Member Blog

It’s free to join SPR and blog about your writing experiences. Read the latest blog entries from our community

How Digital Became the Self-Publishing Beacon of Hope for Comics

By Wesley Craig Green – a writer of comics & movies, occasional entrepreneur, pop culture junkie, and lover of all things 70s.

Till only a few years ago, making a successful go at self-publishing (by “successful”, I mean having a growing audience which actively supports your work) was not the norm. For every Jeff Smith, there were a hundred self-publishers who put out anywhere from one to five issues of their self-publishing creation before they either ran out of funding or drive. This isn’t to say they or their book(s) were a failure. Far from it. It just means the […]

2019-03-06T09:13:35+02:00October 26th, 2011|Categories: Member Blog|

Because You’re Not Worth It (Or, Why Friends Don’t Ask Friends To Work For Free)

I used to find this quote inspirational, but now it just seems puzzling…

“One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film.”

– Stanley Kubrick

Not to pick an undebatable point with one of the greatest creative minds in recent history, but having produced a novel (yes, produced – more on that later) it’s fairly clear that all the author traditionally does is put the words together pretty. Write the manuscript. What usually follows in the process is turning it over to proofers and editors, lawyers who vet the prose […]

2020-02-21T07:18:07+02:00October 19th, 2011|Categories: Features, Member Blog|

Let Your Readers Guide You – They Whisper, So Listen Closely

When I published my first book, “Chasing the Runner’s High”, Amazon had two royalty plans for ebooks published through their Kindle Direct Publishing program. One paid 35% and one paid 70%.  It looked like a no-brainer.  Who wouldn’t prefer to get 70% of the price of each book sold instead of 35%?  The main restriction was that I had to set the list price of my ebook between $2.99 and $9.99 to qualify for the 70% program.

Amazon controls about 70% of the ebook market.  They set the rules and everyone else follows. So there are a lot of […]

2011-10-10T12:40:42+02:00October 10th, 2011|Categories: Member Blog|

Author Willow Polson Says Hello

As with everything on the interwebtubes, I discovered SPR through a series of clicks. I saw that a fellow author, R.J. Keller, had “Liked” my Facebook page for Triune, and she was a mutual friend with fellow author Rob Kroese of Mercury Falls fame, so I looked at her website, which brought me to Backwords Books, which led me here. I love how all this stuff works, and I can see the writing on the wall (no pun intended).

Traditional publishing is either one big gentlemen’s club or the Cretaceous Period, or perhaps both in the form of a […]

2011-10-09T09:33:38+02:00October 9th, 2011|Categories: Interviews, Member Blog|

Review: Von Lagerhaus by Dave DiGrazie

A group of strangers traveling through a surreal afterlife learn about themselves and each other as they seek a mysterious man named Von Lagerhaus.

One minute Rawanzel Johnson was in a Buffalo, N.Y., crack house, getting high, the next she was shivering next to a two-lane road in the middle of a mysterious pine forest. Soon she runs into Karen, a pretty television journalist from North Carolina who says that moments ago she’d run a red light and somehow ended up in the woods. The two find a note on the ground from someone named “G. Von Lagerhaus” welcoming them […]

2019-01-23T12:40:27+02:00October 8th, 2011|Categories: Member Blog|

Review: Legacy of the Light by Todd A. Gipstein

In an attempt to redeem his family’s honor, a man returns to keep the lighthouse where his father had failed to do his duty.

Keepers of the lonely lighthouse on Race Rock, off the shore of New London, Conn., had to learn to deal with intense isolation. The wife of Nathaniel Bowen, a keeper in the early 1900s, could not, so she left Nathaniel, taking their young son, Caleb, with her. Nathaniel was devastated, but continued to do his duty, until one night, consumed by grief over his absent family, he drank too much whiskey and failed to light the […]

2019-01-23T12:40:39+02:00October 8th, 2011|Categories: Member Blog|

Review: The Jaguar Dances by Barbara Winther

In Winther’s thriller, a vacation goes perilously awry when two friends encounter danger, intrigue and drug smugglers in the exotic resorts and mountain villages of Peru.

Along with her best friend Carrie, legal secretary Jan Fielding arrives in Peru hoping for a relaxing, glamorous vacation away from the office. But almost immediately it’s anything but peaceful. Gun-toting soldiers patrol the streets, Carrie’s suitcase is broken into while the girls are in the hotel bar and there’s something odd about their tour guide, Luis, the son of a business associate of Carrie’s father. Worse, Jan feels an attraction toward him that […]

2019-01-23T12:40:50+02:00October 8th, 2011|Categories: Member Blog|

Ebook Away!

I finally published an ebook version of my first novel, “Between Boyfriends.” I finished this book 5 years ago and eagerly began sending it out to literary agents. I got a ton of responses, some form letters and a few criticisms. The personal feedback was very positive but suggested necessary changes. I spent maybe 1 year doing an major rewrite, then eagerly send the new version back out again. Nothing. After about 1 year of sitting on the book and trying to come up with some brilliant way to convince an agent or publisher to do the last thing they […]

2019-01-22T05:57:52+02:00October 5th, 2011|Categories: Member Blog|
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