Summer 2019 Update: New Gage Book Coming, Cartooning Stuff, and Other Sundry News

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Good news for my Garrison Gage fans! Bury the Dead in Driftwood, the sixth book featuring the curmudgeonly private investigator living in Barnacle Bluffs, Oregon, is now with the copy editor and should be available for purchase in the next few weeks. Be sure to sign up for my author newsletter if you want to be among the first to know when the novel is actually out. That’s the cover up there (it still might get tweaked a little, though we’re feeling pretty good about it at this point), and the book description will be coming soon.

It was great to revisit my old friend Gage and the extended cast that inhabits his moody Oregon coastal town, and I’m hoping my readers will feel the same. I appreciate everyone’s patience! Two years was a long time to go between Garrison Gage mysteries, but, well, what can I say? While I know there are plenty of you who’d prefer that I just write Gage books and nothing else, I’m just not wired that way. I also had a big book that went sideways on me and needed to be put aside for a while. It happens. What I can say, however, is that I’ve been making a lot of little changes, both to my habits and my mental approach, that should add up to a lot more books and stories coming from me in the months and years ahead. We’ll see. I’m having a lot of fun and that’s the main thing.  More than ever, the real joy I get from my creative work is the pursuit of excellence. Money and fans are certainly nice and appreciated (oh boy are they!), but the less central they are to my motivation the happier and more productive I am as an artist.

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Speaking of fun, I’m also having a blast with the Run of the House comic strip. (Three recent ones are pictured above.) I completed my 50th strip the other day. While I’m posting most of them in various social media channels (Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, etc.), the best way to  see them is at www.runofthehosue.net, posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. While the strip is free, if you want to show your appreciation, a $1/month at Patreon is certainly appreciated.  By becoming a patron, you’ll also get lots of extras. Every little bit helps.

Other news? We had a fun trip to Florence, Oregon a few weeks back, staying in a lake house and having a blast. Kayaking, ping pong, hanging out in the hot tub, even a couple dune buggy rides — it was a great retreat. Overall, weather has been quite pleasant this summer, both in the Willamette Valley and on the Oregon coast, and I feel almost guilty saying so, since I know that’s not the case elsewhere. Oh, and if you’re somebody who wants to lose 41d7cBwU1pLweight, or simply get healthier overall, I highly recommend reading Jason’s Fung’s book The Obesity Code. My weight had been creeping up over the years — nothing egregious, but like most people, it was just trending in the wrong direction — and I’d finally decided I’d had enough and I needed to cast a wider net on my understanding of the issue. Of all the books I’ve read on diet and nutrition, Fung’s book finally filled in the missing pieces for me. My biggest takeaway from it? That when and how often we eat is just as important as what and how much. It makes complete sense from an evolutionary point of view, too. Read the book for more information. It’s heavy on the evidence side, which I love, but you can certainly skim some of the more data-intense parts of the book and still come away with a much-improved understanding of human physiology. A lot of it is simply reinforcement of what we already know (cutting down sugar, refined carbohydrates, and eating more whole foods, plus moderate exercise, is a recipe for better health), but if you read this book you will understand why 98% of all diets fail — and what you can do to prevent that failure from happening to you.

Book Recommendation: Blockbusters by Anita Elberse

If you want to make money as an artist, or at least understand what’s happening to writers, musicians, and other entertainers in the age of Amazon, iTunes, and Netflix, you really need to read Anita Elberse’s book, Blockbusters.  A professor at Harvard, her conclusions are grounded in plenty of evidence and ten years of research.  I can’t stress enough how much this book has changed how I look at the publishing industry.  At the very least, you should watch her twenty-minute interview with Charlie Rose, where she hits most of the high points of her book.

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I had originally planned to write a much longer post about what I learned, particularly the middle chapters about the digital disruption, but it’s not much different than what I wrote a year ago with a few exceptions.  You should read this book if . . .

  • You want to know why Chris Anderson was wrong about “the long tail,” and that there is even more concentration toward bestsellers than the pre-Internet days (and increasingly so)
  • In most digital marketplaces 85% of the income is made by 1% of the products, 95% by 5% of the products, and that the bottom 75% make virtually nothing
  • That publishers, studios, and music companies are absolutely correct to bet big on blockbusters
  • And why simply putting out a lot of products, at least by itself, is not a winning strategy for any artist

She does not lay out that strategy.  That’s not her target audience.  If you’re a writer, musician, filmmaker, or any kind of artist working in the digital age, that’s up for you to decide. I’ll just say this:  It’s not getting any easier.  If you want to make more than pizza money, you need to take the long view, constantly striving to get better at both the craft and the business, and do what you can to give your work maximum visibility.

I’ve recommended this book to a number of writers already, and when I told them about some of the conclusions, they’ve all said it sounded pretty depressing.  I don’t think it has to be. Yes, the bad news is that it’s probably just as hard, if not harder, to make money as an artist as it was before there were so many ways to go direct to an audience. The good news is that the playing field is more open to newcomers than ever before.  There are no gatekeepers except the fans themselves, and they will give you their attention — the most precious commodity in the modern entertainment era — if you earn it.

 

The Indie Writer’s Tool Kit: How to Sell Better and Make More Money

Well, the holidays came and went with the usual fanfare.  Lots of food, lots of gift wrapping, lots of good times.  And it’s raining a lot again here in the Willamette Valley.  Rainy and cold in January — no shock.  All the traditions continue.

I’m co-teaching a workshop in “indie publishing” with Dean Wesley Smith next month in Lincoln City, Oregon: “The Indie Writer’s Tool Kit: How to Sell Better and Make More Money,” February 25-28, basically from 7 p.m. on Friday until noon on Tuesday.  My own publishing company, Flying Raven Press, has added a nice secondary income to my life, and I know Dean is doing fantastically well with his own WMG Publishing.  Although I have no plans to abandon working with traditional publishing (Wooden Bones is coming out from Simon and Schuster this August), the opportunities to go direct to readers, and skip the middlemen, are incredible for writers today.  It’s given me tons of options I didn’t have two years ago.

Contact Dean if you’re interested in attending.

This is essentially a “level 2” for those who attended the Think Like a Publisher Workshop last year, or for people who already have the basics of publishing an ebook and POD and want help taking it to the next level.  Should be a lot of fun.  The full workshop description is below, and Dean also has a very good post about why we tweaked the title — and the writer vs. author mindset in general.

Preparing for this workshop has also clarified my thinking about how best to spend my time as a writer and a publisher.  It’s also lead me to what other people might find are some surprising conclusions.  I no longer have a Facebook or Twitter account, for example.  And I no longer feel a need to blog regularly (in fact, I think doing so can actually be counterproductive).  Though I think it’s more important than ever to maintain an informative and accurate website.  It’s amazing how many author websites fail that simple test.

I’ll be talking about all that and more next month.  There are lots of things a writer can do to sell better and make more money.

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The Indie Writer’s Tool Kit: How to Sell Better and Make More Money

For writers who attended the Think Like a Publisher Workshop, or people who aready know the basics of publishing an ebook or POD, here’s a workshop to help you take your publishing enterprise to the next level. Learn the basics of writing effective book descriptions, techniques to make your covers look professional, how to use the Internet to promote (and how not to), and how to get your print books into independent bookstores. Audio books, author bios, loss leaders, pricing effectively, boosting productivity, website tools — all this and more is packed into four
intense days of learning. Includes in depth discussions about the current
state of publishing and the exciting opportunities that exist for writers.  Contact Dean Wesley Smith for more information.

Guest at North Coast Redwoods Writer’s Conference

If you’re a writer anywhere near Crescent City, California on September 16-17, consider attending the North Coast Redwoods Writer’s Conference.  I’ll be one of the guest speakers, and one of the things I’ll be talking about are all the amazing changes taking place in the publishing industry — and how you can take advantage of them.  (I’m going to touch on many of the same topics that Dean Wesley Smith and I talked about in our How To Be Your Own Publisher workshop — which, incidentally, we’re doing again in October.)

More information about the conference can be found here.

Me, I just wanted another excuse to visit the Redwoods, which is one of my favorite places on Earth.