Back To Basics

Quality Control: It Matters

July 28th, 2009 · 14 Comments

I posed a question last week and received no response. I didn’t expect one because it addresses issues great and small, depending on how you approach it. I was looking at it from a narrow perspective, but you know how it goes: the more you think about something, the bigger it becomes. So here goes. […]

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Barnes and Noble, Blackberries, and Human Nature

October 16th, 2007 · 4 Comments

There is nothing like October — the falling leaves, the shorter days, the endless aisles of Christmas ornaments. Around here, October says “Goodbye old year, hello new!” Or, people, it’s nearly time for me to stop staying, “People, it’s 2007.” Publishers and online retailers and content providers have this fascinating love affair with partnerships. Stay […]

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The Story Of Your Life

May 17th, 2007 · 10 Comments

We were doing some casual research over the weekend — nothing strenuous, early summer has hit SoCal and when the choice comes down to blogging or sleeping in a hammock, well, what would you do — and realized something a bit distressing. There is nothing worse in this world than the bio pages on author […]

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The Other Side of the Story

December 27th, 2006 · 17 Comments

In response to our recent rant about an author who decided that the best way to help independent bookstores was to pull his book from Amazon, we received several interesting comments — and one fascinating comment (not a bad return on investment). In this case, the author noted that the costs of doing business with […]

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Notes From The Inbox

November 29th, 2006 · 4 Comments

We had a lovely rant about finding reviewers for your work planned for this morning, but due to technical difficulties (ie, lack of caffeine), it was lost in the ether. However, we remember enough of said tirade to reproduce the intent of the post, if not the actual words. Our intent was to explain, gently, […]

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Three Easy Steps To Earning Money From Your Blog

October 9th, 2006 · 4 Comments

Last week, we link to an article with the grand plan of returning to the topic later that day. Days have a way of getting away from us. As do weeks. But we have been dwelling mentally on the subject, and woke up this morning ready to write about the all-important topic of making money […]

File Under: Back To Basics · Marketing For Introverts · Non-Traditional Publishing

More Web Advice For Writers

September 12th, 2006 · 7 Comments

Let us start the day by returning to a topic near and dear to everyone’s heart: your website. For reasons that shall remain private, we have been doing a worldwide tour of author websites for the past several weeks, and can say that there’s something rotten in the state of websites. First, the tough love. […]

File Under: Back To Basics · Marketing For Introverts

Linking Is A Virtue, Not Linking Is A Vice

September 1st, 2006 · 1 Comment

We have been understandably worked up about this whole online presence thing this week. Hmm, maybe it’s not so understandable — it strikes us that you are not privy to our lengthy debates with the husband. Trust us when we say that nothing makes an evening fly by like a discussion about making the web […]

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The Thinking Piece

August 29th, 2006 · 2 Comments

Once your domain name is secured, you can breathe easy. No need to worry about someone grabbing your precious name and forcing you to spend hard-earned cash on buying it back (by the way, if you do spend said cash, do not feel bad; it happens a lot…in your next life, go with an unusual […]

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