Alexander M. Zoltai's Blog, page 105
January 31, 2016
Author Interview ~ Ana Simons
Regular readers know I have many author interviews on this blog.
And, those readers know about my relatively recent immersion into the Wattpad community.
Those readers have experienced interviews with the following Wattpad Authors:Holly Gonzalez,J. A. Partridge,Raphyel M Jordan, andJennifer Morrey.
Today, we have another Wattpad author; but, this one’s quite different…
So different I’m publishing this interview on a day I normally re-blog someone else’s post and I’m leaving it as top post on...
January 30, 2016
Publishing 101 with BJ Muntain, part two: Querying
Back on January 23rd I re-blogged Part One of this 101 of Traditional Publishing :-)
So what is querying?
Querying is trying to sell an agent (or publisher) on your book. You do this by sending a query letter. Some agents only want the query letter, some want a synopsis, some want to see the first 5, 10, 50 pages. Send them what their guidelines say they want to see.
A query letter is a creative business letter. It’s a business letter because you want to do business with the...
January 29, 2016
#WORDS ~ 42 of Our Weird Little Friends :-)
My Best Friend, Jane Watson, shared two very interesting lists with me that I’ll share with you.
I was happy she shared them because, as you can see from the image, this blog has had visitors from many countries…
Dots are Visitors Since November, 2012 ~ Total Visits on Map = 55,310 — Total visits to this blog since January, 2011 = 94,158
You’ll have to go to the links I give youto read about all the words but I think it will be worth your time, for entertaining and educational reasons :-)
Fir...
January 28, 2016
Top Ten Ways to Match Books to Readers by Dana Johansen and Maureen Mooney Corbo
Today’s re-blog might seem like it’s for teachers only…
Nope — most of the ten tips will work just as well for your friend or neighbor :-)
A child comes up to you, hope in her eyes. She asks the one single question that has the power to strike simultaneous excitement and fear in a teacher, parent, or librarian- “Can you recommend a good book for me?”
We know our students, children, and the books we have on the bookshelves. So what are we worried about? We worry that we will g...
January 27, 2016
Amazon Seems to Be Playing Fair, after All . . .
Five days ago, I published the post,Do We Have to Worry about Amazon Being Heavy-HandedAgain?
I reported on a story about Amazon putting warning labels on e-books that have typos and other errors; but, I expressed my wariness about what was being said in the quoted article fromgoodEreader…
I also asked for a heads-up if anyone saw more about this issue…
I saw more…
First, was an attempt at damage control by the author of the article I’d blogged about—What authors need to know about the new Ki...
January 26, 2016
The British Library
Some re-blogs pack more punch than others…
This one’s packing a huge load of goodness :-)
Sir Isaac Newton memorial at the British Library.
Wish you could explore the world’s largest library whenever you wanted? Imagine being able to leaf through ancient books, view online exhibitions, and feast your eyes on some of Britain’s most treasured objects. Can you think of a better way to inspire your next story?
You can do just that, and you don’t have to leave home. This resou...
January 25, 2016
If You Write for a Living (or, even if you don’t do it for a living), Should You Be Paid to Speak at an Event?
I’ve been following a story…
Image Courtesy of sanja gjenero ~ http://www.freeimages.com/photographer/lusi-46247
Not one I’m intimately involved in—I don’t count on being paid as a writer (even though being a writer is my main occupation...)—the United States government pays me a military pension—though, I am looking for an alternative income that could exceed the pension and afford me more freedom of mundane decision :-)
But, it is a story I’m intensely interested in…
I first caught wind of...
January 24, 2016
Writing Actually Is Hard Work, Which Is Fine
Today’s re-blog is a rare gift:
A non-fiction piece that’s lyrical…
An honest look at what it takes to “write good”…
A reminder to my former self that nearly every first draft needs improvement…
Ruth Carmelwrites in response to Mike Minchin’s guest blog post, “Writing is Not Hard Work”: I’m in the winter doldrums and the writing is slacking off. More precisely, I’m slacking off it. Too much late night television, forgetting to write down my ideas. At least I have a...
January 23, 2016
Publishing 101 with BJ Muntain
Regular readers know I’m a bit partial to self-publishing; but, today’s re-blog is a very good introduction to Traditional Publishing :-)
This week I asked my good friendBJ Muntainto come in and share a bit of her experience in the publishing world with you all! Since BJ has a wealth of great knowledge, her guest post will be in two parts, shared this week and next week. Hope you enjoy!
Publishing 101
with BJ Muntain
I recently read a blog post about a query service, on Jane...
January 22, 2016
Do We Have to Worry about Amazon Being Heavy-Handed Again?
Image Courtesy of John Hart ~ http://www.freeimages.com/photographer/MaxxDamage-35059
The topic for today’s post came from the wonderful blog called The Passive Voice—usually showing snippets with links to other blogs but sometimes holding forth at length, eloquently—this time with the snippet/link about “Kindle e-Books will have a warning message if they have spelling mistakes or bad formatting.”
The passive guy (who’s actually a lawyer) led me to a somewhat detailed article at goodEreader.
...
