There’s a battle going on right now, between the pro-AI futurists and the anti-AI rights creators. Both sides got some excellent points that you can find online. I’m not going to comment on that.

I will say that I’ve been using the Midjourney Art AI and while it took quite some getting used to (and the results, as yet, can’t compare to a true illustrator – for one, a human illustrator can count the number of fingers on a hand,) there are some things that AI is really, really good at.

Like scraping lots of images and extracting the similarities from them. Which is exactly what we do when we’re doing cover research. Take a look at this:

It may not be the greatest covers in the world, but they’re definitely western covers. That’s the prompt I used “book cover, western”.

If I was writing western, assuming I knew nothing about the genre or the covers, I’d instantly know a few things: (more…)

You’ve finished your first short story. You’re proud, maybe a little scared. And you have no idea what to do next. Should you start editing it? (no) Should you hire an editor? (no) Should you throw it in the trash? (no, no, and a thousand times no)

This is what you do (and I’m fully aware that I’ll get some hate for this, but this is how the writing world works):

You correct any obvious spelling and grammar mistakes, and you send it out to markets that publish this type of story.

Yes, unedited.

Why? Because right now, you’re likely not able to edit it. You don’t have the skills for it. Anything you do to it will make the story worse.

How do you get those skills? (more…)

There are two types of business books: the ones that talk about business, and the ones that teach you how to do it. Coleman’s Crowdfunding Your Fiction falls solidly into the second category.

If you’ve ever thought about using Kickstarter (or a similar crowdsourcing platform) to launch a book, you need to red Crowdfunding Your Fiction.

CYF (which I’m going to call it from now on) gives you a high-level overview of everything you need to do in order to successfully launch a crowdfunding campaign. Then it dives into every little detail, and holds your hand while guiding you through every step, including pointing out where to click on the homepage. (more…)

I’ve read a number of marketing books in my day, but very few that pack as much punch in as little space as Andrea Pearson’s Killer Content.

Killer Content is laser focused on tactics and results. You won’t find many anecdotes here (although, since this is Andrea Pearson, there will be a lot of smileys.) You won’t find heavy theory either – you’ll get a one or two sentence summary of the main points, then a link to the survey/study/rapport/other where it comes from. (more…)

I’ve written several hundred blurbs, for myself, for other authors, and for non-authors, mainly academics.

That’s right, there are blurbs in academia. They’re called abstracts, posters, or one-slide presentations, but if it works like a blurb, and functions like a blurb, it is a blurb.

That’s my view. Don’t tell it to any academics. Also, when I say “blurb,” I mean “back cover copy.” That’s the correct term. Nobody I know uses it (OK, some pundits in the self-publishing sphere do, but most of us just say “blurb”.) I’m going to say blurb. So there.

Anyhow, blurbing (which is five characters shorter than “blurb writing” and I’m a lazy bastard) is not a writing skill. It’s marketing, and while you use your keyboard for both, they’re essentially different skill sets. And no, one of them won’t leave a trail of slime on your pristine, artistic soul.

Let me explain why, and how you go about writing an effective* blurb.

(* Please note the “effective.” The key point of a blurb isn’t style, information capacity, or ego, it’s effect – unless you’re writing to stoke your own ego, in which case feel free to skip the rest of this post…)

Oh, and this is a bit longer than my usual posts. As in “about 1500% longer.” Yeah, it needs a table of contents: (more…)

Why did my story get rejected?

This is a forum thread in the form of an AMA by an (ex-)Clarkesworld slush reader.

Lots of interesting analysis of short fiction markets in general and Clarkesworld in particular. Great if you’re submitting or planning to submit to the big mags.

Pay close attention to the “I slushed 2000 stories, passed up 150-300 to the editor, and none of those got published.” (more…)

Let’s say you have an idea for a setting, or an event, or a new type of technology, but you can’t transform it into a plot. There’s simply no action there, no conflict. All you’ve got is a “what if…”

How about you take one of those what ifs and ask “who would be the most hurt by this?” I.e.:

“What if all people could suddenly fly? Who would be the most hurt by this?”

Airlines. Airline pilots. Airline maintenance workers. What if it’s a airplane mechanic who really loves his planes, but now they’re all worthless and nobody wants them? “The Airplane Whisperer, coming soon to a theater near you…”

Second point would be to see how badly you can make the person hurt. (more…)

Sometimes you read a book at exactly the right time to change your world. Algis Budrys’ “Writing to the Point: A Complete Guide to Selling Fiction” was one of those books for me.

Writing to the Point is a short (152 airy pages) yet deep (spanning everything from “Chapter 1: The Basic Basics” to dealing with agents and who to format a manuscript) writing advice book. It took me slightly less than an hour-and-a-half to read, and I haven’t come away from a writing how-to book this turbo-charged in a long, long time. (more…)

You’ve written your novel, published your stories, signed an autograph or two[note]Yes, your mother does count.[/note]. And then you get the question: so, what’s your platform like?

What the hell is an author platform? Have you got one? Is it contagious?

Easy there, buckaroo. Help is on the way.

An author, or author’s, platform is all the online presence you’ve got[note]In fact it’s all the presence you’ve got, including offline, media and personal, but you don’t want fans trampling your mother’s petunias so we’ll stick to online.[/note]. It’s your website, Twitter feed, Instagram account, and forum moderator powers put together. And the most basic, and easiest to do, part of your writer platform, is your author website. (more…)

There are some things that work plain better than others, that resonate with your needs better than others. When it comes to writing, I have tons of resources that I use on occasion, some that I use repeatedly and a few that I use all the time.

This is my Top Ten List of Writing Resources for the fall of 2016 (with some bonuses and honorary mentions). (more…)