NFTs for Authors: Is This a Rush for Fool’s Gold? – by P. S. Hoffman…

Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

on Jane Friedman site:

Lately, influencers are parading Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs, as the shiny new key that will unlock the future of the internet. In publishing, respected entrepreneurs, like Joanna Penn, are wondering if NFTs could become a serious source of income for authors.

And I think by now we’ve all heard of the dazzling displays of wealth behind the earliest NFT artwork and book deals.

But in my opinion, the promise of NFT books is riddled with warning signs. The outlandish hype, the allure of quick riches, and the shining exterior of “new, disruptive technology” paints a picture I’ve seen before.

Here’s why all this chatter about NFTs in publishing will probably amount to nothing more than a rush for fool’s gold.

Continue reading HERE

View original post

Getting Yourself to Write

A Writer's Path

Writing can be a struggle for writers of all levels, from beginning to professional.

The struggle has a dreaded name: writer’s block.

View original post 563 more words

How to Draw Readers in Through a Character’s Choices – by Angela Ackerman…

Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

on Writers Helping Writers:

Quick, what’s one thing you need in every scene?

This question can have a lot of answers – tension, conflict, stakes, emotion, action…on and on it goes. But I would argue one of the most important is one of the most basic: choice.

Continue reading HERE

View original post

It’s Now Available For Pre-order

Have We Had Help?

As of yesterday East Wind is uploaded and available for pre-ordering from all Amazon sites. As I hoped, here in the UK its priced at £0.99. Officially it will be available to the general public on the 1st of January 2022. That is the date when your pre-ordered copy will appear on your Kindle. I really hope you enjoy reading East Wind and Arvo’s journey together, and the heart warming love story which they both share in when Arvo (Bill) meets not one but two loving souls that he falls in love with. First Lin Mae who gives him a precious daughter – Tilde. Then his true soul mate Katya who he remains with for the rest of his days.

View original post

4 Types of Article Templates to Help You Write More Efficiently – by Robyn Roste…

Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

on The Write Life:

Would you consider yourself a pantser or a planner? No matter what you write, there are those who approach their projects with a plan, and those who prefer flying the seat of their pants. Most writers are somewhere in between. They like knowing where they’re heading, and would rather not have another staredown with the blank page. This is where the article template comes in.

Article templates are especially suited for freelance writers, bloggers or journalists who write articles, rather than those who are writing book-length works. (But if you’re looking for a book outline template, check out this resource.)

How to use an article template

Before we get into types of article templates you can use for your next project, I want to talk about how I prepared this article using a template. This is not to say there is a right or…

View original post 24 more words

How To Build Your Author Platform When You Have No Clue What That Means – By Rachel Thompson…

Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

on Bad Redhead Media:

When I first started in the publishing industry over ten years and seven books ago, the nebulous concept of an author platform sounded like a vague box of ‘things’ a writer would buy at the Invisible Writer Internet Store.

“Want the deluxe package?” an oily salesman with an extreme side part would ask. “I don’t know,” I would shrug. “How much does it cost?” I’d ask this snake-oil dude. He would smile, wryly, “That depends.”

Sound familiar? Still confusing. I know.

This is how a seasoned writer explained an author platform to me at the time that helped me make sense of it all:

Think of your author platform as a deck. Each tactic is a plank. Without a full deck, your platform isn’t solid. It’s flimsy. Building each plank will give you a solid foundation to work from when selling your book so nothing falls…

View original post 100 more words

Substack for Fiction Writers – by Erica Verrillo…

Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

on Publishing … and Other Forms of Insanity:

Subscription services for writers have had a spotty history. For one thing, these services have previously been based on borrows, rather than sales, and authors tend to focus on sales. As a consequence, there aren’t many subscription services that have stood the test of time. Oyster collapsed after a scant two years, leaving Scribd and Kindle Unlimited to hold down the fort, at least for book borrows.

The newest kid on the block, Substack, takes a different approach. For a monthly fee, which is set by the author, readers can subscribe to anything the writer produces: short stories, essays, commentary, serialized novels, you name it. Authors also have the option of not charging anything at all.

Why bother with yet another publishing platform? There are already so many of them.

Continue reading HERE

View original post

November Book Reviews

Myths of the Mirror

My reading is way off this month due to NaNoWriMo, but I finished the first draft of my WIP, and I’m happy about that.

I still have four wonderful books for you!

November book reviews include my4 and 5 star reads of 19th century romance, Christmas romance, a Christmas novellette about family love. And for a little variety… a book with werewolves!

Click on the covers for Amazon global links.

*****

The Unraveling of Lady Fury by Shehanne Moore

This book was a hoot. Imagine a romance where the characters are blackmailing each other and yet contractually agree to produce an heir.

Lady Fury needs an heir if she hopes to keep the estate of her dead husband, who, by the way, is in a box in the cellar and starting to stink. Captain Flint Blackmoore is an old flame from years past, a privateer who dumped Fury on the…

View original post 784 more words

How to Effectively Bring Sound into Your Fiction – by C.S. Lakin…

Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

on Live Write Thrive:

Today’s post is a reprint from some years back, but it’s one that deserves revisiting!

Sound may not be something writers pay much attention to when they work on their novels. Of course, there usually is a significant amount of dialog, and there may occasionally be found a noise shown in the scene, such as a branch cracking underfoot, the whoosh of an arrow zipping by, or the hiss of a snake. But other than the obvious, basic sounds, novelists don’t usually think much about this sensory element.

By looking at some of the ways filmmakers deal with sound, we can see many possibilites of how writers might enrich their books with this often-ignored component.

In the book Cinematic Storytelling by Jennifer Van Sijll, we read this about sound: “Sound effects are as much the purview of the writer as are visual symbols . . …

View original post 66 more words

Is That Publisher Email Legitimate? – by John Doppler…

Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

on Self Publishing Advice:

We’re sensible indie authors, we can often sniff a scam out. But scammers are getting smarter and it’s getting harder to tell a legitimate email from a scam. In today’s Alliance of Independent Authors Watchdog post, John Doppler explains how to tell the legitimate from the scam.

Your book has been on the market for a few months now, and maybe sales are starting to lag. Then one morning, you open your inbox, and a wondrous email springs forth with a fanfare of trumpets:

Greetings!

This is Joseph Monicker from Reputable Press Solutions, a traditional global publisher affiliated with Penguin Random House.

We are very interested in the book that you published and we would like to help you get a contract from one of the biggest traditional publishing companies…

Because you are a wise author, you immediately suspect a scam. But how can you know for sure? Are…

View original post 9 more words