Tweet With special assistance from the Wu Tang Clan, I’m going to try and address one of the weirdest, most all-over-the-place topics in the ongoing, evolving mess that is indie and self publishing. What the HELL should these things cost? As far as advice, you’ve come to the wrong place because I HAVE NO IDEA. Race […]
Tweet We’ve had the pleasure of targeting (or, to be more realistic, eliminating) the largest swathe of readers with BISAC. We’ve also re-visited how cover and promotional copy will hook specific readers once your category has narrowed them significantly. Today, though, I want to talk about how to hook someone’s interest. And this person doesn’t […]
Tweet As you’ve probably noticed, this month we’re looking at non-fictional books quite a lot. This turned out to be a really spectacular marketing opportunity because, in looking at non-fic books, I discovered that they are the Holy Grail of book marketing how-tos. Do you disbelieve me? Let me take you on a tour through […]
Tweet Recently, I talked about BISAC headers and their simultaneously freeing and restricting abilities to target broad swathes of readers. Broad Across the Beam How broad? How about things like Fiction or History or Humor? Yes, things as disparate as Dune is from Sense & Sensibility, or The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is from Meet the Beatles: A Cultural History of the Band […]
Tweet Once upon a time there was a man named Aaron Pogue. He worked every day as a writer, and yet he dreamed every day of working as a writer. You see, he worked as a technical writer translating Engineer into English. But he wanted to be a fiction writer so he could translate words into dreams. […]
Tweet Part of marketing your book in this brave new world of self, indie, and e-publishing is targeting your category. Categories are what most people call genres, but I’m not going to get into the minutiae of which term is correct. I’m going to call it category for the duration of this post for clarity […]
Tweet I spent last month’s Guts & Bolts being pretty hard on Epic Fantasy’s promotional copy. That’s not surprising: I have a complicated relationship with the genre, even going so far as to quit it entirely while I was in college. But I’m going to try and be nicer this time around by dealing with […]
Tweet Every now and then, I decide I want to be stylish. I’m able to dress myself reasonably well; it isn’t all superhero emblem t-shirts and blue jeans. I have some nice dress shirts and good-looking sweaters. I’ve been known to rock the fedora and the newsboy cap. I own more than one pair of […]
Tweet In a couple of posts, I threw around the phrase “weaponized plot.” This is a phrase that I invented (as far as I know). It’s a phrase used often by me and by the staff at Consortium Books. But it occurred to me it might not be immediately obvious to everyone what it means. […]
Tweet Guts & Bolts is my catch-all dissection and deconstruction of various parts of book promotion. Since promotional copy is my theme this month and with Courtney’s review fresh in mind, I decided to take a look at promo copy in one of the most beloved facets of the fantasy genre…Epic Fantasy. Most beloved by […]
