When Is Something Worth Teaching?
This month I’m posting every day, picking the top voted reader question and answering it. With 37 votes, submitted by Andrew…
Latest Blog Posts
Why Writers Are Cranky
I enjoyed this recent post, 14 Ways to Tick off a Writer, because many of these things have happened to…
The Year Without Pants Cover: how it was designed
I’ve previously written about how covers should be designed (See How To Design A Great Cover). My fifth book,…
Meeting the Street Poet of NYC
Selling books is hard. It’s a surprise for most writers, even experienced ones, how much harder finding people interested…
Working For Free: An Argument
Tim Krieder, author of the excellent We Learn Nothing, wrote in the NYTimes about the mistake of working for…
The 7 things authors do before book launch day
Authors lead odd lives. Most of what people know of us we control through blog posts and books. Behind…
Should your book be a memoir or fiction?
Here’s a common question about writing memoirs from the mailbag: I just read a novel I loved and was…
Best Book On Self Publishing: APE – Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur
I was pleased when I heard that Guy Kawasaki was working (with Shawn Welch) on a book about self-publishing.…
How to read an amazon.com book review
We read for different reasons, but we often write reviews as if everyone in the world is just like…
Book review: Your First 1000 copies – a guide to marketing books
Last night I read Your First 1000 copies: The step by step guide to marketing your book by Tim Grahl…
Should you self publish your first book?
From Monday’s question pile reader Gutenberg Neto, who has one of the best names ever for questions about publishing, asked: After releasing books…
My process for blogging
From my Monday question pile, my friend Angela asked: As an active blogger and communicator, I’m curious your setup. Obviously…
How To Write a Second Draft
As I’ve been working on The Year Without Pants, I wrote recently about how to revise a first draft,…
Book Review: Good Prose – The Art of Non Fiction
I gave a talk at WordCamp Seattle recently about writing. One point I made was the limitations for improving…
How Pulp Fiction was written (and rejected)
From Cinephillia and Beyond, this comment from Roger Avary, who co-wrote Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction with Tarantino: We just took…
Blog Community Panel: Summary (WordCamp Seattle)
Thanks to everyone who attended our panel session at WordCamp Seattle, and to our panelists: Ariel M Stallings, from Offbeatempire.com,…
How to design a great book cover (Behind the scenes)
The 1.1 edition of Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds, a collection of my best essays, was officially released.…
Two ways to write: with your gut or with your head
An amazing comment from Charley Daveler on my post How to Write a Book: You can tackle a book…
The Redemption of Jonah Lehrer?
Twitter is aflutter today with talk of Jonah Lehrer, the (in)famous young author caught fabricating quotes, about his recent…
How to revise a first draft
The only faith a writer needs to have is in the next draft. The quality of any draft does…