… Read more   I take advantage of free book downloads. You should, too. It’s a good way to see what the marketplace is like. Smart authors are constantly playing with prices to find the ideal one that will move traffic.
Smart authors who self-publish, that is. Other authors, those who are published by

… Read more   E-book sales continue to grow at a remarkable rate, especially for fiction. A BookStats survey – compiled by the Association of American Publishers and Book Industry Study Group – has found that sales of fiction e-books rose 42% last year, representing sales of $1.8 billion.
Nonfiction sales grew too, albeit

… Read more   You may have noticed that we live in a post-apocalyptic age. At least fictionally.
Many movies and television and novels have set their plots after an Armageddon-like event, whether it’s a nuclear holocaust or an alien invasion. N smart phones, no entertainment devices, no digital tools, no social media.
This

… Read more   Copy, then find your voice.
Most new writers emulate the writers they most admire. They can’t help but sound like them. Even true originals like Marcel Proust used to do parodies of the writers he was most influenced by. He used this copying as a way of exploring what these

… Read more   We don’t get information the same way that we used to. The very idea of story has changed. It’s all faster, shorter, and far more present than ever.
Simple narratives have been replaced by continuous story, as in role-playing video games, where interactivity replaces passive absorption of narrative.
This isn’t

… Read more   In my last post I raised the question of why the HBO series “Game of Thrones” is such a success. Not questioning its quality – it’s first-rate – but the reason something so seemingly old-fashioned would find a sizable audience.
I think one reason, beyond its immersive quality, is that

I’m somewhat surprised that the HBO series Game of Thrones… Read more   , adapted from George R.R. Martin’s fantasy epic “A Song of Ice and Fire” is so successful. Everybody I know is watching it, and its fan base is spread across all age groups, from attention-deficit teens to people who confess

The filmmaker Steven Soderbergh is apparently tweeting a novel… Read more   .
Now this isn’t exactly news. But it says something about how some creative folks are utilizing other means to express themselves.
Soderbergh, director of big-budget flicks such as “Ocean’s 11,” Academy Award-winning films such as “Erin Brockovich” and indie favorites

… Read more   Are book reviews worth it?
Do reviews actually sell books? No, but you do.
It seems that, at least according to newspapers, the book review is a thing of the past. Most newspapers have done away with book sections, severely limited book reviews and care less and less about cultural

… Read more   The bestselling author James Patterson recently posted an ad that ran in the New York Times Book Review and in Publishers Weekly, calling attention to great American classics, and asking who will publish great books going forward if publishers and bookstores fail.
The responses have been interesting – and the