Book Marketing Methods That Don’t Work
It’s no wonder that the Internet is bursting with promotional services, marketing companies, publicity gurus, and book promotion self-help advice from authors who’ve been there, done that.
Archive for the ‘The SFWA Blog’ Category
Guest Post: Checking the Gender Balance
What is happening here is the creation of what we might call “his-story”. If the only books talked about, the only books that find their way into the historical record, are books by men, then anyone looking back over time will get the impression that the only important people involved in the field, perhaps the only people involved in the field, were men.
Key Conditions for Suspense Part 26:
Patterns for Resolution Elements 1-3
Readers want their tension to build to a pitch. Then they want to feel a release. The resolution phase is where you deliver that delicious release.
Quick Updates for 2011-06-10
Member News for Robert J. Sawyer, Leah Cypess, and Anna D. Allen.
Guest Post: The No. 1 Habit of Highly Creative People
Creativity is a nebulous, murky topic that fascinates me endlessly — how does it work? What habits to creative people do that makes them so successful at creativity?
Clark, Mendelson, and Scott:
New Name for a Fee-Charging Agency
Every time I bemoan Writer Beware’s overpacked file drawers, and wonder whether I should get rid of files for agents and publishers that have gone out of business (or at least consign them to the basement), I’m reminded of why it’s important to keep that old information handy.
Key Conditions for Suspense:
Part 25 – Patterns for Struggle Elements 5 & 6
The stories that use insight and decision are usually those where the main obstacle is the character’s internal problem. For example, in stories where love and friendship is on the line and the obstacle is the main character’s values, it may be that the hero has to make a decision to place love above something else.
In Memoriam: Joel Rosenberg
Joel Rosenberg (b.1954) died on the evening of June 2, a day after suffering a respiratory depression that caused a heart attack, anoxic brain damage and major organ failure. Rosenberg’s first published short story was “Like the Gentle Rains” in IASFM in 1982. A year later, he published The Sleeping Dragon, the first novel in his long-running […]
Contract Red Flag: Net Profit Royalty Clauses
Publishers that pay on net profit often pay higher royalty percentages than average, and if the percentage is large enough–50% or more–it may offset the deductions. But be sure you know exactly what those deductions are.
Guest Post: Proprioception
Being paralyzed led me to becoming a writer. While in that incapacitated state, I began spinning stories in order to go to the places I physically could not. It was no surprise that those stories were science fiction and fantasy, and that their main characters tended to be people with amazing abilities and “deformities.”
