28,000 subscribers

How many times have you visited a website only to discover it had not been updated in six months or even a year? How is a reader supposed to know you’re still writing if you don’t refresh your pages now and again? The mere existence of a website doesn’t cut the mustard with an eager […]

The number of classes, appearances, books, and podcasts for writers boggles the mind. It almost feels like teaching writers makes more money than actually doing it. Out of curiosity, I briefly study most of those opportunities that come across my desktop, and, believe me, I’m on a lot of mailing lists. If they appear interesting, […]

We all know the benefits to donating our time and money: warm fuzzies, tax write-offs,  the gratifying sense of purpose and general knowledge that we’re helping others and making the world a better place. But in donating, when do we as writers sell ourselves short and where do we draw the line? When is charity […]

(Read Parts 1 and 2 of this three-part series online.) 3: Production and publication With the book hitting its crowdfunding target, it was time to look at production and publication. We had a fantastic copyeditor, Hayley, who carried out what Unbound called a developmental edit. She spotted lots of errors, some quite structural, and did […]

You may not realize it, but I wrote the chapter “How Much Should I Charge?” in the 2022 Writer’s Market this year. It was a humongous assignment, and until I did the research, I didn’t realize how much had changed in the last five years as well as mid- and post-COVID. Freelancers are very much alive and […]

(Read Parts 1 , 2 , and 3 of this 3-Part piece at FundsforWriters.com.) 2: Getting the orders in! After getting the book deal signed with Unbound, we now had to raise a five-figure sum in pre-orders to get our manuscript turned into a real book. One of the fun things Unbound does is teach you […]

1: Getting started In this series of three articles, I’m going to look at how I crowdfunded my novel, Work in Progress, through Unbound’s unique crowdfunding model. I wrote my book with two pals, Martin and Alex. It was originally called Kitten on a Fatberg, and it tells the story of a group of eccentrics, aspiring writers […]

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.  ~Annie Dillard This quote, from the FundsforWriters newsletter on November 26, 2021, reached me toward the end of a one-month writing residency. Dillard’s words helped me understand why I had found my weeks at the residency so worthwhile: because this brief period of time […]

Steven Pressfield (the author of The War of Art) speaks about the difficulty of pushing through and reaching THE END of whatever you are writing. It could be a poetry chapbook. It could be a memoir. It could be fiction of any genre or any word count. It could be a how-to on cabinetmaking or a children’s picture […]

As writers, we tend to carve out a niche for ourselves and stick to writing what we know best. We get comfortable writing in our genre. It fits us much like a pair of old pajamas. Even if the money isn’t coming in like we’d hoped, we don’t want to take those flannel pants off, […]

I just saw another crowdfunding campaign where the author is asking for money to be able to do what they love to do…write. These types of campaigns are usually not successful, and this is why: 1) Everyone has a dream. Why should the world pay for your dream? 2) A lot of people, millions as […]

There are almost 31 million small businesses in the United States, and a freelance writer who understands how to serve and communicate with small businesses—and their special needs and restrictions—can open up a whole new world of opportunities, relationships, and steady income. As a small business owner, advocate, and consultant, someone who has worked on […]