Tag Archives: Kindle

Direct Sales: the future for ebooks and more?

Joanna is trying to sort the facts from the hype on direct sales

A Kindle reader is propped up in front of a pile of 5 assorted books.

Bigstock: 93317477

A couple of weeks ago, I took part in a webinar about direct sales for books, led by the co-founder of a direct sales organisation in the USA. So I knew from the start that the webinar was bound to include a sales pitch.
Fine. But how much else of what he said do I believe?

First, a quick definition. What do I mean by direct sales?

Let me use an example. Not about books. There’s an organic dairy farm just up the road from where I live. They could sell their milk to supermarkets. In fact, they do. But, in addition, I can go to the farm and buy organic milk direct from them, from a chilled milk dispenser which is available to customers 24/7. If I do that, I’m buying direct. The farm gets all the cash from my purchase with no supermarket or other middleman taking a cut. I probably get a fresher product at a keener price. Win-win. Except for the supermarket, of course.

Direct sales of books : who benefits?

Continue reading →

Writing too long leads to the dilemma of cutting down to size

Joanna’s tortured musings on Cutting Down a Manuscript PLUS NEW TIPS

A few years ago, I was faced with a MS that was much too long. It needed cutting down to size. So I wrote a blog with my tips for doing it.

editing in Scrabble tilesLast time, the MS had swollen to over 94,000 words. I needed it to be well under 90K. I actually got it down to 82K, by following my own hints and tips. Then I submitted it to the editor who’d asked for it. Unfortunately for the length problem, I then had to make changes to take account of said editor’s (very perspicacious) comments and it swelled to—would you believe?—94,000 words again. Disaster on the length front, though the MS was a lot better for the editor’s input.

Impossible to resubmit the MS at that length. So chagrined author had to go back to ruthless application of the strategy for cutting down. Continue reading →

Electronic Benefit and Compulsive Micro-editing

boring micro-editing Confession time: I have a problem with compulsive micro-editing;  and I don’t normally believe in electronic benefits.

I am a quintessentially late adopter. Even when I have been pushed through the airtight seal into the orbiting 21st century, I’m not one who expects to find anything much good coming from the new technology at my command.

Mainly, of course, because it’s NOT at my command. It goes its own way. Sometimes it’s too fast for me and whizzes onto the next page, next program. And freezes. Or it’s too slow, so that I lose confidence and try to go back. And it freezes.

This is true of laptops, desktops, tablets, E-readers. The whole boiling. I hate ’em.

Except…

Except that they make my writing life just a little bit, well, easier.

Conviction Tiffler Addicted to Micro-editing

Micro-editing, the enemy of the finished bookYou see, I’m a conviction tiffler.

If, like Autocorrect, you don’t recognise the term, I borrowed it from a woman who was once my editor. What she actually said was — in a public restaurant, quite loudly —  “If you don’t stop tiffling with that sodding book, I shall come round with chloroform and forceps and remove it surgically.” Continue reading →