When I told people at ConCarolinas that I’d gone from writing 2k to 10k per day, I got a huge response. Everyone wanted to know how I’d done it, and I finally got so sick of telling the same story over and over again that I decided to write it down here.
Today, when the dominant form of communication is email, it’s easy to go through your publicity campaign without ever hearing your publicist’s voice. This would be a mistake.
So let’s get back to that whole laughing at work-for-hire authors or trashing popular books or not understanding what a saleable novel is.
According to Carolyn’s research, aided by Google, there are about 288,355 books published every year by traditional publishers. Current estimates anticipate 800,000 books will be self-published this year. So how do you make your book stand out among literally a million titles?
Honestly, it is difficult (although not impossible) to avoid strategies that don’t incorporate Facebook in some way, either through a personal account or through Facebook Pages, at least not for writers who have at least one novel published. Once you have fans, Facebook becomes logical since it has the largest user base, therefore making it much more convenient as a way for people to find you.
Whether you want to self-publish your novel or are trying to land a traditional publishing contract, it is in every author’s interest to make connections and talk with the editors in our field.
Anything I can control, I pay close attention to. Contracts. Personal relationships. The words. Stories I want to tell.
The Speculative Speakers Service at AboutSF.com provides information for educators and conference organizers who are looking for guest speakers. Members of SFWA, who’d like to talk about SF at schools, meetings, or conferences, are invited to register.
Are Facebook, Twitter and IM having any effect on the quality or volume of my work? These questions, coupled with a very long list of goals I wanted to accomplish, plagued me like a broken plot.
Somewhere during the summer, when I got the latest “I can’t sell this” from an agent, I realized, “You can’t, but I can.” I have not looked back since.
A loyal warrior in a crisis of faith must fight to regain her place and begin her life again while questioning the events of her past. A complex, action-packed exploration of the costs of zealous faith, brutal war, and unquestioning loyalty.
Mia Tsai is a Taiwanese American author of speculative fiction. She lives in Atlanta with her family and, when not writing, is a hype woman for her orchids and a devoted cat gopher.
