I had a great time at the writer’s conference in New York. There were many industry professionals willing to share their insight about the changing publishing climate. Here are five points I’d like to share with you.
1. When you’re just starting out don’t worry about publicity (a website is fine, a publicist is too much). […]

Farewell…
First let me be serious and say rest in peace to science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke who died this week at the age of 90. Find out about his life here.

Now for some frivolity.

Make money as a fake
If you want to get your less than truthful memoir published and be like Misha Defonseca who […]

Hardcover edition

More than 300 authors are blogging today to support the trade paperback release of Patry Francis’s novel THE LIAR’S DIARY.
Ms. Francis is fighting an aggressive form of cancer and can’t promote so authors are coming together to help. You can find out more about this effort here.
Her publisher, Penguin Group USA, is offering […]

So it has come to this. Missy Chase Lapine, the author of The Sneaky Chef, is suing Jessica Seinfeld, the author of Deceptively Delicious , for plagiarism and Jerry Seinfeld for defamation. Am I being naïve to hope that it’s all one big misunderstanding? You can read about the case here.
Do you think it […]

In this Writer Beware Blog they talk about this company Starving Writers Publishing. Okay, aside from the fact that they explain why they’re taking your money to publisher your book, I find them perplexing.
I don’t understand who would submit their work to a publisher called Starving Writers Publishing??? I mean not only are they […]

Can you get rich writing romance novels? Sure. Will you? Probably not. At least not at first. Romance author Brenda Hiatt has a great page on her website called “Show Me the Money”. Click here to find out what publishers are paying romance authors.
From my understanding it’s not much better–excuse me–different than the other […]

I have a section in The Writer Behind the Words called Make Money Matter, but I couldn’t be as eloquent as this (warning: he uses foul language, for those of you who might find that offensive, but his message is important and clear):

Listen and learn. Treat your writing career as a business. Expect–don’t hope–to […]

Do connections matter?

There’s been a rumbling in the publishing world that Jessica Seinfeld (wife of the comedian Jerry Seinfeld) might have borrowed recipes from Missy Chase Lapin. Why? Because the recipes and ideas in Deceptively Delicious (Seinfeld’s book) are similar to The Sneaky Chef (Lapin’s book). And why is there a fuss? Because […]

Donald Trump knows marketing. But this ploy is impressive. The October 17th book signing for his title Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life written with Bill Zanker, president and founder of the Learning Annex, brought up a good question about the crowd of people there.
Were they there for the authors […]

To celebrate the coming of Halloween I want to share horrific tales I (or others) have experienced in the publishing industry. Here I will share tales about agents that will make you cringe, stories about authors that will make you shiver, and anecdotes about publishers that will make you run away in horror.
Okay they may […]