Aug 09 2013

The Single Best Way to Sell a Lot of Books

Price is no longer as big of a determining factor as it used to be. A couple years ago, John Locke started the .99 bandwagon and many authors jumped on. At first readers were excited, until they realized the slush pile had just been dumped onto their Kindles and Nooks. This is good news and bad news. Bad news? Being cheap isn’t the game-changer it used to be. Good news? People are gravitating to higher priced books, because there is a presumption of higher quality. This means good books can make more money. Yay!

Aug 08 2013

Take Your Career to the Next Level–When, Why, Who and How to Fire People

As an individual author-entrpeneur, not firing can affect our career, our health and our intimate relationships. Endure the stress of an agent who doesn’t return e-mails for months at a time and you’ll understand. We need functional web sites to do our jobs well. Not having a web site, a bad web site or an ineffective web site hinders our performance and growth.

Aug 07 2013

Take Your Career to the Next Level–Getting Pruned

I actually had to fire someone I cared about because this person would not take risks. This person needed validation from twenty people that every decision was perfect, and if one person said change the plan, this person changed the entire plan. We cannot live life by committee. Not and stay sane, at least. This person was afraid of being pruned, didn’t want to lose the pretty flowers. But no pruning? No growth.

Aug 05 2013

Blog Hijack: I Aim to Misbehave

By Jay Donovan Poor Kristen fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous of which is “Never get involved in a land war in Asia” – but a couple steps down is this: “Never leave your Tech Guy in charge of your blog.” Kristen called me Saturday to see if I could …

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Aug 02 2013

Learning to Drop the Donkey–Is Perfectionism Killing Your Career?

All of us want to do a good job. We want to put our best foot forward. We all say that we want feedback and critique, but deep down, if we are real honest, we want people to love everything we say and do. Unfortunately, this isn’t the reality. We can’t please everyone, and it is easy to fall into a people-pleasing trap that will steal our passion, our art, and our very identity.