Deciding On a Publishing Path
I’ve been thinking I would actually publish this book for about three years. Not the wistful fantasies of what if, but the blood curdling idea that it might actually happen. As with anything I involve myself in, the first thing I do is research. It was a pleasant surprise to find multiple options. It was less pleasant to find the “right” path was hotly contested. Well, I’ve made a decision. I will be self publishing. At least for now. I am not writing this as a condemnation for traditional publishing or to uphold the standards of indie publishing. This is the first post in documenting the choices and challenges going down this path. I hope it is educational, and not in a “I won’t do that!” kind of way. There are a bunch of blogs that cover this, I recommend you read them first. My perspective is someone entering, and…
On Using Distractions
I was reading through some of my blog posts from the old Story Arcs and I saw one about writers block. In particular, it was about how one of the things I did to work through it, cutting through distractions. First, I’d like to say that a lot of people say there’s no such thing, there are just writers not writing, allowing things to get in the way or too afraid of “messing up” to put words on paper. That’s not important, not to my point anyway. It surprised me because things have changed bit since then. Eliminating distractions is often essential to getting things doen, but for a while now I’ve actually been using them. My favorite way to write at the moment is to put Netflix on one side of the screen and Word (or WordPress at the moment) on the other. Then I burn through some TV…
Iron Man 3
Iron Man 3 was great and there are several reasons why. It’s a great action flick, it has great humor, a fantastic plot, and does what the others have done so well, just better. Everything the second did wrong, it corrected. Everything the first did, it improved upon. I don’t know if I’m willing to say it was better than Avengers, but it was certainly close. And while there is a lot to this movie, what I want to discuss is the twist. It’s not really a review. If you want a review, well, it’s great, go see it. Done. If you don’t want to know anymore, don’t read any further. Really, don’t. Everyone who hasn’t seen it, just to make sure, you’re gone, right? Cool. Anyway, so it turns out the Mandarin is a fake and Guy Pierce’s character is running everything as a puppetmaster behind the scenes, using…
E-book Formatting and Marketing Guides For Writers
Galleycat has a full list of several links to formatting guides for e-books. I haven’t had a chance to review everything, but it looks like a great resource to have. It can be found here
Parallells Between Video Games Industry and Publishing Industry
Gamepolitics published Microsoft’s FAQ for the Xbox One today, and it’s really interesting to see some familiar ideologies. Ones I’ve been reading about in publishing. Namely, paranoia. Basically, if you don’t connect to the internet every 24 hours, it won’t play games. Publishers will have the option to disable used games. They can also choose what retailers will be able to participate and whether or not a fee will be applied to the trade in. They will have the option to disable allowing your friends to borrow games. They will have the option to disable game rentals. Now, it’s really too soon to tell, but if this is true, it reeks of a paranoia I would usually ascribe to Apple. They want to monitor every purchase you make and ensure they don’t lose one solitary sale. And if it were were digital sales only, it wouldn’t be as big a…