Short stories are good. I’m a fan. Collections of short stories are great. Natural stopping points. But apparently no one buys them, or at least no one buys them except from Established Authors. Ernest Hemingway has probably sold more short-fic since he ate his shotgun than when he was alive. Branding is everything. Probably this… Read More Ernest Hemingway Can Kiss My Ass
When you create a paperback on Kindle Direct Publishing, the default trim size is 6×9. According to Reedsy, that’s a standard size for trade paperbacks, known as US Trade. The other standard size is 5X8, which Reedsy says is standard for novellas. As in, most of the books I’ve published. Those trim sizes make a… Read More Book Sizes and Countdown Deals
I self-published my first book, Solar System Blues, over a decade ago. Back then, I was hopeful enough to believe that if I gave away free copies on Goodreads, that I’d get a bunch of good reviews. I got two, one of which was from Self-Publishing Review. Sales? I got a few. In 2017 I… Read More There Are No Rules For Book Sales
Occasionally, I check the reports on Kindle Direct Publishing, to see how many copies I have sold of things. This puts me in the group of “Authors who sit in front of their computer, compulsively hitting Refresh over and over to see their Amazon ranking like one of those perpetual motion bird toys. Peck. Peck.… Read More New Versions of Void now Available
I often feel as though keywords were inscrutable gobbleydegook, this makes them seem saner, than anything else I’ve read. The big idea is that a keyword can be, and probably should be, a cluster of words. Thanks to Cedar Sanderson from Mad Genius Club for breaking this down. I used it to pre-create a blurb… Read More Link: A useful Primer on Amazon publishing: Blurbs and Keywords
This is my fourth overall poetry collection, and third published to Amazon (Wonderland is Hell is available free to read here on Content Blues). It’s material from the last two years. It’s longer than Stir, and unlike The Short Cool Summer, it’s available in paperback as well. As a chronological collection, it’s going to vary… Read More One Line or Another – Now Available
Summer is an odd time. I should be filling the blog with posts, but somehow, other projects take precedence. To be fair, I’ve definitely fallen from my 10-post-a-month threshold I was hitting in the fall and winter. That means something, but I’m not sure what. The point is, I’m behind on posting stuff. It happens.… Read More Unnamed Journal, Caligula and Punk Rock: Big ‘Ol July Update
I’ve been saying for some time that I’ve been working on editing The Meditations of Caius Caligula. The initial draft appeared serially in Unnamed Journal (a distinction it shares with Void), except the final chapter, which has not been seen anywhere. Composing it rather pointed out some of the weaknesses of the draft. As conceived,… Read More The Process of Editing
I’ve talked about this before, but it’s becoming official. The last free issue of Unnamed Journal has gone live. It’s available on Joomag. We’ve had great fun building and growing the magazine, and now it’s time for the next phase. Our Patreon is going to go live next. The plan is to have Subscribers have… Read More The Old Phase of UJ… Must End
I like to call Solar System Blues my first novel. Certainly it was my first serious attempt at self-publishing, and my first serious review. Because of this, I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted for the cover, and just kind of used the templates that CreateSpace and KDP offered. That has changed. Self-Publishing… Read More Updating a Classic: Giving Solar System Blues a Cover it Deserves
Content Blues 