Courtney Wendleton's Blog, page 32
August 23, 2016
Why Your Book Isn’t Selling
Original image courtesy of Juhan Sonin via Flickr Creative commons.
The writer’s worst nightmare. You researched, you wrote, you finished, and then published your book. You wait for the sales and……….*crickets*. This is something that can happen to any kind of author, traditional or nontraditional. We think we have a hit on our hands only to later be checking it for a pulse.
What happened? Why is the book just not selling?
The Market
Remaindered Titles
In the not so distant past, there was only one way to get published and that was traditional publishing. Though many authors cheered when they were finally able to cast off the chains of New York, let’s at least respect that agents and editors might have known a thing or three about the book business.
Writers would often get vexed at the stack of rejection letters, believing they couldn’t actually write well. This was…
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How to Grow Your Author Blog
Image via Flickr Creative Commons, courtesy of Mike Licht
I am a huge fan of writers having a blog, but one of the first arguments I get is, “But I did have a blog and it did nothing.” I hear your pain. We live in a world of instant gratification and often it is why we are more inclined to post content on our Facebook or Twitter instead. Instantly we can see other people sharing and responding and it feels oh so good.
The blog? Meh.
The problem, however, is that any “benefit” from Facebook or Twitter evaporates almost as soon as it appears whereas the blog (if we stick to it) will keep giving us rewards for years to come.
Reframe Your Goal
Original image courtesy of flowcomm, via Flickr Commons
I will give you tips for growing your author blog here in a minute, but a simple…
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So You Wrote a First Draft—Dear God! What NOW?
Once we have that crappy first draft usually there will be two major things we need to do…fill or cut. Okay, drinking makes three. And maybe wondering why we didn’t go to dental hygienist school instead makes four….
Anyway.
While it is true that too little substance can generate confusion, too much fluff can create distraction.
There needs to be a balance between…
Enough about the damn snowstorm! and Wait? There was snow?
Thus, once we have that completed first draft and begin our read-through we need to make these refinements to see if what we created meets or exceeds our expectations.
Sadly this is usually the first draft.
Much of what we will need to do is going to be dictated by what kind of writer we are. Are we a Trimmer or an Embellisher? There is a fantastic post over on Writer Unboxed that describes these two types of writers.
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August 22, 2016
One Year Ago: The day my heart shatttered
A moment of silence for the anniversary of a lost loved one.
One year ago today my heart broken into a million pieces.
The loss of my Fat Cat – ChesterAnn – devastated me. The vet had worked weeks to try to pull her through, but in the end, she passed away.
My office has become quite the shrine to her memory. And even with getting 3 new cats, there is a void that she left behind.
ChesterAnn was like no other cat I have ever had. There will be no other cat with her distinct personality…and personality she had in loads.
So today I’ll mope around, look through pictures, talk to the other cats about her. I’ll snivel a little. Okay, maybe a lot.
August 18, 2016
More on Red Sister
This is just a quick post to note a few things in regards to the upcoming series, which is titled Book of the Ancestor:
I’ve written a post on my blog about the books from a beta-reader’s perspective. It’s spoiler-free and if you’d like to read it, it’s HERE .
Mark has finished writing the third book of the trilogy on 7th August 2016! YAY!
Book #1, which is titled Red Sister, can now be pre-ordered on Amazon US and UK , with publishing dates April 4, 2017 and 6 Apr 2017 indicated on the sites respectively. Pre-orders help authors tremendously, please consider supporting Mark and his books by pre-ordering the first book early on!
Ace Books already has a cover draft for the US edition of Red Sister prepared, which is by artist Bastien Lecouffe Deharme.
Agnes
I’m Not Comfortable Where I am.
Is this all we have to be, should be and can be?
Life in this world is a fight for your space. So, you have to have it in your mind that it is a fight and that you must fight your way out till you have what you want.
Above all, learn to speak in your own voice.
Things won’t come to you because you are beautiful or handsome, things come to does who see this world are strange land and that nothing comes easy and fights for what they want, believe and hold dear.
I am challenged this morning. I am throwing it to you also.
Wake up, Freshen up, make up and stand to be a better person today.
Bless.
– Shadrach Victor Kwetso
Why Do Creative People Burn Out?
by Meg Dowell
Creativity is, in many ways, like magic. We start crafting something out of nothing and, suddenly, the whole world looks and feels different. We can do anything. We can BE anything.
This line of thinking has its downsides. It implies that, because we are creative, because we have moments when we feel invincible and unstoppable, we don’t need to slow down. We don’t need to rest. And this just isn’t the case. I’ve learned that the hard way. Perhaps you have, too, and that’s why you’re here.
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How to Evaluate Your Current Author Marketing Strategy
by Ashlee McNicol
We all need a little help sometimes. As authors, it can be really hard to keep up with our writing when social media management and promotions take so much time out of the day. Most of us intend to make it full-time, but if you have no background in business, how can you make this happen without the planning taking too much time out of the day?
Let’s start with the basics in evaluating your current marketing strategy.
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Language and Worldbuilding
by Pekoeblaze
Well, for today, I thought that I’d take a very quick look at one of the more basic rules for making fictional “worlds” seem more immersive and realistic. This is because I happened to see an absolutely perfect example of this rule in action fairly recently.
So, what is this particular rule? Well, the rule is that the language in your story or comic should reflect the area that it has developed in. Whilst your story or comic itself should obviously be written in your own native language, a lot of linguistic changes can be shown through things like expressions and idioms.
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3 Reasons for Reading Dystopian Fiction
Artistic Credit: http://elldevil.deviantart.com/art/Dystopia-Destroyed-City-357489610
People can be doggedly hard on dystopian fiction. It’s weird how some people can like a thing a great deal until it becomes wildly popular and then somehow that popularity makes it suddenly unpalatable. Instead of asking “why is dystopian fiction still popular” maybe we should talk about why it was to begin with.
Here’s three reasons why people are reading Dystopian Fiction.
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