The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success by Mike Coker

From Smashwords.com:

The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success: "I released a new ebook tonight, The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success. It's priced at FREE.

The book represents my attempt to distill, organize, package and share the best practices of the most commercially successful Smashwords authors.

The book is organized around 28 different "secrets," in which I explain not only what a writer should do, but also the thinking behind why they should do it.

The book took me almost 18 months to write. We've been so crazy busy at Smashwords that most of the writing occurred at 35,000 feet on my frequent flights to here and there, and during vacations.

The initial spark for the book struck two years ago in early 2010 when the organizers of the Self Publishing Book Expo conference in New York invited me to speak at their September 2010 conference on a topic of my choosing. I named the session, "The Seven Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success," not because I knew the secrets but because I wanted to learn them."

….. Read More

(Via Clippings.)

My Chess Blog

Recently I started my own Chess Blog called Just Another Chess Blog: http://blm3000x.com/chessblog/

Thought I would share it, just in case there is anyone that might like to see it.

Waffles, anyone?

Well, after a few days of wondering, pondering, and waffling I have indeed decided to move forward with the old work rather than the new. In short, Project GECKO lives on.

I have spent a good bit of the past few days reading what are the last two chapters of the book, making notes as I go on possible revision material, but mostly just refamiliarizing myself with the work. It is still rather rough but it still shocks me that I wrote it and that it actually seems l Ike a good damn story. It needs some work of course, but that is to be expected. I'm still learning so there is no telling what might be said about it by anyone attempting to read it in such an early revision. Or in any revision for that matter. Time will tell.

So having completed the reading I am set to actually sit and finish the damn thing. There is the ending to flesh out and a few sections that are hanging in the wind with some sort of chunks either missing of overlooked in the original writing. Like huge chunks. The kind that. Make a person ask 'WTF?'

But for now it is time to cleanse the mind..body..spirit..soul with some tai chi and qigong.

However know this world .... The book is coming. I will leave something behind.

'Cause I Already Know The Who

When, where, how, … yeah, I suppose I already know the why too.

How do you get back into writing a novel that has been chilling in the file cabinet for over six months? I'm thinking I'm going to have to do some back-reading on this one. See where I was. I glanced at it for a moment and found that I still remembered some of it, so I'm good there. Guess I should get on with it, huh? I hate doing work.

Today … Tomorrow?

So Today is the day … well, really it's gonna be Tomorrow.

What shall it be, you ask?

The day that It All Begins … er, Resumes. Back to the books. Not reading them, but writing them. (Of course there will be large amounts of reading as well. That goes without saying.) Time to get serious about getting serious. Time to build my business. No, not the failed start-up thingie I tried. I mean my writing. There's a lot to juggle but today was an eye opener as they say. I can do this.

So tomorrow I begin the ending of my second novel attempt, Project Gecko. Write the end, fill in a few spots, restart the first edit of it, and I should be golden from that point forward. I have to start somewhere, right?

See -- and I know I've said this before -- writing is the single most difficult 'job' I've ever attempted. And no, it's not the actual writing that is hard, it's the making myself do it. There is not deadline yet. Nothing that is not self-imposed anyway. And self-imposed … well, that horse don't run. (Wow! That one was really bad.)

But no more! Dammit! I'm gonna do this. I shall get a head start and begin tonight. Because it's always better to cheat at a job! Make it seem more real. Yeah. It's real alright! And I'mma gonna do this here shit. :)

And It Has Begun ...

Well, the holidays are over and now it's time to get back into the swing of everything: fulfilling my obligations as the Family Domestic Engineer, Getting Serious about the writing, and making sure that the days subject gets to whatever appoint there is on a given day. And for some reason we seem to have a metric Butt Ton of appointments for a family so small. And on top of that there is the fishing, wrapping up the shark fishing season, the fishing rod building, the organizing of fishing equipment (and maintenance), and did I mention fishing?

Ah, and now you see the problem, don't you? How can someone take a serious crack at a novel and do all that other crap at the same time? You can't. Nope. So I must shave off some stuff somewhere. Do my chores faster, that's a given, but that still only gets you so much time. So that leaves … pruning away some of the fishing. Some might say that it's silly for me to be pained so much by even thinking that, but it's something that was ingrained in me, neigh … wielded in my DNA decades and decades ago. It is a part of me, but than again, so are all the words within my skull that are fighting to get out.

So I must man up to the keyboard and giver 'er a whack and see what happens. I must take one for the BLM team. Or one could just look at it as me stopping being so godsdamn selfish and try to bring in a dollar of two. At least it will make me seem as if I have actually done something with my time. (Although I do on occasion bring food home for the table. It's a small defense (since they are rare this time of the year) but at least I thought one up!)

And now, as you can guess, I really should be writing and not just sitting here yapping at you.  In the words of a wise one -- maybe just a wise ass, but wise none the less -- "because I'm a writer dammit, and I'm done fucking around!"

Almost The New Year

That's right, it's almost that magical time where people make insane 'resolutions' that we all know, including them themselves, no one ever really keeps. Ok, so maybe you do, but the rest of us mere mortals fail 8 times out of 10. There is always a few that manage to skate by with a win. Bastards. Anyway, so I think that here shortly I will begin to make mine. And what will be different than all the previous ones? I recognize that I am beyond mortal and this time I will succeed. Yes. And I've made some simple ones. That helps!