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Category Archives: self-publishing
Make a Living at Writing?
There’s money to be made in writing fiction. But not necessarily by those doing the actual writing. As the number of books being churned out in this age of self-publishing has increased astronomically, the odds of making a living wage … Continue reading
Posted in Amazon KDP, Christmas, farming, nostalgia, self-publishing, social criticism, Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., La Conner. Skagit Delta, Swinomish Slough, Rainbow Bridge, bookstores,, Washington State Ferries, writing
Tagged book marketing, editorial services, hybrid publishers, KDP, legacy publishers, literary agents, Maxwell Perkins, word processing
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Did William Faulkner Really Say This?
In writing, you must kill all your darlings. Not according to John Crowley, writer of fantasy, science fiction and mainstream fiction. I was happy to read in Crowley’s “Easy Chair” column, in the November 2014 issue of Harper’magazine, that the … Continue reading
Posted in history, self-publishing, social criticism, writing
Tagged book editing, creative writing groups, Earnest Hemingway, Gustave Flaubert, Harper's Magazine, James Joyce, John Crowley, Mark Twain, Maxwell Perkins, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, The Easy Chair, Thomas Wolfe, Wallace Stegner, William Faulkner, word processing, writing style
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Look What They’ve Done To My Book!
Thomas Wolfe, manically writing while standing, using the top of his icebox as a desk, tossing his manuscript pages into a nearby wooden packing crate, would not understand how my two novels got mangled when transformed into Kindle versions. I … Continue reading
Posted in self-publishing, writing
Tagged author compensation, e-books, formats, Kindle, Luddite, Maxwell Perkins, mega-publishing, Thomas Wolfe
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Blizzard of Books, Queries, Reviews, Blogs
OK, the accompanying sketch–from a photograph of the Pennsylvania Railroad depot in Rahway, New Jersey, following a late-19th Century snow storm (likely the legendary Blizzard of 1888)–might strain the metaphor a bit. Certainly it’s undeniable that in our early 21st … Continue reading
Posted in history, self-publishing, writing
Tagged author services, Blizzard of '88, getting published, self-promotion
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Where Have You Gone, Maxwell Perkins?
Was it easier to get a book published before the recent onset of mass-digital (mostly self) publishing? It may depend on the type of book. Media celebrities, no matter how vacuous, seem to have no trouble getting book deals with … Continue reading
A View from the Track Up
A major physical challenge in maintaining railroad track is that just about everything being worked on is less than a foot off the ground. A little like farm labor in that respect. After much of a lifetime of blue-collar jobs, … Continue reading
Posted in history, railroading, self-publishing, writing
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J.P. Kenna 