Archive for the ‘Information Center’ Category

THE INDIE FILES: Make the Most of New Book Announcements

by R J Theodore An author promoting their upcoming release might feel like Sisyphus, because the effort to keep people aware of your book is neverending. When you let up on promotion, you and your boulder wind up back at the bottom of the slope. When you do benefit from a flash of attention, you […]

Reimagining Conflict

by Marie Brennan Recently, I’ve seen a number of online discussions about stories without conflict, especially stories from outside the Western narrative tradition. I’m not the right person to discuss those specific approaches, but listening to the conversations has made me realize how narrow a definition of conflict my teachers presented to me. If your […]

THE INDIE FILES: Listen Up! Self-Producing Audiobooks

by Kim Fielding Until fairly recently, it was impractical for most self-published authors to produce audiobooks. Now, however, almost anyone can easily produce a high-quality one. This is good news, because audio constitutes a significant—and profitable—portion of the publishing market. According to IBISWorld, the audio market grew 8.1% between 2017 and 2022, and is now […]

Treading on Embers

By Lorraine Wilson Statistics are easy to quote, but difficult to connect to, don’t you think? It’s easy to say that 20% of people in the UK are disabled, but within publishing we account for only 5%. To say migraines are, according to the World Health Organization, the sixth highest cause of “Years Lost to […]

SFWA Alert: Tax Guidance for Audible/ACX Royalties Reporting

Please consult the guidance that follows from the Authors Guild, one of SFWA’s sister organizations, on a significant United States tax-reporting change that many independent authors have shared concerns about since January 1. That’s when Audible/ACX changed their tax-reporting practices for royalties from audiobook productions, by including royalties for both authors and their audiobook narrators […]

I Feel Funny: Humor Writing Tips for Novelists

By Kathy Flann We think of humor as something that just … happens. Yet, as someone who writes both humor and fiction, I’ve learned that each is a distinct craft with challenges that can multiply when combined—not unlike when Ray, Peter, Winston, and Egon cross the streams in Ghostbusters, risking total protonic reversal. Okay, maybe […]

10 Hands-On Tips For Writing Flash Fiction

By Maria Haskins Writing flash fiction—commonly defined as a story of no more than 1,000 or 1,500 words—can seem daunting at first try. Or addictive if you’ve already caught the flash-writing bug. These tips are based on my love for flash as a reader and writer, and I want to emphasize that they are tips, […]

Story Salvage: Finding the Opportunity in Failure

By Jeff Somers It’s often noted that in baseball, making an out 70 percent of the time is considered all-star play(1). Although every writer’s experience will be different, writing often seems to offer a similar success ratio in terms of failed stories. Sometimes that failure also comes fast, which gives you the opportunity to start […]

Two Essential Questions to Ask As You Self-Edit

By Kahina Necaise Convincing fiction is about cause and effect.  That’s why, in my work as an editor, the two questions I ask most often while diagnosing an issue with a client’s story are:  Does this come out of nowhere? Does anything ever come of this? Does this come out of nowhere? is about unclear […]

THE INDIE FILES: Going Wide

by J. Scott Coatsworth Editor’s note: All recommendations in this article are the opinions of the author and do not reflect an approval or endorsement by SFWA. Two Paths to Indie Greatness As an indie author, you have two basic choices for distribution:  Go all-in on Amazon—eBooks, paperback, and Kindle Unlimited (KU). Or “go wide,” […]