P.D.R. Lindsay's Blog, page 20

If only...

I have been enjoying the brilliance, clarity and sheer genius of Dr Philip Ball. The Doctor is 'a freelance science writer, broadcaster and lecturer who's particularly interested in the interactions of the sciences, the arts, and the wider culture.' That sounds somewhat abstruse. In fact Ball makes it all so fascinating I'm in despair.

In May he was one of the guests invited to New Zealand for the Auckland Writers Festival. He gave two talks - the first 'Bright Earth: the Invention of Colour'...

Sometimes...just sometimes.

It seems to me that New Zealand writers and the NZSA and Creative New Zealand and the Book Council will never grow out of this idiotic belief that pretentious arty-farty 'literahry' writing is great writing. Whilst searching for a market for a story I came across this print journal, an American well established Small Press one, called 'Iconoclast'. Its submission guidelines sum up perfectly what I want to shout at New Zealand writers.

Prose: To 3500 words (occasionally longer). Subjects and st...

A really useful place for Indie Writers

I've been working with two wonderful new writers. Full of enthusiasm, grit, stickability and thousands of story ideas these two newbies put the writers' group to shame.

Moaning about not getting published via the traditional route this writers' group wouldn't even consider being independent and forming a co-op to help each other publish. Too much hard work and they couldn't sell their books, it was too difficult.

Sigh!

Might I recommend to all Indies new or established that they join up or even...

Emails and the Book Fair

Why life gets in the way of writing is something we writers all moan about. I note that the men moan less. They usually have wives to do the cooking, cleaning and child rearing for them. I need a wife, or housekeeper or a good WWOOFer to do all the chores, manage the telephone and let me write. Life has been intrusive for months with that stupid neighbour, and the court case, insurance problems, medical problems, penguin protection problems and the need to do these water exercises to keep wal...

The joy of reviews.

Oh the joy of a good review for the Indie writer. I was fortunate enough to have The Review Blog read a copy of my historical novel, 'Tizzie' and then present me with this charming review. http://thereview2014.blogspot.co.nz/2...

Obviously I am pleased with such a thorough review but I wonder why so many so-called reviews do not discuss important aspects of a book such as the cover and formatting? And I won't go into the rants you can read littered all over GoodRe...

May I recommend that all Indies and those snooty people w...

May I recommend that all Indies and those snooty people who keep saying the e-book is dead have a look at this? I really appreciate what the Author Earnings people do collating all this information for us so that we may know what is really happening in the Indie world.

http://authorearnings.com/
Welcome to the May 2015 Author Earnings Report. This is our sixth quarterly look at Amazon’s ebook sales, with data taken on over 200,000 bestselling ebooks. With each report over the past year and a ha...

Useful Advice for Indies about Twitter.

I am always grateful for places like IndiesUnlimited because of the sound, practical and useful advice I find there. I am nearly sure these extracts come from there. I am now thinking more kindly about Twitter. See what you think.


'Why would Google want tweets? Twitter has become the first line of communication in breaking events. If an event occurs on the other side of the world, tweets are relaying that information in nearly real time. If Google has access to that information (called the Twi...

indies forever. Our celebration on March 25th.

The Indie party is over. Another group of people have been informed about the ease, absence of expense, and sheer delight of being an Independent author. The hour rapidly became two, thanks to our local library's generous gift of a comfy space and the time to use it.

An interesting possibility of a book, art and photography, sprang up and everyone was keen to explore the multimedia aspects of digital printing.

Seems to me that there is new world out there for writers, musicians, artists and pho...

Why be an Indie author?

1. To have your work read, and read by as many readers as possible. Self-publishing is the best way to achieve this.

2. You can publish a book that looks professional and compares well with a traditionally published book. So do it!

3. You can update, correct and add to your books very quickly.

4. You earn more of the money. 40% -70% is a lot more than trad publishers offer.

5. You can privately, and definitely behind closed doors, cock a snook at the agents and trad publishers who 'loved' your...

The New World of the 21stC Novelist.

Now isn't that a grand title? Alas, being a 21stC novelist means hours spent doing P.R.
It goes like this.

I am still a bemused technophobe so when Simon at Readersintheknow.com drops me an email telling me about a gadget I have to have and it's a Read Excerpt widget I have visions of a little robot that crawls around books finding extracts for me. I haven't signed up yet, need the money, but this is the sort of gadget I need for readers on my website. Then I am struck by an awful thought! Is t...