Ask the Authors 2022 is featured in KJA’s Writing Tools Bundle

Posted: October 1, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Anthology, Ask the Authors, Book Promotion, Books, Nonfiction, WordCrafter Press, Writing, Writing Business, Writing Challenge, Writing Inspiration, Writing Life, Writing Process, Writing Tips | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment
Ask the Authors 2022

Where can you find publishing industry experts willing to share their secrets? 

Ask the Authors 2022 is the ultimate writer’s reference, with tips and advice on craft, publishing and marketing. Eleven experienced and successful authors share what works for them and offer their keys to success in traditional publishing, hybrid, and indie. You’ll learn industry wisdom from Mark Leslie Lefebvre, Kevin Killiany, L. Jagi Lamplighter, Bobby Nash, Paul Kane, Nancy Oswald, Chris Barili, Jeff Bowles, Roberta Eaton Cheadle, Mario Acevedo and Kaye Lynne Booth.

This book offers up-to-date and tried-and-true ways to improve your craft, explores current publishing and book marketing worlds. Take a peek inside and find out what works for you.

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Every year, Kevin J. Anderson curates a Writer’s Career Toolkit Bundle in coincidence with NaNoWriMo, because we all know that those crazy writers who knock themselves out at this time of year to produce 50,000 words in 30 days, need all the help they can get.

This year, Ask the Authors 2022 is one of those books to be included in this useful bundle of books for writers! We are in great company. L. Jagi Lamplighter has a book of her own in the bundle, The Art and Craft of Writing and Mark Leslie Lefebrve has a book co-authored with D.F. Hart, MBA, Accounting for Authors. Also included are books by big name authors such as Joshua Essoe, Joanna Penn, Kevin J. Anderson, and David Farland. There’s even a book by one of my cohorts, Aisley Oliphant, Booked to the Gills, which is aimed at writers of 30 day writing challenges, and will be helpful to those preparing to participate in NaNoWriMo. (You can see my “Review in Practice” for Booked to the Gills, here.)

The Writer’s Career Toolkit Bundle

The Writer’s Career Toolkit Bundle  – Curated by Kevin J. Anderson


This is the time of year when a lot of people turn their thoughts to writing. Challenges such as the National Novel Writing Month (November) and other writing groups and workshops encourage you to push your craft and productivity. So, each year I put together a big writing StoryBundle packed with insightful books on a wide range of topics relevant to writers, both newbies and old pros. I include craft books, basic advice, time management and productivity, careers planning, publishing, and marketing—the complete bag of tricks!


This year we have fifteen titles, enough to keep you busy planning your next project and your entire writing career.


For basics, I’ve included Kaye Lynne Booth’s comprehensive Ask the Authors 2022, the ultimate writing reference anthology, with writing tips and advice from eleven different authors on everything from pre-writing rituals, to character development and world building, editing and revision, publishing, book marketing and more.

L. Jagi Lamplighter’s sharply insightful The Art and Craft of Writing delves into the nature of storytelling itself to discover simple and practical steps that can bring our writing to the next level.

And if today’s most successful publishers, editors, and writers wanted to share the lessons they’ve learned, would you listen? Here’s your chance in Titans Rising: The Business of Writing Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror in the 21st Century by William Alan Webb and Chris Kennedy.

Next, if you’re ready to write that novel, Joanna Penn will get you started with How to Write a Novel, everything you need to write your book from idea to finished final draft.

David Farland’s Million Dollar Outlines is the seminal writing manual on outlining and structuring a book to make it reach the largest audience, written by well-known master and teacher.

And Kevin Ikenberry’s Mercenary Guide to Story Structure gives a great overview of your story: All stories have structure—learn the ins and outs of the most common modern structures and how they enhance your characters and thestories they inhabit.

And you can’t get anything done unless you learn how to find and organize your writing time. Booked to the Gills: How to Crush Thirty-Day Writing Challenges for Busy People teaches time management, workload distribution, and other skills for writers who feel they have no time to participate in writing challenges such as National Novel Writing Month. Now to more specific skills, depending on what you’re writing.

Joshua Essoe continues his series of Guides with Worldbuilding, written by an editor from the perspective of tackling all the most-common issues writers struggle with when creating worlds. 

On Writing (and Reading!) Short by Ron Collins is a celebration of writing, reading, and living short fiction.

Interested in writing scripts? My own book of Clockwork Angels: The Comic Scripts contains nitty-gritty inside examples of how to write a comic script, all six complete scripts for the BOOM! Studios comic series from bestelling author and award-winning comic writer.

In The Non-User-Friendly Guide for Aspiring TV Writers by Steven L. Sears, a veteran successful TV writer shares tips and inside knowledge on how to break in to writing for TV.

Once you have your masterpiece completed, you need to turn your mind to the business. If you decide to go the indie publishing route, a vital guidebook is Chris Kennedy’s Indie Publishing for Profit: How to Get Your Book Out of Your Head and Into the Stores, which teaches both the craftand business of writing.

Sarah Painter’s Stop Worrying; Start Selling:The Introvert Author’s Guide to Marketing shows you how to take control of your success as an author and build your readership through authentic, low-stress marketing.

Christopher D. Schmitz sells thousands of paperbacks every year by identifying his fanbase and targeting where those folks go… and he shows you how to replicate his success in Sell More Books at Live Events.

And finally, you can’t forget about the numbers. Read Accounting for Authors by D.F. Hart and Mark Leslie Lefebvre. Regardless of how you are publishing, having a solid understanding of basic accounting principles allows you to make the most out of your author earnings and calculate your
pathways to success. With this StoryBundle, you’ll be well equipped for your writing and
publishing journey. – Kevin J. Anderson

For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll get the basic bundle of five books in any ebook format—WORLDWIDE.


On Writing (and Reading!) Short by Ron Collins
The Art and Craft of Writing by L. Jagi Lamplighter
Essoe’s Guides to Writing: Worldbuilding by Joshua Essoe
Indie Publishing for Profit by Chris Kennedy
Booked to the Gills by Aisley Oliphant


If you pay at least the bonus price of just $20, you get all five of the regular books, plus ten more books for a total of 15!


Million Dollar Outlines by David Farland
Clockwork Angels – The Comic Scripts by Kevin J. Anderson
The Non-User-Friendly Guide for Aspiring TV Writers by Steven L. Sears
Stop Worrying; Start Selling by Sarah Painter
Accounting for Authors by D.F. Hart, MBA and Mark Leslie Lefebvre
The Mercenary Guide to Story Structure by Kevin Ikenberry
Ask the Authors 2022 edited by Kaye Lynne Booth
How to Write a Novel – From Idea to Book by Joanna Penn
Sell More Books at Live Events by Christopher D. Schmitz
Titans Rising edited by William Alan Webb and Chris Kennedy

This bundle is available only for a limited time via  http://www.storybundle.com .

It allows easy reading on computers, smartphones, and tablets as well as Kindle and other ereaders via file
transfer, email, and other methods. You get multiple DRM-free formats (.epub, .mobi) for all books! It’s also super easy to give the gift of reading with StoryBundle, thanks to our gift cards – which allow you to send someone a code that they can redeem for any future StoryBundle bundle – and timed delivery, which allows you to control exactly when your recipient will get the gift of StoryBundle.


Why StoryBundle? Here are just a few benefits StoryBundle provides.


• Get quality reads: We’ve chosen works from excellent authors to bundle together in one convenient package.

• Pay what you want (minimum $5): You decide how much these fantastic books are worth. If you can only spare a little, that’s fine! You’ll still get access to a batch of exceptional titles.
• Support authors who support DRM-free books: StoryBundle is a platform for authors to get exposure for their works, both for the titles featured in the bundle and for the rest of their catalog. Supporting
authors who let you read their books on any device you want—restriction free—will show everyone there’s nothing wrong with ditching DRM.
• Give to worthy causes: Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of their proceeds to the Challenger Center for Space Education!
• Receive extra books: If you beat the bonus price, you’ll get the bonus books!

StoryBundle was created to give a platform for independent authors to showcase their work, and a source of quality titles for thirsty readers. StoryBundle works with authors to create bundles of ebooks that can be purchased by readers at their desired price. Before starting StoryBundle, Founder Jason Chen covered technology and software as an editor for Gizmodo.com and Lifehacker.com.


For more information, visit our website at storybundle.com, tweet us
at  @storybundle  and like us on  Facebook . For press inquiries, please
email  press@storybundle.com .

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The 2022 Writer’s Career Toolkit Bundle launched on September 29th and will be available thorugh the end of November. So, before you sharpen your pencils and limber up your fingers for the upcoming writing challenge, grab you bundle and warm up your brain cells to do your best writing ever!

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In celebration of this momentus event, eight of the contributing authors to Ask the Authors 2022 are getting together to tell us more about this great bundle and offer more writing tips and advice. Contributing author Mark Leslie LeFebrve will host myself, Bobby Nash, L. Jagi Lamplighter, Kevin Killiany, Roberta Eaton Cheadle, Nancy Oswald, and Mario Acevedo, on his Stark Reflections podcast. I’ll keep you posted as to when that podcast session will air.

Writer’s Corner: What? I’m a business?

Posted: July 25, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Book Promotion, Indie Publishing, Promotion, Publishing, Self-Publishing, Writer's Corner, Writing, Writing Business | Tags: , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Often it seems like everybody wants to be an author, and with the rise of digital publishing and print-on-demand, everyone pretty much can. After all, all it takes to write a book is an idea for a story, a general idea of story structure, and a basic knowledge of grammar and punctuation, right? Well… yes and no, but that is a discussion for a different post. For our purposes, we’re talking about writers who have what it takes to become an author.

However, many authors don’t realize how many non-writing tasks are involved in being an author. Because we aren’t just writing books, we want to sell them, too. And as soon as we start doing that, we become a writing business. That’s right. And we have market and sell our books, pay for websites so fans can find us, find reviewers, engage with readers, as well as putting out a newsletter and other types of advertising to sell our books. And we must keep track of expenses and earnings so we can properly pay our taxes. Yep. Authors really are a business.

As soon as you write your first book, (or story, or poem), you’ve created what they call IP (Intellectual Property), and you are faced with deciding how you want to handle it. In the past, an author would pitch their book to an agent or editor in the hopes of landing a traditional publishing deal, and if they were fortunate enough to land one, then they would sign a contract giving some, or all, of their rights in exchange for royalties, possibly with an advance of reasonable size against future royalties.

Traditional publishing is a traditionally slow business, so then, the author would sit back and wait from two to five years for their book to be published and then, wait even longer until their royalties are enough to pay back their advance, before receiving royalty checks, generally about 15% of sales, twice a year. So you see, by traditional publishing methods, most authors really were starving artists. Add to this that many traditional publishers required you to sign away rights that they never had any intention of using, but they just wanted to cover all of their bases, and would only allow their authors to put out one book a year, and you can see why many authors assumed pen names in other genres just to try and make ends meet.

Fortunately, with the rise of independent publishing, all that changed. Now days, authors who are more prolific and can produce more than one book per year, can write and publish as many as they want. And they can also sell or maintain whichever rights they want to. Independent authors are now dealing directly with book distribution platforms, or they can choose to give an additional percentage to an aggregator, who then places their book on the various distribution platforms, but they still receive a bigger percentage of their royalties than traditionally published authors do.

As explained in Dean Wesley Smith’s Magic Bakery, the IP for your creations are your products, which you can give away or sell in any way you wish, as long as you maintain control of your rights and manage them smartly. That is how successful authors today manage to keep their backlists working for them.

The flip side of this, is that independent authors don’t have publishers to edit and hone their books to perfection (editing), provide a cover (cover design), or get reviews (business) and market their books (marketing and promotion) for them. (I wrote a post about the many hats an author must wear today back in October of 2016 here, but I really had no idea at that time.)

So, these are other skill sets today’s authors must have or learn, or hire out and pay someone else to do them. If they chose to hire them out, then these things become additional business expenses. (The bold emphasis is to reiterate that authors are indeed, a business.) While much of the paid advertising works with numbers and data, authors better brush up on their math skills or hire someone to keep their books and figure their taxes, too. And when you chose to become an author, there are no employers to provide health or dental or vision insurance. The author is responsible for providing these things for themselves as a self-employed entity, because they are a business.

I hate to keep driving on that point, but it’s one which keeps slapping me in the face. Just when I think I’ve done my homework well and gained all the necessary skills to be a successful author, there it is again. At first, I thought that all I’d need was English, grammar and storytelling abilities. One I’d earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, I found that I needed marketing skills to peddle my wares. With almost a B.A. in marketing, and a M.A. in publishing, it looks as if may need a degree in business, as well. ( Okay, maybe not a full degree, but general business knowledge and a good understanding of the publishing industry are needed, because… yep, you got it, you’re a business.)

As a business, authors need to act as professionals, and do what they can to keep up to date on industry news and changes on social media channels and digital platforms which you use on promotions and advertising.

Another thing that I have learned is that even bestselling authors with a large backlist, need multiple streams of income to make their writing business work. It is just good sense in the rapidly changing world of digital technology, where the owners of digital platforms you use for promotion and distribution can change the rules without notice, to not place all of your literary eggs in one basket. The rapid changes to digital industry also mean that there is an abundance of helpful digital tools out there to help you in your writing business. But then, that just means that I need to learn new skills (tech skills) so I can use them!

And to think, I just wanted to write stories.

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Kaye Lynne Booth lives, works, and plays in the mountains of Colorado. With a dual emphasis M.F.A. in Creative Writing and a M.A. in Publishing, writing is more than a passion. It’s a way of life. She’s a multi-genre author, who finds inspiration from the nature around her, and her love of the old west, and other odd and quirky things which might surprise you.

Kaye Lynne Booth lives, works, and plays in the mountains of Colorado. With a dual emphasis M.F.A. in Creative Writing and a M.A. in Publishing, writing is more than a passion. It’s a way of life. She’s a multi-genre author, who finds inspiration from the nature around her, and her love of the old west, and other odd and quirky things which might surprise you.

She has short stories featured in the following anthologies: The Collapsar Directive (“If You’re Happy and You Know It”); Relationship Add Vice (“The Devil Made Her Do It”); Nightmareland (“The Haunting in Carol’s Woods”); Whispers of the Past (“The Woman in the Water”); Spirits of the West (“Don’t Eat the Pickled Eggs”); and Where Spirits Linger (“The People Upstairs”). Her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets, and her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, are both available in both digital and print editions at most of your favorite book distributors.

When not writing, she keeps up her author’s blog, Writing to be Read, where she posts reflections on her own writing, author interviews and book reviews, along with writing tips and inspirational posts from fellow writers. In addition to creating her own very small publishing house in WordCrafter Press, she offers quality author services, such as editing, social media & book promotion, and online writing courses through WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services. As well as serving as judge for the Western Writers of America and sitting on the editorial team for Western State Colorado University and WordFire Press for the Gilded Glass anthology and editing Weird Tales: The Best of the Early Years 1926-27, under Kevin J. Anderson & Jonathan Maberry.

In her spare time, she is bird watching, or gardening, or just soaking up some of that Colorado sunshine.

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Join Kaye Lynne Booth & WordCrafter Press Readers’ Group for WordCrafter Press book & event news, including the awesome releases of author Kaye Lynne Booth. Get a free digital copy of her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, as a sampling of her works just for joining.