Anne R. Allen's Blog... with Ruth Harris
Writing about writing. Mostly.
by Anne R. Allen When my publisher asked me to remove the explicit sex scenes from my upcoming novel, The Lady of the Lakewood Diner I thought he was nuts. Sex sells, doesn’t it? Maybe not so much anymore. That screeching sound you hear is the abrupt U-turn the publishing industry is taking away from erotic […]
by Ruth Harris This is Ruth Harris’s third installment in her Writer’s Toolkit series. You can read Writer’s Toolkit #2 here and Writers Toolkit #1 here. Today she’s talking about tools for organizing your research and ideas: very timely for me this week. I’ve been working on and off for months on researching my […]
by Anne R. Allen If you’ve ever wondered why unsolicited Internet advertising is named after a perfectly innocent meat product, blame Monty Python. In a famous 1970 sketch, the customers in a café are constantly drowned out by a chorus of Vikings singing “Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam… Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam!” Conversation is impossible […]
This week Ruth Harris gives us more must-have tools for writers in the second installment of her “Writer’s Toolkit” Series. Lots of stuff here that’s available FREE or cheaply. This is another post—like the one about global markets last week—that reminds me how much I still don’t know about this business. I have to […]
One of the biggest changes the e-reader has brought to the publishing industry doesn’t get much cyberink in the online book community. It’s the huge international market that’s opening up now that we don’t have to pay to ship physical books around the world. If, like me, you’ve ever experienced that terrible moment on vacation […]
by Ruth Harris First of all, what the &%^# is metadata? AccordIng to Wikipedia, it’s “data about data.” But we’re writers and we’re talking about books, so, huh? Let me try again: when it comes to a book, metadata can be defined both by what it is and what it isn’t. Metadata’s everything in […]
by Ruth Harris As a follow up to Anne’s post, How To Get A Book Published for new or beginning writers, we’ve decided to post a list of the must-haves and the beyond-the-basics that belong in every writer’s toolbox. Even writers just starting out will probably already have at least some of these tools, but there […]
This week Ruth Harris gives us some powerful reasons to be happy about the ongoing changes in the publishing business. “What?” sez you. “But we see such woeful lamentation and wringing of hands over the demise of the book industry.” It’s true about the laments. Scott Turow, bestselling author and president of the Author’s Guild […]
by Anne R. Allen Self-publishing has lost its stigma, and it’s the publishing path of choice for a lot of writers these days. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Or that everybody who self-publishes will succeed. Unfortunately, I’m seeing a lot of writers dive in head first without having a clue what they’re doing. Even long-time […]
by Anne R. Allen I spend a lot of time here telling writers how and why to use social media, but I don’t often address the dangers. Yeah, they exist. I don’t know why, but otherwise sensible people can morph into irrational brutes when they’ve got their fingers on a keyboard and a connection […]
by Anne R. Allen First, an awesome announcement: this blog will be named to Writer’s Digest’s Best 101 Sites for Writers in the May-June issue! (special thanks to Lila and Janet for the heads-up.) We are so jazzed! The magazine should be in stores soon. Subscribers have already got their copies. Many, many thanks to whoever nominated […]
by Anne R. Allen Last year I wrote a post about the importance of writing Amazon reviews that caused something of a poop-storm in the bookish corners of Cyberia. Although most readers—especially in my own Boomer demographic—were grateful for the post, a furious minority exploded in fits of high dudgeon. I even got death threats […]
by Anne R. Allen Amazon’s Kindle turned five years old last week. What an exciting half-decade it’s been! Jeff Bezos showed his genius when he gave his e-reader that name. The device sparked a conflagration that is still pretty much out of control. The old publishing world is in chaos, and nobody has a […]
