Nick Thacker's Blog, page 26

Breaking the Silence, and Getting Over “Busy”

I promised myself I’d never write a post like this.

I said to myself (and my readers) that an “I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a while…” post was unacceptable, and unprofessional.

I lied.

I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a while.

The truth is, I’m sorry I haven’tposted, but I’m not sorry about the reasons. And there are many:

My freelancing gig picked up — I’m working with a sports ministry, numerous authors, bloggers, and small businesses, and I’ve been busy.
I began working for my church part time. I’...

7 Ways Guest-Blogging Can Launch Your Blogging Career

Note from Nick: This an excerpt from my new guide, “The Dead-Simple Guide to Guest Posts,“available on Amazon.

I write here regularly, and one of the ongoing themes I use in my writing is the idea of “defining our own success.” Success means many different things to people, and everyone has their own version of the definition.

Blogging and building a platform online is no different — we can measure success in terms of dollars, readers, subscribers, downloads, or many other metrics — or we can c...

Books to Help Your Writing Career

My Amazon.com author image!

Over the past six months or so, I’ve been doing alotof blogging. I relaunched this website to become a “writer’s paradise” of sorts (still working on that, obviously), and I tried to focus my efforts on the writing niche, at the intersection of marketing, self-promotion, and being a great writer.

Because of all that, my non-blog writing projects have also morphed. I used to imagine writing books about camping and wilderness survival (a childhood interest), music, or...

Scrivener: The Ultimate Guide to Exporting Ebooks (Kindle, ePub, etc.)

Since I began publishing my books, I’ve been using Scrivener for the writing and editing process. If you weren’t aware, I’m a ridiculously-huge fan of Scrivener, and you can read about it more here(by the way, it’s available for Mac and Windows, and through the Mac App store and they offer a free trial as well).

The problem I’ve faced with Scrivener is that it gets a little complicated to export for the certain formats I need, like print and e-book. It works exceptionally well, but getting thi...

Want to Write? Write A Short Story First

This week marked a special day in the lives of many practicing writers. A local (online) hero, Joe Bunting ofThe Write Practice, has published a short book calledLet’s Write A Short Story!

In a world of quick-to-print indie authors, eBooks galore, and too many self-pubbed authors chasing a buck, this is one book that I can honestly say islongoverdue.

I’ve been following Joe’s work for a few months (I know, I was a little late to the party), but I had the pleasure of working with him through a g...

The Jack Skellington Guide to Creative Self-Discovery and Personal Challenges

Image by andy z

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas may be a quirky tale about a skeleton and his Halloween Town friends, but its charm extends far beyond what you may expect. I’ve discovered something about the bony main character after watching the movie for the zillionth time: he’s got a lesson or two for us imaginative types.

Allow me to explain.

Jack Skellington was a creative professional who wanted a challenge.

Jack had it all – a prestigious “Pumpkin King” title, an uncanny talent...

5 Keys to Getting the Most Out of Your Book Marketing

Photo by aloshbennet.

As I write this, I’m finishing edits on my first novel, a thriller calledThe Golden Crystal, as well as putting the finishing touches on a short series of Kindle articles I’m calling theDead-Simple Guides(the first of which is titledThe Dead-Simple Guide to Amazing Headlines, available for less than a buck on Amazon).

The editing process, for me, isn’t as straightforward as the writing process. It’s filled with second-guessing, rewrites, and random tangential musings.

On to...

How to Fit Blogging Into Your Busy Schedule

This is a guest post from Mariana Ashley, a freelance writer and blogger.

Remember when you first started your blog? You probably stared at the blank WordPress page with incredibly high hopes of establishing yourself as a major player in the blogosphere. You may have imagined being able to quit your day job and become a professional blogger. A few months after starting your blog, you may have started to feel a little overwhelmed as reality hit you. Becoming a successful blogger takes a lot of...

The Secret to Writing Great Nonfiction

Malcolm Gladwell
Seth Godin
AJ Jacobs
Tim Ferriss
David McCullough

There. I just listed off a handful of my all-time favorite non-fiction authors. Actually, I just looked to my right and read off the names of the authors of a section of books on my bookshelf.

What they all have in common is, yes, they write nonfiction (for the most part). That means their stuff is real, true, and based on factual evidence.

The problem I have with a lot of nonfiction though is that it’s boring (ironically enough, the...

The LendInk Disaster, Piracy, and the Successful Author

[image error]I must admit, I was a little behind on this one. Apparently, an ebook lending faciliter, LendInk, has gone the way of Napster, Kazaa, and some of our other favorite file-sharing sites. Thanks to a barrage of Facebook posts, Tweets, and even hate mail, the site was taken down by their host and hasn’t come back online since. It was a question of DRM (Digital Rights Management), piracy, and the constantly-changing world of Internet technology.

If you, like me,haven’t been keeping up with this iss...