When I first started this blog I would haphazardly store useful links and articles I wanted to comment on here and there, like a squirrel burying nuts. Then, also like a squirrel, I would promptly forget where I’d put them.
I recognized the problem inherent in this work flow after only a few head-banging evenings and did a little research on solutions. This led me to pull down a copy of Linkman, which I still barely know how to use, but at least all my blog fodder winds up in one place. I think.
Despite this handy means of tracking my nuts, however, I still don’t seem to have a lot of time to go back and dig them up and give them a proper Ditchwalk thumping. So the links keep building up, and I keep saving them, and you keep missing out on the content, and the squirrels bounding around my yard keeping talking about me in ways that are less than complimentary.
So today I’m going to start posting links to items that didn’t make it into an individual post, and in coming weekends I may even go back and dig up some of the stuff I buried two months ago. If only to feel the thrill of victory.
Enjoy. 🙂
- Copyright, Publication Rights, Kindle, and YOU
The kind of process post every would-be author should read. Profited me greatly, particularly regarding the proper steps for establishing professional identity and custody of copyrights. - Thoughts on the Craft
Written by Cheryl Anne Gardner, this post beats the glitter off the self-publishing movement and reveals the pragmatic reality beneath. (The post is from an art-centric perspective.) - Hold a Self-Publisher to Account: Month 3
Dan Hollaway, posting as a pair of shoes, dishes dirt on his self-pub sales. Previous posts here and here. - How to Negotiate a Bigger Book Advance: 9 Insider Tips
Interesting for what it talks about (the variables that matter to the publishing industry) and what it doesn’t talk about (writing quality). And yet I’m sure it’s factually true. Consider this a primer on why publishing is A) dying and B) no longer viable for anyone without a TV face. - N.Y. Times mines its data to identify words that readers find abstruse
An older (6/11) post, but one I found interesting. Coincidentally, I noticed for the first time this week that I couldn’t highlight|copy from the NYT site because it wanted to treat my highlighted text as a query. Fortunately, the Ctrl-C key combo still works for copying highlighted text, even if the Copy option is no longer available in my right-click menu.) - Battlefield Heroes Users Decry New Pricing Scheme
Yet another example of how the dominant theme in American business is screwing your own customers out of money. (The banking industry cries uncle as a result of their own drunken credit excess, gets bailed out, then jacks up interest rates and fees on rank-and-file members. Too-big-to-fail begets too-small-to-succeed.) The games industry, no slouch at exploiting users, is furiously working on the correct balance between free-to-play player skill and micro-transactions as a means of bypassing effort. Not surprisingly, the people making these games keep coming up with ways to induce people to spend.
More each week until all known problems are solved.
— Mark Barrett
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