Our goal as writers is to craft a story so interesting that strangers will pay money to hear it. In the first edition of this posting, I tried to show a model for working out the math for modern writers. That brought up a lot of questions from my readers. So I put together a […]
On Writing v5.1: Cash is Good – ROI
Our goal as writers is to craft a story so interesting that strangers will pay money to hear it. Let’s start with definitions: ROI stands for Return On Investment. The equation: Revenue minus Costs divided by Costs. In publishing, this is a very tricky number because books have a startup cost but very little operational […]
On Writing 5: Cash is Good
Our goal as writers is to craft a story so interesting that strangers will pay money to hear it. Gordon Gekko, you are no doubt too young to remember, was a movie villain who stood in front of a crowd of stockholders to announce, “Greed is good.” He then made a fairly rational case for […]
Ebooks Outpace Hardcover Sales
According to the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which should add the disclaimer “20th Century” or “Old School” to their name, announced that Q1-2012 ebook revenue increased 28% to $282 Million while hardcover dropped a couple notches to $229 Million. Paperbacks dropped big time (big duh) to $98 Million. We knew the day would arrive. […]
On Writing 3: Appreciating the Craft
Our goal as writers is to craft a story so interesting that strangers will pay money to hear it. Do you appreciate the craft of writing? Like professional footballers, writing celebrities make it look easy. James Patterson is one of the most deceptive writers of our era. You can read his books but you cannot […]