July 16, 2025
SMASHWORDS https://www.smashwords.com Smashwords FAQ for Authors and Publishers Mark Coker came up with the idea for Smashwords in 2015 after co-writing the novel, Boob Tube, with his wife Lesleyann. Major publishing houses weren’t interested. They felt there too many other books like it, and those books had sold poorly. In 2018, Smashwords launched with the […]
June 25, 2025
Years ago I started publishing my eBooks on Smashwords and Draft2Digital. D2D distributes to dozens of on-line sites and libraries. I don’t make a lot of money from these books, but every so often I have a nice surprise when royalty payments appear in my bank account. As of now I have ten (10) of […]
October 13, 2021
It’s less than three weeks until Halloween. A perfect time to read a romance that’s also a suspense. I’ve just lowered the price on the e-book for HAUNTED to .99 cents. This is one of my older romances. I wrote it after O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murdering his wife. Of course the hero in […]
February 3, 2021
Nowadays, most writers can’t simply write a story, send it off to an agent or publisher and sit back and wait for the praise and money. Of course, it’s always been true for most writers that once the story has been written, they must take off their writer’s hat and put on their editor’s hat. […]
October 21, 2020
Tomorrow, October 22nd, A KILLER PAST will be available as an e-book. No, this isn’t a new book, but for over two years Mary Harrington’s story in e-book fashion has been missing, and its disappearance is a good example of how little control most authors have over their books. Originally, A KILLER PASTwas published in […]
September 6, 2017
I’m always trying something different, sometimes because of outside changes (lose a publisher or hear about a new publishing opportunity), and sometimes for variety (write sexy romances, sweet romances, romantic suspense, straight suspense and thriller). Back in the mid ‘90s, my Silhouette editor told me about a new line that was being created. The idea […]
April 19, 2017
I’m continuing my summaries of sessions I attended during Sleuthfest 2017 with the Saturday afternoon session titled “Different Paths to Publication.” This panel included Lynnette Hallberg, Sharon Potts, John Keyse-Walker, and Dan Ames with Gregg Brickman moderating. Dan Ames started the conversation by comparing the three common ways of being published today: traditional (large publishing […]
November 2, 2016
A few weeks ago Barbara Vortman posted a comment on my blog. She said, “I remember when your first book was published. Can you tell us how marketing has changed since then and how you adapted? I have never been a self-promoter and I detest the job. My novel will languish forever on Amazon because […]
October 12, 2016
Back in 1997 Silhouette published Heiress Seeking Perfect Husband under their Yours Truly line. I loved the story. It’s a “You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find Prince Charming” type of story and is probably the most humorous one I’ve ever written. When the publisher dropped that line, my agent was […]
June 1, 2016
I was at the Portage District Library last Thursday talking with a group of writers and one woman asked how much it cost to publish an ebook. I had to give the unsatisfying answer of “It depends.” I decided that would be a good topic for a blog, especially since Friday I uploaded the file for […]
November 25, 2015
(*see the end of this post for offer.) Thanksgiving is a time to get together with family and friends and be thankful for the good things that have happened in our lives. I feel especially blessed. Forty-eight years ago I met a man who over the years has been everything we romance writers want in […]
October 28, 2015
Tomorrow I’m flying to Nashville to attend a writers’ conference (Killer Nashville). I’ve been attending writing conferences for more than thirty years, and I always come home having learned something. On Saturday morning I’ll be on a “Romantic Suspense” panel. I’m feeling a bit unprepared. Although, in the past, I’ve written what I (me, myself) […]
September 30, 2015
This past week I’ve been reformatting and updating Destiny Unknown, a romance published by Bantam Loveswept back in 1997. I’ve been lucky with this one. I had the original manuscript on a 3″ disc and a friend just happened to have a computer that could still read those discs. (None of my computers can.) I’d […]
April 6, 2015
Back at the turn of the century (the 1900s to the 2000s) I often said, “If they get the cost of the readers down, e-books are going to take off.” I don’t know if anyone listened to me. Others, obviously, had the same thought. The readers didn’t really get cheaper, not down to the level […]
June 25, 2014
This week I’ve been working on getting Storybook Hero ready to upload to KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), Smashwords, Nook, and Kobo. Although the story part of the manuscript basically stays the same (there is a slight difference for those uploaded for the Nook), the front and afterword portions vary a little. Creating the Table of […]