Child abuse is a despicable crime, and Marian L. Thomas is hitting back!

Marian L. Thomas is back with another bestseller

My Father's Colors.

Best-selling author Marion L. Thomas appeared on my blog back last year in May with
Color Me Jazzmyne. She is an active supporter of victims of child abuse, and her books aim to educate as well as entertain. 


                                              What's New?

Marian welcomes the release of her second book, My Father's Colors-The Drama-Filled Journey of Naya Monà Continues on March 1, 2011. It is sure to be another Best-Seller for the author as it takes you on the journey of four individuals that lead to one destination filled with betrayal, lies and shocking secrets.

Naya Monà is back on another emotional and drama-filled roller coaster as she finds herself fighting to find her voice, discover her father's past and search for her daughter. How do you find a daughter you never knew you gave birth to?

Then there's Chris—her husband. How far would one go for love? That is the question that Chris wastes no time answering. He will do whatever it takes to remove his wife’s pain, even if it means being the one to cause her the most.

Let's not forget Misty. Fame and Fortune have been the determining factor for Misty ever sense her father passed away. How far will she go, this time, to achieve it?

Introducing, Carl Thompson. Carl has found the love of his life, only she doesn’t know it. Green eyes and hazel brown hair fill his dreams for the future. Does he have enough love for the both of them?

Join best-selling author Marian L. Thomas as she takes you through the captivating pages of My Father’s Colors. This book is guaranteed to make you laugh, cry and get caught in the drama-filled story of a woman’s journey!

What type of book is it?

My Father's Colors-The Drama-Filled Journey of Naya Monà Continues is both contemporary fiction and literary entertainment that focusing on character and plot development. Poetic and filled with melodious tones, it derives its inspiration from the real life experiences that many woman and children of abuse face. It is emotional, captivating and sparked with the elements of reality to make a true reader connection.

Ready to win a free signed copy? How?
Marian will be a guest blogger for some of the most amazing blogs. Visit each blog, leave a comment and your name will be entered into a drawing for one signed copy of my book. The person who has left the most comments (one per blog) will win. Ready to win? Start with leaving a comment on this blog.

Ready to Purchase Your Copy?

My Father's Colors-The Drama-Filled Journey of Naya Monà Continues is available in Paperback and Hardcover through the following online retailers:

Amazon.com

Barnes and Noble.com

eReader? Start reading within minutes on:

Kindle

Nook

Visit Author's Website:

http://www.marianlthomas.com

Marian was reared in Chicago but lives with her biggest-supporter—her husband and their spoiled but playful dog, Winston in Atlanta, Georgia. Received her Bachelor's degree in Business Communication, graduating Magna Cum Laude. Marian writes with a box full of colors in her head. Using the analogy of a crayon box to describe the struggles and journeys of women, has become her literary trademark. Readers have been captivated by her emotional appeal and her flare for reality that continues to be weaved within the pages of her books. Her debut title, Color Me Jazzmyne, went on to become an Amazon Best-seller. Reaching #1 in the Rhythm & Blues category, #2 in Inner-Child and #7 in Performance/Voice for the amazing melodious tones developed through the voice of her main character, Naya Monà. Color Me Jazzmyne was also ranked as one of the" Top 100 Books"-1st Qtr 2010 by the Sankofa Literary Society Review.

Why do professional writers shy away from Twitter...

and other on-line communities? Unfortunately they won't be able to read this because they "don't do blogs", but Sara Sheridan is here to share her thoughts on the matter. 

My digital journey

by

Sara Sheridan

"Intelligent, accessible writing"

I’m an historical novelist – there are few jobs more retrospective. I dumped science at an early age. I expect that initially my interest and indeed patience for Twitter, blogs and html came from the fact I live with the Greatest Geek alive. So enormously scientific and complex is his day-to-day job that I still don’t really understand what he does. Suffice to say it’s something that enables 30 million users to simultaneously log onto a website without it crashing. Before I met the Greatest Geek I avoided technology and only adopted what my more savvy friends had road-tested and recommended. I was the last to get an email account in the late 1990s, the last to indulge in online shopping and I still sport a brick of a mobile phone rather than a flash Android or iPhone (this last because one of the prerequisites for my mobile phone is that I have to be able to fling it at a wall if I lose my temper). However, I’m a professional writer and I consider it part of my job to publicise my work and these days part of that job is done online.

I was reluctant. The Greatest Geek poured me a whisky and sat me down and said he’d help, but that this was my job and I’d have to do most of it myself (his time being taken up with the 30 million users). I started by building a website for my work on Google Sites and soon I was clicking the html button with aplomb and could understand enough to delete rogue lines or alter links. Then, on a trip to London I was introduced to someone in the digital marketing department at HarperCollins who told me I ought to try Twitter. My soul rebelled. This wasn’t my thing. No way. But I started - tentatively at first, and then surprisingly, I found I really enjoyed it. Writers don’t get to meet readers very often and when they do it’s only for a short time (after a book festival or library event, for example). On Twitter, people who had read my book followed me and I could see what else they were reading, why they’d liked what I’d written and by the by, more about them than I’d ever elicit from two minutes in a tent at a book festival, stuck at a signing desk. It was fascinating.

Next I started following and being followed by librarians and archivists, schoolteachers, events organisers, writers, bookshops, agents and publishers. A whole network was opening up. People were interested and fun and generous. I was offered a couple of event slots and the opportunity to write for a magazine. A famous writer to whom I got chatting gave me career advice. Then I decided I’d try blogging and wrote (non historical pieces) for other people’s blogs rather than starting one of my own. The response was wonderful – people got back in numbers and told me what they thought – not something that happens when you’re writing a story based in 1840s China or Arabia.

After that, I tried Facebook (which didn’t really suit me as it has a bias towards personal rather than professional data) but unperturbed I continued to blog occasionally, to tweet and also administer my own website. I joined Linkedin (to which events professionals seemed to respond) and bought a Kindle (which I love) Then people, or rather, festivals asked me to come to talk about it. And there, I think, was where I became an evangelist. I was in a book festival green room surrounded by luminaries when I first realised there was a huge split in the writing community. I asked if anyone else was on Twitter – in fact, you’d have thought I’d asked if anyone else had recently stabbed their kids in the heart. It just poured out. Writers who’d seemed retiring and quite reasonable started to hiss about intrusion of privacy and the importance of paper books and how un-green it was to sport a Kindle. What, I asked, innocently, less green than felling trees like billy-o, transporting them all over the place and then pulping 40% of them? Privacy? Is anyone asking you to blog or tweet or even facebook (if you must) your personal life? This is about reading and books – it’s an interesting way to meet people and share information.

‘What do you tweet?’ one eminent writer sneered. ‘Do you tell the world whenever you’ve had a scone?’

‘Nope. Just when I’m off at a book festival or reading something interesting,’ I told him. ‘It’s a great way to meet readers and they’ve all been so nice.’

This buttered no parsnips. One or two people said they simply didn’t have time for ‘that kind of thing’. These are people who would have dropped everything to do a newspaper interview or appear on radio. People who complained that their readership was falling and their publishing contracts were not being renewed. Even people whose readership was in the 12-16 age group, who (as yet) didn’t have a website despite the fact that kids of that age are enormously active online. One woman texted her daughter every five minutes whilst saying she had no time to write an 140 character tweet (lady, it’s the same thing). It was simply odd. Other writers and book trade professionals who were taking part in the social media revolution were, like me, bemused. Then some weeks later, I was verbally attacked at a public event by a writer who was mortally offended that I’d suggested she give it a shot (at worst you might not like it, at best it could revolutionise the way you work, I’d said. She hadn’t taken it well.)

These days, to be honest, as a result of that experience, I never evangelise unbidden though I am increasingly being booked for festival and writers’ groups events to talk about my experiences online. I tend not to argue with writers who put up a barrage about how impossible it would be for them to have a website or start a twitter account or a facebook fanpage. It makes me sad that these are writers – professional communicators – who are shying away from a medium that is crying out for their skills and demonstrably is the best way to communicate with a wide readership.

Most of all this is an era where our digital rights are being defined and because so many writers consider it beneath them, many important issues are not being considered and decided by writers themselves but by the digital operations departments of major publishing houses, online booksellers and other corporate entities. I am not thinking only of digital copyright – Net Neutrality is probably the most vital issue for freedom of speech online and should be at the top of any writer’s agenda. Most don’t even know what that means (it’s that the fastest broadband speeds might be chargeable at a rate well beyond small scale bloggers or individuals). If net neutrality is abandoned, individual voices will download so slowly that they would be unheard. This has huge implications for writers, yet in the writing community net neutrality is largely unspoken. The net has provided a level playing field for criticism and comment – anyone and everyone is entitled to their opinion – and that is one of its greatest strengths. We’re all (quite rightly) demonstrating about library closures but I worry that at this critical time in our history that many people are thrusting their heads into the sand rather than opening their eyes to what is happening – both in terms of opportunity and possibility and the actual structure that will contain us as an online community if we allow it to do so.

I didn’t expect to love being online as much as I do. I’ve met some wonderful people and discovered that however arcane some of my interests that there are people out there who are interested too. It’s also been a lesson in what my readership do and don’t like and what does and doesn’t work in terms of promoting my work. And best of all I’ve made some friends.

Sara Sheridan was born in Edinburgh and started writing full time in 1998 and the novel Truth or Dare was published. Sara is an active member of the Society of Authors and a supporter of the Scottish Book Trust. She has also co-written two short films, Fish Supper and The Window Bed in 2000, and ghost written many novels. In 2009 she turned to historical fiction with The Secret Mandarin. Early this year  Secret of the Sands, described as a sweeping epic novel, was published, and her children's book, I'm Me! will be out March 201.

Contact Sara:
http://www.sarasheridan.com/
Twitter: @sarasheridan
Amazon for Secret of the Sands
And here for I'm Me! at Amazon

She was a slave. He was her master. Both of them long to be free! 1833 -- The British Navy are conducting a survey of the Arabian Peninsula where slavery is as rife as ever despite being abolition. Zena, a headstrong and determined young Abyssinian beauty has been torn from her remote village, subjected to a tortuous journey and is now being offered for sale in the market of Muscat. Lieutenant James Wellstead is determined that his time aboard HMS Palinurus will be the conduit to fame and fortune. However, all his plans are thrown into disarray when two of his fellow officers go missing while gathering intelligence in the desert. By an unexpected twist of fate -- Zena finds herself the property of Wellstead, now on a daring rescue mission into forbidding territory. Master and slave are drawn ever closer, but as danger faces them at every turn, they must endure heartache and uncertainty -- neither of them knowing what fortune awaits them as they make their hazardous way through the shifting sands. A rich and epic novel that will appeal to fans of The Pirate's Daughter and East of the Sun.

I'm not a princess, a pirate or a witch! I'M ME! Grown ups. Lovely Aunt Sara can pretend all she wants but Imogen doesn't want to be a princess, a pirate or a witch. Not today. She wants to go to the park with her aunt and play with a ball, swing higher than a tree and eat ice-cream. And why not? This book is perfect for children who know their own minds \-and grown-ups who think they don't.

Editor Sean Hayden talks to us about ORIGINS

A Demonkin Novel

Ashlyn Thorn was born different. She was born with all the characteristics of a vampire, but in a world where vampires, elves, and werewolves work, play, and die side by side with normal humans, everyone knows vampires aren’t born, they’re made. The only thing she ever wanted is to know her true Origins. Ashlyn’s tale takes her on a quest to find out what makes her different and to find out the truth, but with every question she gets answered, she uncovers more uncertainties.

 To make things worse she makes enemies of the most powerful vampires of the city who consider her powers to dangerous to let go unchecked. She is saved by the government only to be trained and used to serve their purposes, and Ashlyn finds herself torn between two worlds. She can either be a monster, or help fight the monsters.

 
 
 
Not only did Sean Hayden bag a contract to have the Demonkin Series published with Echelon press he was offered a job too, which eventually became a senior editor within the company. Now that’s what I call a book deal! See

post about Echelon Press where he shares his knowledge of "life as an editor".

He says, "After an extensive search for an agent and publisher, debating self publishing, and massive amounts of hair loss, I finally found Echelon Press, a small Indie publisher out of Maryland."

 

Sean started writing about a year and a half ago. His debut novel, Origins is an urban fantasy about vampires, how they came to be, why there are different breeds, and the main character Ashlyn. If you want to look at what the book is about, Sean has a website devoted to the series as well as an author website.

Wise Words: A Proper Charlie - chicklit novel.

Wise Words: A Proper Charlie - chicklit novel.:

Charlie watched as he fell back onto her settee, and then straddled his lap. Oh my God! What was she doing! She was having an out-of-body-experience, she thought. Only she wasn’t dead. She was alive. Very much so. She wriggled against him wonderingly and excitement flared in her body as his own rose to her teasing.

Charlie Wallis has everything a girl could wish for: a loving boyfriend, a fantastic job as a newspaper journalist for London Core and resides in a trendy flat.

Trouble is Charlie’s boyfriend’s a loser, her job title really reads `clerk` and her flat, at the top of a high-rise, isn’t that nice after all.

Her new boss, Ben, is a huge bear of a man. A gentle giant, with chocolate brown eyes that hold a secret.

While London Core investigates the disappearance of local prostitutes, Charlie wants in on the action, deciding that dressing as a hooker and walking the streets is good research.

Bumping into Ben was the last thing she expected.

… but ignite!

A story of opposites that not only attract …

A Proper Charlie is now available as a down load from Smashwords and on Kindle on Amazon.

Leela Soma is Twice Born

Glasgow: Through the eyes of first generation Indians

Have you read a book about Glasgow seen through the eyes of first generation Indians?
Twice Born does just that. The novel follows the life of a young couple from India and their experiences in Glasgow.
Twice Born peels away the layers and presents the simmering progress of their life in Glasgow.
Straddling the two cultures, putting down their roots while not forgetting their liberal family values steeped in an ancient culture is a delicate balance for them.
The overarching themes of the novel are the universal aspects of love, identity and betrayal. An interesting aspect of the novel is that it also follows Scotland's fight for Independence as the political events parallels their lives.

Leela Soma's very first foray into publishing came when she entered two poems and raised a modest amount for a breast cancer charity. Her portfolio contains poems and a collection of short stories, some entirely in Glasgow dialect.

She won the Margaret Thomson Davis Trophy for Best New Writer 2007 for Twice Born.

Leela was formerly a principal teacher of modern studies in Glasgow. She is married with one daughter. and lives  in Milngavie, Glasgow. She arrived in Scotland in the late 60s and says of the city 'This is my home. I love Glasgow as much as my birth city of Madras Chennai. I am proud to be Scottish and Indian.'

Click below for the interview:

If you are a writer or blogger you should know the importance of TAGS

But first what are they?

In computer terminology, a tag is a keyword which provides a visual suggestion of the number of articles tagged with a keyword. The more popular a keyword the larger it will appear in the tag cloud.

In easy-speak if you were to search the Internet for say, help or advice on blogging, you'd head over to Google or Bing and put in the search engine "blogging help" or similar. And the savvy blogger would have used your words as taglines because he wants you to visit his page.

Now, if I wanted you to be able to find my book, A Proper Charlie easily, my tags would be "chicklit" "romance" "Louise Wise" etc and your searching words would generate my taglines to be at the top, or near to the top, of your search and hopefully you'll click to be taken to my book.

On various blogs or websites taglines look like this:

The larger the word the more popular they are. Or they can be neat like an index. But either, they work the same. Tags are generally chosen informally and personally by the blogger. It's wise to chose them to best describe the article written.

For this one I shall use, taglines, what are taglines, how to use taglines etc.

If you have a book out and it's on Amazon make sure you have tagged your book. At the bottom of the Amazon page you should see "Tags Customers Associate with This Product" and then a list of taglines. These are the tags that generous people have given your book. And I say generous because it IS generous. Every little tag helps navigate potential readers towards your book.

There is an option to add your own, and I fully recommend you do so. As many as you can think of relevant to your book. Mine for Eden are: science fiction romance, romance, science fiction, survival, louise wise, love story, love, relationships, contemporary romance, best sellers, holiday read, quick read, a must read, romance novel, eden,  social media.

Louise Wise
Author of Eden and A Proper Charlie

Platform-Building Crusade

I’ve always been a fan of the idea that if you help someone, they will help you: I follow you, you follow me etc, and in this small lonely world of writers where support is “while you’re on the computer, check the cinema times, eh?” and acknowledgment “not given up the writing malarkey, yet?”, news that other writers with similar feelings makes us feel better. Well, it makes me feel better!

Then I come across a blog by Rachael Harrie who has thought up this ingenious idea called, Platform-Building Crusade.

Well, don’t let me tell you about it, read it yourself: click!


 

Working Together to Renovate Publishing–The WANA Plan...

Nicked from Kristen Lamb's blog...

I normally dedicate Mondays to talking about the craft, but it’s my blog and here I reign supreme. Mwah ha ha ha! Oh, no pouting, we’ll talk about craft plenty more later on. I think you feel encouraged by what I have to say.


Friday’s blog got a lot of great discussion going about publishing and the sweeping changes we are seeing to the industry. Over the weekend, I watched the movie “The Social Network,” which gave me the courage to share with you my solutions for the problems publishing is facing. People are reading more now than they ever have in the history of humanity, which means there are more readers than ever before. Yay!

So, today I want to give my vision of how those in the publishing world could solve some major problems. Writers, agents, editors could work together for the bigger win. Let’s call it, The WANA Plan, because in my world, we all work as a team. We are not alone.

Yes, call me Pollyanna. You guys wouldn’t be the first.

Reality Check


Any proposed solutions must accept reality. The future is now. Everything is going digital. We cling to the horse and buggy, and we’ll get run over by the automobile. We need to move with change, adapt and reinvent. Those willing to work their butts off and innovate will behold a world of wonders never before imagined.


Think I am overselling? Who would have thought ten years ago that a person could have friends they talked to daily on every continent…for free? Facebook did it. So let’s embrace some of the entrepreneurial mojo and get excited.

Times Are Changing…FAST


Virtually every creative industry has gone digital. I have argued this for years. In music, the record labels were decimated by NAPSTER. Record stores are a quaint relic, and CDs are losing the battle to digital downloads. Photography has also gone digital. Kodak had to reinvent or die. Now movies are going digital. We sit in the comfort of our home and watch a movie from Netflix, or we download one from iVideo or Vudu.


Three years ago, I argued that this was the future of publishing, that eBooks would start to dominate the market in the next five years. I caught a lot of criticism. People loved paper too much. It was too expensive, too technical, etc. They told me, A decade at least!


I countered that technology had hit a critical mass and now innovation was taking off exponentially. Software developments that once took years now were happening in weeks and months. Technology was also getting far more affordable. It was going to happen faster than anyone could imagine. Books, I challenged, were next to experience this mass transformation, and faster than the mediums before.


Then the iPad launched and redeemed me. Nooks and Kindles only reinforced this idea that eBooks would be a force to be reckoned with.


Publishing will be wise to take lessons from other industries and reinvent. Be architects, not artifacts. Either we will define change or it will define us. And we don’t have the luxury of time, either. Change is no longer linear…it’s exponential.

Four years ago, I proposed that it was possible to market fiction. I posited that social media had the power to generate word of mouth and build a following for an author by building a network that could expand exponentially based on relationship. Most agents didn’t believe me. I even had big authors tell me that social media was just a time suck and that it was just better to spend that time working on the novel. Twitter was a waste of time.

You guys have no idea how hard it was to get anyone to take me seriously. I thought, for a brief time, that We Are Not Alone—The Writer’s Guide to Social Media would never see print unless I self-published.

Agents said they couldn’t sell it. In a way, I can see why. First, I was new and unproven. I will grant that. Also, my book was just a bad fit for a publisher that couldn’t get a book out right away.

My book highlighted a HUGE problem that the big publishers are working to remedy, but they aren’t there yet. As things stand, the big publishers are too slow. A social media book would be irrelevant by the time they could get it on the shelves. Also, if the technology suddenly changed, any unsold books would be as good as trash. I was writing about a hot topic, but traditional publishing was not tooled to accommodate.

Click HERE to read further

Submitting a Manuscript - with Echelon Press

Sean Hayden is here to guide us through the submitting process. He is the Executive Acquisitions Editor for Echelon Press (indie press), and has some excellent advice for those at the submitting stage.

As well as an editor Sean is also a writer and his novel, Origins will be out later this month. His author-interview will also appear here to coincide with his books release - be sure to check it out!

Hi, Sean and thank you for allowing me to talk to you about "life as an editor" at Echelon Press. As both author and editor you have an inside knowledge of what a publisher is looking for in the dreaded query letter and synopsis. Is there a magic formula?

Click below for the answer, and more questions:
 

Gary Moore introduces us to: Churchmouse Tales - for "big" kids.

At last, a cynical bedtime reading for kids aged 11 to 100 about all the important things that you never thought you needed to know, such as:

Why you should never buy a penguin at auction.

How to make best use of 127 colour-blind hamsters.

How your banjo keeps going missing.

The ideal way to push frogs out of trees.

What really happened during Castro's Cuban Missile Crisis.

How the Internet started -  and more!

The is a selection of twenty-four short stories and due to be published by Charging Ram Books of Canada to be out Feb/March this year. The book is described as: 24 amusing short stories, in 148 pages of whimsical rubbish lovingly crafted into one slim overpriced book.

Gary Moore says of himself:  I've never been afraid of doing things and taking chances. At age 25 I employed 20 people and had a rapidly expanding business. By the time I was 30, I had lost the lot. I'm someone who sees an opportunity, exploits it, and then manages to shoot myself in the foot by trying to be too clever. This has happened a number of times, and hopefully I've learnt a few lessons from it. Currently I'm languishing in a trough rather than riding a peak, but you have to keep trying. Most of the millionaires that I've known in business (Although not all) have been as dull as ditch-water and have spent their lives accumulating money rather than living. I don't expect the book to be a best seller, I'm an unknown after all, and I have neither contacts in the publishing trade nor money to promote the book. I also know that not only do you have to write the right material at the right time in the right market, but you also need a decent slice of luck to make it. But if people like the first took, then they will buy the second and the third. Overnight success is something that happens very rarely. The J K Rowling story is well known simply because it is so unusual. I figure that I have to keep plugging away building up a readership. If I get lucky that's great, but right now I'm not phoning the local Bentley dealership to discuss the colour of the carpets.

 

Gary Moore is an Englishman living and working in France. Has been many things in the past: Army officer,

factory owner, market trader, heating engineer and now writer of satirical nonsense. Has been both rich and poor and has dined with millionaires and paupers. Currently closer to the pauper end of the scale.

Links: gary.moore@orange.fr

What inspired you to write your book?
Lack of money originally. I live in a poor part of rural France where there are not many jobs,and those that are available are poorly paid. Despite working full time as a self employed heating engineer, a long period of constant bad luck meant that I was always left with nothing in my pocket at the end of the month. The only thing that I could think of that wouldn't cost me anything and might bring in a few pennies was to write. I had always entertained kids at family parties by telling them stories that I had made up, and people used to say that I should write them down and send them off – They didn't tell we where to send them though!

Click below for more!

Rejected again? This video is sure to cheer you up.

Vanity Publishing - a campaign for truth and honesty

Vanity Publishing - Advice and Warning

Vanity Publishing explored by The acknowledged expert

Johnathon Clifford:

In 1959/60 when two American companies were advertising widely throughout the UK offering to publish individual poems in anthologies at £9 and £12 each respectively, I coined the phrase "vanity publishing". Since 1991 I have campaigned unceasingly for truth and honesty in the vanity publishing world and have become recognised as the authority on the subject.

See my feature article in the Writers' & Artists' Year Book

My work has been featured in both national and regional radio and tv programmes which have exposed the business practices of various vanity publishers and by many responsible newspapers and magazines (many of whom now refuse to take 'publishing' advertisements). In 1999 I was invited to the House of Lords to speak to members from both houses about the need to change the law to stop the "rogue traders" in the publishing world. However, it wasn't until 2008 that the law was changed, enabling the authorities to better curb the excesses of rogue vanity publishers."

My advice pack for authors seeking a publisher, or seeking to self-publish, or who have experienced problems with a publisher, is available as a download from this website - see

FREE ADVICE PACK
Should you need further assistance you may email me at info@vanitypublishing.info

Many unwary authors are encouraged by a vanity publisher's initial promotional material which usually praises the work submitted - whatever its quality. Such publishers often misleadingly refer to themselves as 'partnership', 'self-', 'joint venture', or 'subsidy' publishers. But however they may refer to themselves and however much they may deny that they are - if they charge you to publish your book - they are a vanity publisher.

A dishonest vanity publisher makes money not by selling copies of a book, but by charging clients as much as possible to print an unspecified number of copies of that book. Some vanity publishers will print as few copies as they feel they can get away with. Most will claim to market their publications. However, major bookbuyers have gone on record recently stating that they "do not buy copies of books centrally from vanity publishers," but only "as a result of the effort of the author in that author's local area." Which speaks for itself.

It does not follow that all vanity publishers are underhand, and those who tell you there is never a need for an author to pay to have a book published or that all vanity publishers are 'bad', simply display a lack of knowledge and understanding of the publishing world.

So how do you tell the difference? See "A Good Vanity Publisher . . ."

I cannot stress too strongly . . .

If you cannot find a mainstream publisher to publish your work at their expense, you must look on the whole process of publishing not as money invested to make you a return, but as money spent on a pleasurable hobby which you have enjoyed and which has provided you with well-manufactured copies of your book. If you do also manage to make a small profit, then that should be looked upon as an unforeseen and unexpected bonus!

Examples of authors seeing a return of more than an extremely small part of their outlay through a vanity publisher are extremely rare.

My advice is that you do not answer advertisements in newspapers or magazines which offer to publish books. Mainstream publishers NEVER advertise for authors - they have no need to do so.


Please click on the links to be taken to Johnathon's website.

This is why I hate book signings!!

David, an ordinary man in an unordinary world - The Silver Cage

By

Mik Wilkens

fantasy novel

Life is good for David Conner. He has a great job, plenty of money, and he’s just met the woman of his dreams. But his dreams turn into nightmares when he finds himself on Lucasia—a magical world of shapeshifters, dragons, faeries, and other creatures of myth—where he is the key to victory in a struggle between opposing forces: one sworn to save the world, the other intent on its destruction.

If he is to survive, David must learn the rules of this strange new world, master its powerful magic forces, and decide who is friend and who is foe.

But is David the world’s savior . . . or the cause of its ruin?

 
 
 

Mik Wilkens has done a lot of different things in her life, all of them creative. She’s been an illustrator, trophy designer, graphic artist, programmer, multimedia developer, webmaster, and author. She loves science as well as science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative fiction. She’s a rabid Joss Whedon fan, she’s crazy about greyhounds, and she collects moose. Mik participates in Renaissance faires throughout the southwest United States promoting adoption of retired racing greyhounds with Greyhounds of Fairhaven, a non-profit organization she founded several years ago. She lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, with her husband, a pack of retired racing greyhounds, and an ancient, three-legged demon in a cat suit.

Click below for the interview: