow the holder to prevent others from using the word in a way that would deceive others about the source of a product or service.

Although RWA and a...

Using Google AdWords to Make Interested Readers Commit — Guest: Christina Delay

Here's the latest from Jami Gold, Paranormal Author :

If you’re anything like me, you have a huge to-be-read pile. Between my physical stacks of books and the ebooks stored on my Kindle, I have more than enough books to last a lifetime (or two… *cough* or three).

Of course, that fact doesn’t stop us from collecting more books that sound interesting. (One can never have too many books. *smile*)

However, that common trait among readers means that even when readers are interested in our work, th...

How Much of Yourself Is in Your Writing?

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We’ve probably heard this question before: How much of yourself is in your writing?

Maybe we heard an author interview asking that question. Maybe we read an article about it. Or maybe we even have our answer in our FAQs on our website.

Some writers answer from the perspective of their characters: What do they have in common with their characters? Are the characters based on themselves in any way?

But in truth, this question of how much of...

Recognizing Quality Writing: Can We Tell If We’re Any Good?

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When we’re first starting to write, we often struggle with the learning curve. Human nature often leads us to assume we’re further along the curve than we really are, simply because we don’t know what all we don’t know.

That problem is a huge reason behind why I created the Writing Craft Master Lists of skills. I brainstormed a list for each phase of editing:

content/developmental editing  (fix story and character-level issues) line editin...

Why We All Need a Writing Community

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All of us start on the writing path from different places and with different experiences. We may have been inspired by reading other stories, or participating in an online fandom, or any other of a thousand circumstances.

Somewhere along our path, we realized an online writing community existed. Often, we made that discovery when searching for an answer to our writing or publishing questions.

Not only are there countless writing workshops...

Branding: The Right Way vs. the Wrong Way

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Over the past few days, a crazy story has erupted on social media with the hashtag #cockygate. It involves authors (one who’s quite…erm, cocky), Amazon, and trademark law.

Author Faleena Hopkins claims her readers were getting confused by so many romance books having similar titles to hers. That issue isn’t unusual, as a quick look in any genre would reveal that popular tropes often lead to similar titles.

Historical romance titles tend to...