Sunday, October 9, 2011

Blog Roundup: October 3 - 9, 2011

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and it's kind of a big deal. If you're considering participating, check out the official site and check out Chuck Wendig's blog post on the 25 Things You Should Know.

Greta van der Rol talked some about targeting your audience. I think that if you're planning to publish or share your writing in any way, you really do need to think about your audience.

Amelia James had a nice personal post on why she's happy being self-published. I have to agree with her assertions there. I love the freedom and the total control of my career self-publishing allows.

The A Chick Who Reads blog is so pretty. It's like a bright Tim Burton landscape. She writes pretty good reviews, too. If you're looking for a book review blog, this one is a good place to start.

Cover design was on my mind this week, so I think this post over at Do Some Damage is worth reading. Good cover design is important whether you're working with print books or ebooks or both, but each medium needs something a little bit different. A print book has to grab your attention in the store. An ebook has to look good as a thumbnail. But print book covers need to look good as thumbnails, too, because more people buy their books online.

Diana Cosby wrote a guest post for Isis Rushdan's blog about believing in yourself. Insecurity is a serious affliction for writers so it's a good idea to build up an arsenal against it.

Rik Davnall's post about his marketing strategy actually encouraged me to comment. (Fourteen years of fandom trained me to be terrified of commenting on anything online.) I think any writer pursuing self-publishing needs to come into it with reasonable expectations.

I enjoyed James Killick's "Three Little Words" post. The ideas are the easy part. It's the making the idea big enough to make a story, stringing the words together, and making the whole thing compelling that's tough. (Writing is hard. Why am I doing it again?)

Keystrokes and Word Counts moved.

Rob on Writing featured a post about his $0.99 novel. About the price, really. I was talking to my mother about pricing earlier this week and how I thought $0.99 for my current books was fair, but that I'd probably charge $2.99 for the novel (I'm also planning considerably more promotion and marketing for it). It will still be cheaper than most traditionally published books and it still falls within the "impulse buy" range. My mother remarked that she doesn't feel like she's losing anything if she spends up to $2.99 on a book, even if she doesn't read it. I think most people feel that way.

Sirra has done it again, this time with a post on show vs. tell. Even if you think you've got that particular aspect of writing down, a refresher is never a bad thing.

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