Tag Archives: writing

September 9, 2013 ・ Writing

How to connect with your readers

Credit: ‘Chelmsford Public Library’ on Flickr

One of the best (and worst) aspects of self-publishing, is the ability to connect directly to your readers using various social tools. The GoodReads platform is a very good example of this kind of ability. And while there have been a number of horror stories popping out from GoodReads.com, there is no denying the possibility of connecting in very real ways to those who read your books.

The primary thing to remember in this task is the fact that your readers are your gold mine. Without them, you’re simply writing for

September 2, 2013 ・ Writing

File formats – what are they really?

So, you’re ready to write your novel; or you’ve already written it and are about to upload to a website (like Free-eBooks.net) for publication. We state on our submission page that we accept DOC, RTF (rich text format), and PDF (portable document format) formats but that we suggest DOC as the best format possible for conversion to the other reading formats (TXT, HTML, ePub, and Mobipocket). And you see all that and wonder what in hell we’re trying to say.

It’s confusing, if you haven’t worked within the computer technology field, to understand what all those acronyms

August 12, 2013 ・ Books

The Review That Makes You Hit Download

I have been struggling with coming up with stuff to write in the last few weeks. The problem lies in this notion I have, that anything I write here has to be somewhat controversial – something to get your blood boiling, dear readers. Something that you can dip in with an opinion of your own and blow mine out of the water. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of controversy in the blogosphere these days. The days of dueling eReaders is just about over because if you’re in the market for an eReader, you’ve either already had

July 24, 2013 ・ Writing

Writing is just as much visual as it is contextual

I stumbled onto a link that focuses on an aspect of writing that not many people consider when they are writing: typography. The link was shared by on one of my social media feeds and it is essentially a book-in-a-website. An intriguing way to publish in itself (and certainly a subject for a discussion at some later date), it was less about the fact that the book was indistinguishable from the website and more about the content of the book. This is a book about typography. My social media friend had introduced it by writing, “If you

June 12, 2013 ・ General

Inspiration can come from surprising places

I had occasion to send some encouraging words to a demotivated writer today. Why is that something of note? Because it’s ironic; I myself am somewhat of a demotivated writer. I struggle with all kinds of fears and misgivings about writing. A lot of the blocks I am dealing with are real ones – stress of a military deployment, health issues, school, work, personal issues – but a lot of those blocks are also psychological (e.g. “What’s the point? I really don’t write very well at all – not enough to make a difference.”)

My advice to the