Phillip T. Stephens's Blog: Wind Eggs, page 11

I blogged every day for a month and here’s what happened

it’s not what you think
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Keeping up with the tips can give you an attitude Photo: Karolina- KaboomPics (found on Pexels)

There’s a lot of advice out there about successful blogging: Write daily, post as much content as possible. But just because it works for one blogger, it might not be the best option for you. Besides, like a certain President whom I won’t mention, sometimes your success has nothing to do with the reasons which you think took you there. Mateja Clarik shares her experience.

Online Resource: Reading Free Rare Books

Ever wanted to see what a Book of Hours looks like? Or a codex from the time of the Roman empire. What would Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales have looked like before print? The Rare Book Room lets you look at rare books and manuscripts you might never see otherwise. Kristen Twardowski explains…

Kristen Twardowski

Louis Renard, Natuulyke Historie (1782): 90, Special Collections, University Library of Utrecht, via Samuel Fallours and Wikimedia.

Sometimes I get a hankering to read old books. Luckily I’ve found a website that allows me to explore some of the rarest books in the world for free.

The Rare Book Room is a website created by Octavo, a company that has digitized hundreds of rare books from the greatest libraries in the world. The collection contains books by Galileo, Copernicus, Shakespeare, Einstein, Wollstonecraft, and numerous others that cover subjects like art, exploration, history, and music.

Despite the obvious care that went into digitizing the books – the website proudly discusses the the resolution of each image – the site itself is very simple and lacks the bells and whistles of many of its contemporaries. Don’t let the project’s unadorned nature fool you though; the creators regularly add excellent new…

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How Comey Learned to Live with Nausea | Phillip Stevens

One day they’ll remember to spell my name right, but until then you can jump from my post to the entire beautiful issue of TheBeZine on life in the post-truth era.

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We make our brains believe by choosing which ideas for our neurons to reinforce.

Source: How Comey Learned to Live with Nausea | Phillip Stevens

Making a living as a writer: how social media can be a long-term investment for your career

Most indie writers discover the greatest stumbling block to profitability is marketing. You can spend a fortune marketing, spend a fortune hiring someone to market, or try to teach yourself how to market. Until Carol and I strike our gold mine, we’re sticking with option three. Roz Morris provides a few suggestions to get started. (I suggest you focus on one piece of the platform rather than trying to build the whole thing at once.)

Nail Your Novel

Last weekend I was speaking at the PowWow Festival of Writing in Moseley, Birmingham, and they were interested to hear how a writer of 2017 makes a living.

The first thing to say is that not many writers make a living from their books these days – whether they publish themselves or have book deals.

This is often a surprise to aspiring authors – and not a tad disappointing. It’s not that they expect to be earning like the headline grabbers, but they usually hope their book earnings will become a reliable replacement for other income. It usually doesn’t.

Of course, you’re far more likely to make quantities of £££ if you write prolifically in a popular genre – if that’s you, you might find this post by cosy mystery writer Elizabeth S Craig has useful strategies. You might also have made a serious study of hardass marketing techniques…

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When Autographed Novels Put Bookstores in Danger

I believe in the law of unintended consequences. Bookstores routinely sell books at the price listed on the cover. They don’t boost the price, and the only indication the book might be a “collectible” is a protective cellophane cover. E-Bay sellers might try to rip off unsuspecting customers, but to treat bookstores like memorabilia collectors could stop time-honored traditions, like readings by the author. Kristen Twardowski explains…

Kristen Twardowski

Book Passage is a quirky little bookstore situated in the Bay Area of California. Sure, it sells books, but it also does so much more. Every year the shop hosts over 700 author events. During these events, authors often sign books, and if any signed books remain after the crowds have thinned, Book Passage sells copies in the store. Because the shop wants to keep these items accessible to everyone, they sell autographed copies for the same amount of money as the mundane editions to books.

This practice is a wonderful one, but Book Passage may soon have to stop selling autographed books all together.

Image via Wikimedia, Adam Jones, “Bookstore Display for Gavrilo Princip – Assassin of Archduke Ferdinand (1914) Belgrade, Serbia, 17 November 2014.

Late last week I saw a troubling press release put out for the Book Passage by the legal group the Pacific Legal Foundation. On…

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Online Writing Contests: Approach with Caution

Writing contests are a great way to get exposure and a better shot to publish your story or poem than submitting to a journal. Or so goes the myth. The odds are, however, that you’re more writers may submit to a contest than a journal, after a while you spent more in entry fees than you would have earned had you sold to a journal, and you may lose rights to your work.

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(Image courtesy of Books & Such Literary Agency)

Sheritha Singh shares a few concerns you should address before you enter a contest. Especially if they’re asking for money.

#amwriting: submissions: discovering who wants them and how to manage your backlist

Sooner or later you need to develop a name for yourself outside social media, and the best way to do this is to engage readers directly with your short stories and poems. Not on your blog, not on Twitter, but in print and online publications. Connie Jasperson’s guide to Submittable1 is one of the best introductory explanations I’ve seen. Submittable tracks your submissions connects you to publications looking for writers and even sends regular emails with useful tips and information (some of which I

Submittable tracks your submissions connects you to publications looking for writers and even sends regular emails with useful tips and information (some of which I reposted). Note: This post contains other links you may want to bookmark.

1You should bookmark the Submittable link too. That’s why I included it, again, in the footnote: https://www.submittable.comback

Life in the Realm of Fantasy

I’m a member of several author groups who regularly meet in online chat-rooms to talk about the craft. Every member of these groups are published authors, some traditionally, and some Indie. Many are hybrid, with work both traditionally and Indie published.

Much of what we discuss involves the problems we face in developing marketing strategies. While we all agree that only publishing work that is of the highest quality is of paramount importance, one thing is clear: the greatest hurdle Indie authors face is getting our work in front of readers’ eyes.

Therefore, we write short stories and submit them to various anthologies, magazines, and contests. Those of us who write in less popular genres have fewer sales of our novels through Amazon and other eBook sales outlets, which makes it even more important for us to submit short stories to the many contests and publications that are out there…

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Branding for Authors—When Do We NEED Marketing & Advertising?

Lost sight of your book because you’ve read to many articles about your brand, platform, social media, advertising and marketing strategy and…Oh my God! Do they expect me to do everything?

Well, yes, unless your publisher expects to sell forty thousand copies overnight. (He won’t. If you’re reading my blog, you won’t.)

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Corporations may need to work all these elements into their brand, but you might not need to. (Image courtesy of The Author CEO)

Kristen Lamb spares you a little stress by breaking down the branding process. What you should do and maybe don’t need to do. Yet.

Top 10 Reasons to Marry an Alien

Marry an alien? You might think this is a ridiculous idea, but many interextra relationships develop out of abduction experiences. Psychologists agree there is no experience more intimate than sharing an anal probe, even if one of the partners does the probing.

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Striking out with members of the opposite sex? You too can look like the interterrestrial couple by thinking out of the world. (Bridal portrait courtesy of mrmohiuddin.)

If you remain skeptical, let me share a few reasons to marry your other world sweetheart:

They don’t talk back. They just think bad things about you.
They excrete through their skin so they never leave the toilet lid up.
You can swap partners with other alien couples and never know the difference.
They can turn off gravity during sex.
You get to drive one of those cool little floating cars.
They don’t keep you awake until three in the morning worrying about their job.
If you make a fool of yourself, they just think you’re behaving like any other human.
Computers think their language is a credit card number.
They’re genetically engineered, so they don’t have in-laws.
Aliens never get headaches.


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Colleen’s Weekly #Poetry Challenge # 28 – HARD & SOFT

Everyone knows about Haiku (although they might not know 17 Japanese syllables transfer literally to 11 or 3/5/3). Almost everyone I know has written at least one Haiku, usually a bad Haiku.

(Everyone but my uncles and aunts who went to Bob Jones University where Jesus is an American and foreign poetry is worse than bobbed hair and hippie thinking.)

If you really want to impress your literati friends, however, drop the works “Tanka,” and “Haibun” into the conversation. Sure, you’ll be a know-it-all, but you’ll be a know-it-all for the good of literature.

Colleen Chesebro explains the forms and challenges you to share one with her readers.

Colleen Chesebro ~ Fairy Whisperer

Happy POETRY Tuesday everyone!
Are you ready to get groovy with your poetry? Then, you’re in the right place! Pull up a chair, and let’s write some poetry. Alan Ginsberg is one of my favorite poets. He wrote about the beauty of life in raw and imperfect details.

You can write your poem in one of the three forms defined below:

HAIKU in English

TANKA

HAIBUN

You can do one poem or try to do one of each. It’s up to you – YOUR CHOICE. The instructions follow below:

HOW TO CREATE THE HAIKU in ENGLISH POETRY FORM

The haiku is a Japanese verse in three lines. Line one has 5 syllables, line 2 has 7 syllables, and line three has 5 syllables. Haiku is a mood poem, and it doesn’t use any metaphors or similes. 5/7/5.

Wikipedia explains:

“”Haiku” is a term sometimes loosely applied to any short, impressionistic…

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