Matthew Iden's Blog, page 16
April 14, 2012
Featured Today on Scarlett Archer’s “1001 First Lines”
I’m excited to be today’s featured interview on Scarlett Archer’s great blog, 1001 First Lines. Scarlett’s questions about the importance of first lines–and some of the lemons I’ve both read and written–were a lot of fun to answer. It’s a pleasure to just talk about craft sometimes! Check it out if you have a few [...]
April 13, 2012
Book Critique: Robert Parker’s Looking for Rachel Wallace
Earlier this week, I talked about the usefulness of the book critique to help refine my writing. I thought I’d show a critique I did on one of crime fiction writer Robert Parker’s best Spenser novels, Looking for Rachel Wallace, a book that has helped me immensely as I try to make a career in [...]
April 12, 2012
How The Agency Model Led To An Antitrust Suit
Reblogged from David Gaughran: As reported yesterday, the Department of Justice has filed its antitrust lawsuit against Apple and five of the largest publishers (Macmillan, Penguin, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster). A settlement has been agreed with HarperCollins, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster; Macmillan claimed the terms were too onerous, and Penguin appears to [...]
April 11, 2012
Contest: Win an autographed copy of ONE BAD TWELVE!
Head on over to GoodReads.com for your chance to win an autographed copy of my crime fiction short story collection, one bad twelve! The contest ends in just 2 days, so hurry up! Registering at GoodReads gives you the opportunity to participate in reading groups, chat with authors, and enter daily giveaways to win many [...]
April 10, 2012
Reading to Write
I imagine that, for most authors, the urge to write comes from reading. My earliest attempt came from having read a story and wanting to emulate it. There is something about the cognitive process that, for writers and would-be writers, makes the act of reading equate almost directly with writing. Unfortunately, our cognitive process blithely [...]
April 6, 2012
Printing Your Book With CreateSpace: Part III
This is Part III of a three-part series on my attempt to print my short story collection, one bad twelve, using Amazon's CreateSpace method. Part I covered many of the basics; Part II covered the "short list" of tips and tricks that helped me get my title to CreateSpace. In many ways, this is the [...]
April 4, 2012
A Brief Rant on Bad Reviewers
Lord knows independent authors couldn't survive without the wonderful amateur book reviewers on sites like Amazon, Goodreads, and Librarything.com. I love my thoughtful reviewers (the 2-stars and 5-stars alike) and often thank them for their time. If I ever hit it big in e-publishing, it will be because of them. But there's a particular kind [...]
April 2, 2012
one bad twelve available in print!
I'm excited to announce that my crime fiction short story collection one bad twelve is now available in print at both my CreateSpace store and Amazon.com for $11.99. (If you're interested in buying it, I'd appreciate it if you did so at my CreateSpace store…Amazon takes 50% more royalties when selling from their site!) The [...]
March 29, 2012
Give It Away! Strategies for making your ebook free
For authors going indie, it quickly becomes apparent that the best way to get the word out about your books and stories is to give some of it away for free. Although handing out novels like they are candy doesn't have quite the same impact it did two or three years ago, it still may be the [...]
March 27, 2012
Using the Kindle to Edit
When the manuscript for my novel A Reason to Live was ready to move from critique groups to professional editing, I was lucky enough to land the wonderful Alison Dasho (nee Janssen), a former editor for Bleak House Books and Tyrus Books [visit her at http://www.alisonedits.com/]. She's in Wisconsin, I'm in Virginia; obviously, this was [...]
