Red Sage Publshing is now adding longer, single title works to their repetoire. The erotic fiction publisher is seeking stories in the 55,000 to 75,000 word range. Contemporary settings, complex stories. The new guidelines aren’t posted yet, but contact information is available on the Red Sage website. Red Sage Publishing
We spent one day this past week driving the mother around the lovely, but unusually hot, Santa Barbara. A mix of the modern miracle that is eye surgery and the modern hassle that is the medical establishment left us with much time on our hands (not to a mention a mother who could see perfectly mere moments after going under the, well, we believe a knife was involved). There was a brief debate about how to fill the hours until her second appointment. Hmmm, is it a true debate when both parties immediately settle on a bookstore as the optimal
Publisher’s Lunch also reports that after dating for several months, the parties that formed InkWell Management will finally move in together. Because we believe in saving time and effort, we’ll help you out with the new address: 521 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10175. You can’t say we don’t give everything to make you happy.
We have spent hours (hours!) working our way backward through all the important email that piled up while we were out earning funds to pay for the premium cat food required in our household. According to the subject line on the next message in the queue (PW Daily for Booksellers), we are only on Wednesday. And mail just keeps coming. At this rate, we will finish last week some time next month. So we’re abandoning our goal of a clean inbox and moving onto weekly updates (the husband is muttering things like “we need to clean this place up”, so
Yes, it amuses us greatly to point to the music industry as a source of innovation. After all, how can we take seriously a beast that has worked so hard to dominate the forest, only to find out the ants are running things quite nicely? We can’t, and as always, ignore the labels and look toward the artists. For most musicians, like most authors, there is not a lot of money in making and selling products. There are a lot of consumers out there, and they are faced with a lot of choices. Getting someone to put down hard-earned cash
It has been several years since we had what is affectionately known as a “day job” — this week, we have been reminded of the inherent rigors of such an activity, and we find we cannot recommend it. One must rise early and go somewhere else. Then there’s office coffee. It is always bad. And traffic. How does anyone survive leaving the house? We do not know, but we are hitting the road for the fourth time this week. Four work days, four days away from the comforts of our home office with all its toys and distractions. That surely
We don’t want to give away too much, but in 2008, we will have been online for, uh, nearly twenty years. And the Internet was around long before we had our first dial-up account and encounters with bulletin boards and such. In 2008, Amazon and e-commerce in general will be a mature market. So, yeah, that would be a good target for publishers to get their e-commerce acts together. We realize it’s tough, picking up an entire industry and turning it 180°, but we strongly encourage publishers to move a bit faster. Technology is your friend and can help you
We were asked how algebra could possibly be relevant to authors. We thank you for asking! This is one of our favorite subjects. Most authors we know think math is icky and scary (and you won’t get an argument from us), so they trust others to make sure they’re being paid correctly (in addition to trusting, oh, friends and relatives to read agreements and say, “yeah, this makes sense”). This is a Bad Idea. You must understand what is going on. We cannot emphasize this enough. Mistakes can be made. Any author who does not take the time to understand
We’ve always been big on the idea of the collective unconscious. Sarah of the Idiosyncratic Mind (and we mean that as the sincerest of compliments) has read our mind, proving that brilliant thoughts can cross continents. She’s had a series of posts this week revolving around a set of themes dealing with men, women, writing fiction, and gender differences (lots of links at the end of our rambling thoughts). It’s not just about leaving the seat up or down. As she looks at a recent Financial Times article on female (crime fiction) authors who depict graphic violence, she starts with
There comes an ugly moment in every writer’s life: it’s when they discover that underneath the art of it all is a business. If one writes seriously, one must face this fact. Writing requires skin like impenetrable armor and nerves of skill. It also requires fair knowledge of algebra, contract law, marketing, editing, and other sundry skills. We have learned that a martial art or two will not go amiss. As much as we enjoy living in our fantasy world (and we cannot overemphasize how happy we are there), we entered the world of writing with the goal of understanding
