Matthew Iden's Blog, page 19

(This is the first part of a two-part series. Part II coming soon!) I'm of a cynical bent, so am ill-disposed towards cheerleaders, positive thinkers, and canned morale boosts. But the life of a writer is a lonely and often discouraging one. If you don't want to end up jumping off a cliff with the [...]

Hi folks - My first crime fiction collection, Three Shorts, is free for a limited time on all the major eBook channels and readers (Kindle, Nook, iTunes, Kobo, Sony). Please take advantage and grab your copy today; I'd love to know what you think about it, so feel free to comment here or on the [...]

Seven-thirty a.m. in Georgetown, Penang and breakfast was an iced chai and a vegetable dosa hot enough to melt the paint off a car. I sat outside under an awning, wondering if the tiny vinyl chair, wilting in the tropical heat, would hold my weight until I was done. A dozen feet away, a Chinese [...]

The Scariest Thing You Will Ever Do As A Writer Writer Susan Kiernan-Lewis has a nice blog spot on speaking and how frightened people are of it. I think sliding toward the edge of a 200′ foot cliff in winter outside of Park City, Utah counts as scarier…but statistically, this isn't true for most people. [...]

Today marks the one week anniversary of a little experiment of mine: posting my fantasy short story Sword of Kings for free with two different mobile reading services, Wattpad (http://www.wattpad.com/3237579-sword-...) and Scribd (http://www.scribd.com/doc/79242254/Sw...). If you haven't heard of either service, don't feel bad. I'd vaguely heard of Scribd before but only came across the possible [...]

(This blog post is the second in a two-part series. Read Part I here!) In the first part of this post, I discussed the important of having blurbs or varying lengths for your book and a set of cover images ready for any occasion. You might also find the following handy to have around. You [...]

If there's one truth I've found in the new world of electronic publishing, it's that the primary task once the book or collection is written is promotion. And a corollary to that rule–one I've learned the hard way–is that it's of immense value to have as much descriptive information about your project written, saved, and [...]

We Interrupt This Blog: Tribute to LC Evans David Gaughran is one of many authors who are participating a tribute for epub author L.C. Evans today, who passed away from cancer earlier this month. When you buy one of L.C.'s titles on Amazon, a participating author will send you a free copy of their book [...]

The Infinite Wordstream If reader satisfaction is to mean anything to the budding epublishing author, it's going to require hitting the moving target of reader desire. To reverse myself for a moment, the old 3,000 word and 300 page limits were and still are awfully handy as guidelines because the teeming mass of our reading [...]

Why Goodreads Is Making The Switch And What That Means For You. Book reviwer and blogger "Books: The Cheapest Vacation You Can Buy" points out in this post that Goodreads  has moved away from Amazon for its basic book information, finding Amazon's requirements "too restrictive". I'm not sure what that means, exactly, and I haven't [...]