Anne R. Allen's Blog... with Ruth Harris
Writing about writing. Mostly.
by Anne R. Allen I’ve had a number of people ask me that “now what” question in the last few months. There’s tons of info out here in Cyberia, but not everybody knows how to access it. And along with the good info, there’s plenty of bad—especially from predatory vanity publishers and bogus agents. So here are some basics. […]
by Anne R. Allen This is a continuation of last week’s post “HOW TO BLOG.” It’s aimed at authors who are trying to build platform. If you’re only blogging for yourself and your cat, skip this—you and Pufferball can go watch that Hallie Berry DVD again. I’ll also repeat what I said last week: This […]
by Anne R. Allen You’ve probably been reading a lot of conflicting advice recently on the subject of writers and blogs. Some experts are telling us blogging is dead. Agent Wendy Lawton wrote a post on September 15th called “What’s Not Working” and asserted that blogging—and most social networking—is a waste of time for debut authors, […]
by Anne R. Allen This blog got a mention from Nathan Bransford in his “This Week in Books” post on Friday. Of course I’m basking in his überblogger glow. Thanks Nathan! He also pointed out a blogpost I’d missed from Smashwords CEO Mark Coker, in which Mr. Coker bestows his blessing on agents-turned-epublishers. As I mentioned last week, some […]
by Anne R. Allen Twitter terrifies me. Seriously. It’s been described as the world’s biggest cocktail party and that sounds about right: cacophonous, shallow, time-consuming Hell for shy, writerly persons. But many experts say authors who are serious about publication MUST be on Twitter. So a year or so ago I steeled myself and […]
by Anne R. Allen Self-publishing is the trending subject in Cyberia. Last week my post on self pubbing got over 2500 hits. And 60 comments. It not only made “Best of the Best” of Jane Friedman’s “Best Tweets for Writers,” but got a shout-out from publishing blog-god Nathan Bransford. (Thanks, Jane and Nathan!) I’m amazed. Many thanks to all […]
by Anne R. Allen We’re in the midst of seismic changes in the publishing world, with new quakes altering the landscape on a daily basis. The pulp paperback is in its death throes, as mass market houses like Dorchester slink into ignominious bankruptcy. Kindle and the Amazon $2.99 e-book/70% royalty paradigm have changed an […]
by Anne R. Allen Nathan Bransford has spoken. He says it’s never too early for writers to start using social media. Perhaps one day we’ll all be issued Twitter accounts in the womb. Since Nathan is a Thought Leader in our industry (according to Klout) I have a feeling a lot of writers are scrambling […]
by Anne R. Allen I have a confession to make. My high school nickname was “Zombie.” The moniker was intended as an insult, but I loved it. I dressed in black, dyed my hair a dead ash color and wore ghastly white lipstick. I was goth before goth was cool. My senior year, my family […]
by Anne R. Allen This has been hard to keep under my cyberhat all week, but Nathan asked that winners keep the info off the internets until the big day. Which is TODAY. So here it is: I’m one of the three winners of Nathan’s guest blogger contest. You can read my post on […]
