Mark Tufo's Blog, page 8
May 1, 2012
Indian Hill Signed book Goodreads Giveaway for May
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Indian Hill by Mark Tufo 
Indian Hill by Mark Tufo Giveaway ends May 31, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Enter to win
Zombie Fallout 4 Audio Goodreads May Giveaway
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Zombie Fallout 4 by Mark Tufo 
Zombie Fallout 4 by Mark Tufo Giveaway ends May 31, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Enter to win
Zombie Fallout 1 Audio Goodreads giveaway for May
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Zombie Fallout by Mark Tufo 
Zombie Fallout by Mark Tufo Giveaway ends May 31, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Enter to win
April 30, 2012
Zombie Awareness Month of May Contests
Keep your eyes out here on the blog! Tantor has graciously offered up 5 audio MP3 CD's of Zombie Fallout 1 and 5 audio MP3 CD's of Zombie Fallout 4 for Mays contests. These will be available for a give away drawing on Goodreads from 5/1/12 to 5/31/12. I am also doing a Goodreads drawing for 3 signed copies of Encounters~Indian Hill 1. I will post links for the Goodreads giveaways as soon as they are available.
April 22, 2012
Laughable article by Jodi Picoult on Indie Authors
Jodi Picoult advises authors not to self-publish
Posted by John Warner ⋅ April 10, 2012 ⋅ 1 Comment
Filed Under Jodi Picoult
Jodi Picoult has become the latest conventionally-published author to argue that authors should not choose the self-publishing route. Speaking to the Huffington Post, she argues that self-published authors miss out on the marketability afforded by a ‘real’ publisher, and that the self-published world is still too varied in terms of quality, with readers struggling to separate good books from bad.
Much of what Picoult has to say seems reasonable, but it’s also worth noting that many of her arguments can potentially be turned back against her. For example, she says that it’s hard for readers to sort the good from the bad when dealing with self-published authors. That’s true, but it’s also true for conventionally published books. We’re still learning how to sort the vast number of self-published books in a way that helps highlight the best titles, but just because we’re not at that point yet, should we give up on self-published books altogether?
Picoult also claims that self-published authors such as Amanda Hocking often go with a conventional deal once they’re successful. Picoult seems to be saying that most self-published authors long for a ‘real’ deal, but she neglects to note that writers such as Hocking would probably never have been in a position to get a conventional deal if they hadn’t self-published. It’s fine to say that people shouldn’t self-publish, but what’s the alternative?
Would love to do some comparison here from an Indie:
Jodi Mine
#78 ~ 3.5 star #2368 ~ 4.5 star
#3447 ~ 3.5 star #4178 ~ 5 star
#2207 ~ 4 star #4661 ~ 4.5 star
#1196 ~ 4 star #4632 ~ 5 star
#1644 ~ 4 star #2585 ~ 4 star
#9238 ~ 3.5 star #12706 ~ 4 star
#16233 ~ 3.5 star #23178 ~ 5 star
#10297 ~ 3.5 star #21278 ~ 4.5 star
#27137 ~ 3 star #26813 ~ 5 star
Amanda Hocking was able to up her original advance offer of 20,000 to 2 million because of what she had done in the self pub industry. Two more Indies were signed this month with the Big 6. Konrath is making a high 6 figure annual income in which he is not paying a portion to the Big 6.
I have turned down 2 publishers. I have recently hit my slow season which goes through September. Is it the market or the type of books I write I do not know, however if things follow trend from previous years I will be passing up Ms. Picoults rankings come October. On an ending note, Ms. Picoults newest release is being surpassed by 20 or more Indie Authors in the Amazon top 100 overall list. You may be published with the Big 6 but that does not make readers like your books.
Posted by John Warner ⋅ April 10, 2012 ⋅ 1 Comment
Filed Under Jodi Picoult
Jodi Picoult has become the latest conventionally-published author to argue that authors should not choose the self-publishing route. Speaking to the Huffington Post, she argues that self-published authors miss out on the marketability afforded by a ‘real’ publisher, and that the self-published world is still too varied in terms of quality, with readers struggling to separate good books from bad.
Much of what Picoult has to say seems reasonable, but it’s also worth noting that many of her arguments can potentially be turned back against her. For example, she says that it’s hard for readers to sort the good from the bad when dealing with self-published authors. That’s true, but it’s also true for conventionally published books. We’re still learning how to sort the vast number of self-published books in a way that helps highlight the best titles, but just because we’re not at that point yet, should we give up on self-published books altogether?
Picoult also claims that self-published authors such as Amanda Hocking often go with a conventional deal once they’re successful. Picoult seems to be saying that most self-published authors long for a ‘real’ deal, but she neglects to note that writers such as Hocking would probably never have been in a position to get a conventional deal if they hadn’t self-published. It’s fine to say that people shouldn’t self-publish, but what’s the alternative?
Would love to do some comparison here from an Indie:
Jodi Mine
#78 ~ 3.5 star #2368 ~ 4.5 star
#3447 ~ 3.5 star #4178 ~ 5 star
#2207 ~ 4 star #4661 ~ 4.5 star
#1196 ~ 4 star #4632 ~ 5 star
#1644 ~ 4 star #2585 ~ 4 star
#9238 ~ 3.5 star #12706 ~ 4 star
#16233 ~ 3.5 star #23178 ~ 5 star
#10297 ~ 3.5 star #21278 ~ 4.5 star
#27137 ~ 3 star #26813 ~ 5 star
Amanda Hocking was able to up her original advance offer of 20,000 to 2 million because of what she had done in the self pub industry. Two more Indies were signed this month with the Big 6. Konrath is making a high 6 figure annual income in which he is not paying a portion to the Big 6.
I have turned down 2 publishers. I have recently hit my slow season which goes through September. Is it the market or the type of books I write I do not know, however if things follow trend from previous years I will be passing up Ms. Picoults rankings come October. On an ending note, Ms. Picoults newest release is being surpassed by 20 or more Indie Authors in the Amazon top 100 overall list. You may be published with the Big 6 but that does not make readers like your books.
April 15, 2012
Zombie Fallout 5 ~ Digital Media Students receive their books
http://newtechhigh.org/?p=2182
Digital Media Students Apply Their Technology Skills for “Zombie Fallout” Art ContestPosted on April 12, 2012 by Administrator
Napa County Office of Education’s Regional Occupational Program (ROP) students from Dr. James Brown’s Digital Media Design and Criticism 2 course, New Technology High School, and Chris Walton’s Printing and Graphic’s course, Vintage High School, were recently given a unique opportunity to take the skills they have acquired and apply them to the world of work.
Napa County ROP recently hosted a contest for students in the Digital Media class. The students used the various forms of digital media they work with as part of the course curriculum to develop artwork for a new book in the popular “Zombie Fallout” series. Approximately 100 students submitted illustrations to the contest, and the top 13 were selected for submission to the series author Mark Tufo. According to Tufo, “I am completely impressed with the work that the students have presented, and I am thankful for the opportunity to present their art to as many of my readers as possible.”
In the fall of 2011, ROP Director Tammie Holloway learned that Tufo was preparing an anthology for the series. Holloway contacted Tufo with the idea of having students submit illustrations for the new book. He not only agreed, but committed to using the top 12 illustrations in the publication. Students were provided with an edited version of the first four chapters of “Zombie Fallout” so they could obtain a sense of the characters.
Course instructor Brown believes this was a great project for the students because it combined core academics with career technical education. “It was a way for the students to learn how to visually communicate in one image the story behind a chapter of a book,” Brown said. Algamae Ramos, one of the students whose illustration was chosen, said the author liked her “creepy little girl” image. She had chosen her four year-old sister for her model. Although she was not very familiar with Photoshop, Ramos said she decided to “have fun with it” and was pleased when her art was selected for publication. The students selected are eager to receive their signed copy of the book which will include their illustrations.
Napa County Office of Education Regional Occupational Program (NCOE ROP) provides career technical education in multiple industry sectors to high school students. Students have the opportunity to take courses that prepare them for college and careers through hands-on instruction by bringing theory and practice together. Many students use the skills developed in ROP to obtain employment while furthering their education or pursuing their career goals. Students who are interested in taking ROP courses should see their high school counselor.
Digital Media Students Apply Their Technology Skills for “Zombie Fallout” Art ContestPosted on April 12, 2012 by Administrator
Napa County Office of Education’s Regional Occupational Program (ROP) students from Dr. James Brown’s Digital Media Design and Criticism 2 course, New Technology High School, and Chris Walton’s Printing and Graphic’s course, Vintage High School, were recently given a unique opportunity to take the skills they have acquired and apply them to the world of work.
Napa County ROP recently hosted a contest for students in the Digital Media class. The students used the various forms of digital media they work with as part of the course curriculum to develop artwork for a new book in the popular “Zombie Fallout” series. Approximately 100 students submitted illustrations to the contest, and the top 13 were selected for submission to the series author Mark Tufo. According to Tufo, “I am completely impressed with the work that the students have presented, and I am thankful for the opportunity to present their art to as many of my readers as possible.”
In the fall of 2011, ROP Director Tammie Holloway learned that Tufo was preparing an anthology for the series. Holloway contacted Tufo with the idea of having students submit illustrations for the new book. He not only agreed, but committed to using the top 12 illustrations in the publication. Students were provided with an edited version of the first four chapters of “Zombie Fallout” so they could obtain a sense of the characters.
Course instructor Brown believes this was a great project for the students because it combined core academics with career technical education. “It was a way for the students to learn how to visually communicate in one image the story behind a chapter of a book,” Brown said. Algamae Ramos, one of the students whose illustration was chosen, said the author liked her “creepy little girl” image. She had chosen her four year-old sister for her model. Although she was not very familiar with Photoshop, Ramos said she decided to “have fun with it” and was pleased when her art was selected for publication. The students selected are eager to receive their signed copy of the book which will include their illustrations.
Napa County Office of Education Regional Occupational Program (NCOE ROP) provides career technical education in multiple industry sectors to high school students. Students have the opportunity to take courses that prepare them for college and careers through hands-on instruction by bringing theory and practice together. Many students use the skills developed in ROP to obtain employment while furthering their education or pursuing their career goals. Students who are interested in taking ROP courses should see their high school counselor.
April 10, 2012
New Contests going on, on author page
US random drawing
UK and everywhere outside of the US random drawing
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mark-Tu...
Sign up under whichever region applies to you
UK and everywhere outside of the US random drawing
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mark-Tu...
Sign up under whichever region applies to you
amazon reviews by bescully.com
I love this bloggers take on reviews. I remember the day we use to have to make our on choices based on facts alone before ebay and Amazon. Did I just date myself?
http://www.bescully.com/2012/04/why-i...
Why I Stopped Reading Amazon Reviews (and Returned to Reading Books…) Once upon a time, in a pre-Internet galaxy far, far away, I used to buy a lot of books. The process went something like this: read a few reviews in magazines or newspapers, maybe get a recommendation from a friend, or sometimes—and stick with me on this one—just pick something interesting-looking from the bookstore shelves without even reading a review! This method proved pretty effective, overall—a typical run resulted in a few lousy books, a few astonishingly great ones, and many more that landed somewhere in-between. A diverse crap shoot—you know, a lot like life in general.
Then one day those bookstores started disappearing and the Amazonian conqueror took over the land—now I could not only buy nearly any book I desired from the comfort of my recliner, but I could read dozens, sometimes even hundreds of reviews without any extra effort—a reader's paradise all in one place!
But then came the not-so-happily-ever-after ending to the reader's fairy tale: ever so slowly, before I even realized it was happening, I stopped buying books. I would head over to Amazon with a new title, and before hitting the purchase button, I would naturally scan the reviews. The positive ones tended to say much the same things, so I often found myself jumping straight to the negative ones. And although they sometimes tipped me off to a truly avoid-this element, more often than not the cascade of conflicting perspectives left me feeling so ambivalent about the book that I'd decide it wasn't worth taking a chance with my hard-earned money.
Time went by and I caught up on stacks of unread New Yorkers, but one day I woke up starving for a novel—a good one, a bad one, a somewhere in-between one--I didn't care. So I went and bought a book. Without reading any of the Amazon reviews. And then I bought more books, and have been buying them ever since. This method has proven pretty effective, overall—a few lousy books, a few astonishingly great ones, and many more somewhere in-between. A diverse crap shoot—you know, a lot like life in general.
Simple enough for me as a reader, but as an author, such review-rejection is a little trickier. I don't know many writers who can resist the siren song of reading his or her own reviews, and in many ways, the increased interaction between artist and audience that the Internet allows is a powerful new avenue for learning and growth. And yet I can't help but wonder at the consequences, particularly for artists, of this strange new world in which everyone can (and often does) comment upon and rate everything, all the time (and then comment upon the comments…). The best case outcome of this increased feedback is that it provides the artists with more pathways forward on that never-ending, obstacle-filled journey of improvement; the neutral outcome (and the one I suspect is most often the case) is that, like so much else about online "networking," a lot of people end up conversing with themselves in a virtual wind tunnel; but the worst case scenario, which is not too hard to imagine if one has been paying attention to the careers of certain writers, artists and musicians these days, is a crippling cacophony of never-ending voices drowning out the most essential, vital part of this whole process: the artist's own voice whispering to his or her soul in the solitude. Flawed and struggling though it may be, if that voice gets lost in the din, an Internet full of readers and reviewers and critics and editors cannot rescue it.
Another curious aspect of the reader review phenomenon is the tendency (of which I myself have been guilty) for authors to conflate such feedback with professional reviews from industry publications. (Recently, a fellow author even suggested that I should be concerned about the enthusiastic Amazon reviews for my novel Verland: The Transformation because potential readers might think that I had somehow manufactured or manipulated them; although possessing such Svengali-like mind control over my readers would certainly come in handy, I'm going to give most people the benefit of the doubt in being neither paranoid nor absurd enough to travel down that route.) But consider that in a simpler time, a writer's reviews came primarily from newspapers or magazines; everything else was regarded not as a "review," but a "response"—a fan letter (or a hate letter); an "I loved/hated" your book at a signing or store appearance; a letter to an editor, perhaps—and I often think that it might be a happier, healthier (and more realistic) perspective to regard feedback on sites like Amazon and Goodreads as just that: often highly personal, individual reader responses—and yes, as potentially insightful/infuriating/enlightening/exasperating/worthwhile as reader responses have always been—but in no way replacing or replicating the objectivity and purpose of a professional review.
I'm off to buy a new book now; you'll forgive
http://www.bescully.com/2012/04/why-i...
Why I Stopped Reading Amazon Reviews (and Returned to Reading Books…) Once upon a time, in a pre-Internet galaxy far, far away, I used to buy a lot of books. The process went something like this: read a few reviews in magazines or newspapers, maybe get a recommendation from a friend, or sometimes—and stick with me on this one—just pick something interesting-looking from the bookstore shelves without even reading a review! This method proved pretty effective, overall—a typical run resulted in a few lousy books, a few astonishingly great ones, and many more that landed somewhere in-between. A diverse crap shoot—you know, a lot like life in general.
Then one day those bookstores started disappearing and the Amazonian conqueror took over the land—now I could not only buy nearly any book I desired from the comfort of my recliner, but I could read dozens, sometimes even hundreds of reviews without any extra effort—a reader's paradise all in one place!
But then came the not-so-happily-ever-after ending to the reader's fairy tale: ever so slowly, before I even realized it was happening, I stopped buying books. I would head over to Amazon with a new title, and before hitting the purchase button, I would naturally scan the reviews. The positive ones tended to say much the same things, so I often found myself jumping straight to the negative ones. And although they sometimes tipped me off to a truly avoid-this element, more often than not the cascade of conflicting perspectives left me feeling so ambivalent about the book that I'd decide it wasn't worth taking a chance with my hard-earned money.
Time went by and I caught up on stacks of unread New Yorkers, but one day I woke up starving for a novel—a good one, a bad one, a somewhere in-between one--I didn't care. So I went and bought a book. Without reading any of the Amazon reviews. And then I bought more books, and have been buying them ever since. This method has proven pretty effective, overall—a few lousy books, a few astonishingly great ones, and many more somewhere in-between. A diverse crap shoot—you know, a lot like life in general.
Simple enough for me as a reader, but as an author, such review-rejection is a little trickier. I don't know many writers who can resist the siren song of reading his or her own reviews, and in many ways, the increased interaction between artist and audience that the Internet allows is a powerful new avenue for learning and growth. And yet I can't help but wonder at the consequences, particularly for artists, of this strange new world in which everyone can (and often does) comment upon and rate everything, all the time (and then comment upon the comments…). The best case outcome of this increased feedback is that it provides the artists with more pathways forward on that never-ending, obstacle-filled journey of improvement; the neutral outcome (and the one I suspect is most often the case) is that, like so much else about online "networking," a lot of people end up conversing with themselves in a virtual wind tunnel; but the worst case scenario, which is not too hard to imagine if one has been paying attention to the careers of certain writers, artists and musicians these days, is a crippling cacophony of never-ending voices drowning out the most essential, vital part of this whole process: the artist's own voice whispering to his or her soul in the solitude. Flawed and struggling though it may be, if that voice gets lost in the din, an Internet full of readers and reviewers and critics and editors cannot rescue it.
Another curious aspect of the reader review phenomenon is the tendency (of which I myself have been guilty) for authors to conflate such feedback with professional reviews from industry publications. (Recently, a fellow author even suggested that I should be concerned about the enthusiastic Amazon reviews for my novel Verland: The Transformation because potential readers might think that I had somehow manufactured or manipulated them; although possessing such Svengali-like mind control over my readers would certainly come in handy, I'm going to give most people the benefit of the doubt in being neither paranoid nor absurd enough to travel down that route.) But consider that in a simpler time, a writer's reviews came primarily from newspapers or magazines; everything else was regarded not as a "review," but a "response"—a fan letter (or a hate letter); an "I loved/hated" your book at a signing or store appearance; a letter to an editor, perhaps—and I often think that it might be a happier, healthier (and more realistic) perspective to regard feedback on sites like Amazon and Goodreads as just that: often highly personal, individual reader responses—and yes, as potentially insightful/infuriating/enlightening/exasperating/worthwhile as reader responses have always been—but in no way replacing or replicating the objectivity and purpose of a professional review.
I'm off to buy a new book now; you'll forgive
April 6, 2012
New contest! ZF3 Audio
Contest on my facebook page going on now until tomorrow! Join up on facebook author page if interested
