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In a recent article in Scientific American entitled, “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper Versus Screens,” I found much that was fascinating. The article went out of its way not to say that screens are bad or that paper books are antiques. Rather, that our brains handle some things better in paper books than they do in electronic forms.

I often talk to authors who are shopping their latest work around to agents and publishers. Many get disillusioned about the whole traditional publishing game, because it isn’t really interested in unknown writers. The point at which writers contact me is when they start to consider self-publishing.

We’ve all encountered websites and blogs where we must “solve” a word puzzle in order to have a message sent, or a message posted. The reason this technology is used is to defeat the “bots”—programs crawling through the Internet looking for ways to launch attacks and spam. (Personally, I have problems reading the words about [...]

A lot of authors are shy or introverted. This isn’t a problem until the day comes to promote your book – because if you don’t promote your book, it will not sell. I thought I’d share a few thoughts on how to deal with Shy Author Syndrome.

Recently, Alan Shelton of Red Hatchet Press, a distribution client of mine, did a post for Joel Friedlander’s The Book Designer blog (if you don’t read Joel’s blogs, or follow his monthly ebook cover awards, you are simply missing out on one of the self-publishing world’s greatest information treasures). Alan detailed his path to publishing—and was [...]

You can’t grow without criticism. You’ll never grow as an artist. You won’t understand your customers as a businessperson if you won’t hear what your customers really want (and once you become a publisher, you enter into the realm of business).

I recently had a lengthy back and forth with the representative of a major wholesaler who was asserting that we had shorted their company over 50 books. This person, an accounts payable (AP) representative, let me know that they were docking our payment accordingly. Do you know how to resolve this?

Last week, I had lunch with a Barnes & Noble Community Relations Manager (CRM). As usual, she had a lot to say about self-publishers. I’ll just hit the highlights of our talk.

E-books, extended content, audio books. The whole new trend away from the physical book might make you think that real books are going the way of the dodo. Not so much, really. All this electronic stuff is making many of us recall why we love books in the first place, especially the art and craft [...]

Flavorwire recently ran a little slideshow on the “10 Most Powerful Female Characters in Literature” in honor of National Women’s History Month. But 10 doesn’t nearly begin to cover the great characters in literature!