Tag: literature
Review: Deadly Coast
Deadly Coast – by RE McDermott, $4.95 E There is no better nautical thriller in bookstores today than Deadly Coast. I’m not being cheeky about this being an ebook (I presume Mr. McDermott will offer a softcover in the near future). I mean this is the best nautical thriller author writing today. And this is [...]
Review: Murder Takes Time
Murder Takes Time – Giacomo Giammatteo, $17.99 Soft, $4.99 E This is the best book I’ve read this year. I’ve never read the Godfather. I’ve never been drawn to gangster novels. I’m not even big on gritty crime dramas. I couldn’t tell you why I bought this one. Maybe it was the feeling I got [...]
Future Publishing: A Vision of 2022
To visualize the industry a decade from now, let’s first look at the biggest agent of change: the reader. For all the gadgets introduced into the world, all the innovation that will take place in the next decade, all the great marketing campaigns, nothing will stick unless it appeals to the reader. What do readers [...]
Is There Room for a New Thriller Heroine?
My recent poll proved Charlie Fox is a favorite thriller heroine ahead of Katniss Everdeen. Oddly, several well-known and long-standing female leads in thrillers fell below the entry “Still Looking”. Are some of the popular characters like Tempe Brennan, Stephanie Plum or Kay Scarpetta played out? Too much of the same thing? Charlie Fox evolved [...]
5 FREE Tips on Book Promotion
How many Tweets, Facebook Updates, Google+ entries, blog posts, spam emails have you gotten that say, “How to promote your ebook”? After 30 years in sales and marketing, and watching the independent publishing movement for two years, I can tell you that we’ve now come full circle. A year ago John Locke wrote “How I [...]
Review: Killer Instinct
Killer Instinct – Author Zöe Sharp – ~99,000 words, $14.95 PB / $3.49 E I accidentally followed some author I’d never heard of simply because her tweets tended toward humor. After reading a few of her clever observations, I picked up Killer Instinct, her first book. Wow. What a great book. And don’t I feel [...]
Still Looking for a Great Heroine
My post for Heroines in Fiction produced several unexpected results. First surprise: the hands-down favorite was Charlie Fox, the martial-arts expert created by Zoe Sharp. I’d never heard of Charlie Fox until two weeks ago when I met her author on Twitter. I read the book and loved it, so I included her. Apparently, she has a lot of [...]
Poll: Heroines in Fiction
Update: While this poll remains open (heck, why not?) I’ve posted a new one called “Design Your Own Heroine“. Take the poll! Be heard! How should a female lead act, look, think? Literary heroines are everywhere these days. From Anastasia Steele to Katniss Everdeen, books are filled with more multi-faceted, complex women than ever [...]
4 Steps to Google Mind Control
Google Uber Alles. They enter a product category with the intention of world domination. So why bring out the Nexus 7 when they know it can’t compete with the iPad? Simple: They want to control your mind. Why does Google even need an e-reader in their line up? What are their motivations for bringing it [...]
5 Things the Big 6 Will Try
Why did News Corp decide to break into two companies? Because the path-to-market model has changed forever and new investments are needed. Does that mean publishers will disappear? No. Distributors like Ingram? No. Bookstores? No. Nothing will change in the current supply chain except—volume. So why is News Corp so worried about the future of [...]
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