Do companies who post reviews (Amazon, Goodreads, etc) have any responsibility to ensure the reviews they post are written by individuals who read the books reviewed? By now, everyone has read or heard about, the New York Times article citing a company who once offered ecstatic reviews for only $99. In that article, they revealed […]
5 Ways My Heroine Will Kick Your Heroine’s
Am I the only one who’s tired of reading books about women who let rich guys beat the crap out of them, or lust after blood-sucking mythological creatures, or lead a revolution–reluctantly? Look at the 3 best-selling literary heroines of the last 5 years: Anastasia Steele, Bella Swan, and Katniss Everdeen. Where did they get […]
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 […]