If you’re thinking of getting any of my books for the holidays, it couldn’t be easier. I’ve got you covered, even for autographed books!
I’ve been recommending this essay for years to every writer I know. And it’s free to read online…
I compiled a list of fun facts about this brilliant mathematician after reading two biographies. The oddest little things stayed with me, and here they are…
Denise sent this photo to show me what she’s having for breakfast on the West Coast.
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Beauty, nature, blah blah blah.
These little guys popped this week on a very warm day when temps here got into the seventies.
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I use the pencil extender (top) when said pencils get too small to hold easily.
You want to know how a writer procrastinates? He takes pictures of the pencils on his desk.
Yes, I am trying to post here more often. Thank you for noticing. If you want to sign up for my newsletter and claim your collection of free ebooks, go here. Thanks!
Reading an excellent short story by Kristine Kathryn Rusch on le Kindle.
A writer pal of mine just got a job at Amazon, writing for their blog Omnivoracious, among other things. He’s actually the second friend to have landed a job with the online retailer. My publisher at Random House, the fellow who unleashed The Money Book for Freelancers on the world, later left RH to take a job in Bezosland.
Dear Amazon Guy:
I noticed two things about life with a Kindle.
Many times when I'm reading a real book, I get an urge to check something out in another part of the book. When was this published? Where's the author live again? Is this footnoted well? When this happens, I keep one finger in the spot where I was reading, and flip to the other part of the book I need to check, then go back to my finger. Takes two seconds. With the Kindles, at least the one I have, I have to push at a bunch o’ buttons (three to go to the spot I want, and god knows how many to scroll to the page I saw that thing on, and at least one to get back to the main page, and a few more to get back to the spot where I was reading). This is lot of steps, so consequently, I don't do it as much. Which is funny, because the format is digital and that usually implies being able to break out of the media’s linearity. Think of what a hassle it was back in the day to find the song you wanted to hear on a cassette tape. Mp3s changed that. But for some reason with ebooks, I still feel locked-in.
Another thing: When I read a hard copy book late at night, I'll sometimes get a second or third wind and I can keep reading virtually all night without ever getting sleepy. I find I doze off more with the Kindle. Am I reading more boring books or is the device's much-lauded non-glare screen the culprit? I’m no scientist but I can imagine that the light of my bedside lamp reflected on white pages is more likely to keep me awake than the Kindle's screen.
Does this happen to you? Am I normal? Can you check in with your in-house behavioral/cognitive scientists and get back to me?
Also, the last book you mailed me arrived dinged in the box. Can you send me a new one?
Your bud,
Joe
Yes, I am trying to post here more often. Thank you for noticing. If you want to sign up for my newsletter and claim your collection of free ebooks, go here. Thanks!
A buddy of mine is fond of saying, “I’m fascinated by the passage of time and the aging process.” Um, me too. I especially like looking at my calendar and desk diary at the end of the year to see what I actually accomplished in the year just ended. I just did that today and 2011 frankly amazes me.
In the last 12 months, I...
self-pubbed two books (Scientist and the Sociopath; Jersey Heat)
had another book released traditionally
was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal for the very first time
got a starred review in School Library Journal
wrote a “Bible” for a TV show based on a book I hadn’t yet written and watched as it was actually bought
wrote a proposal for a ghost-writing project and sold it for six figures
wrote one book proposal that went nowhere
“conferenced” with a half dozen potential ghost-writing clients about projects that went nowhere
contracted, wrote, and shipped a short history book that will be out in spring
wrote a children’s picture book that’s making the rounds
recorded a hilarious podcast for a presentation we did for International Freelancers Day
gave 7 talks at various bookstores, historic sites, and conferences in the U.S.
did my first TV appearance
did more than 30 radio interviews
did one school visit
did more than a dozen Skype visits with classrooms for my children’s book
wrote, finished, and submitted to our publisher on a “Big Think” book with a collaborator overseas
made numerous out-of-state trips with my wife to help her interview sources and do research for her upcoming history title
visited Monticello for the first time ever and signed our books in their bookstore
taught myself how to format an ebook (ongoing)
conceived a new fiction book series
conducted weeks of interviews with a co-author whose memoir I’m ghosting
wrote and created a hilarious book trailer
made some wonderful new friends in the world of self-publishing
donated books to the troops
had our books featured in two major catalogs and the holiday gift list of a major city magazine
mentored a high-schooler who wrote a children’s book
wrote a novel that I’ll self-pub this spring
saw some Broadway shows
saw a ton of movies
lost an uncle
Facebooked, Tweeted, blogged, Google-plussed
discovered many new fascinating writers who blog
ran a local group for freelancers
hugged and drank with local booksellers
threw a couple of parties
wondered where the year went
wondered why I never have enough time to do the important things.
Professionally, the biggest change this year was jumping into the world of self-publishing. Despite all the good things I experienced this year in the world of traditional publishing, I am more excited every time I sell even one copy of my indie-pubbed ebook. The future is there, and I hope to do more books this way in 2012.
Part of my and my wife’s success with traditional book sales is that we’ve always been willing to hop in the car and drive somewhere to give talks, meet booksellers, and do conferences. We firmly believe that this one-on-one contact is important and ultimately helps us. But there’s no denying that it’s exhausting, and we’re hoping to reduce the number of trips we do in 2012 and focus more on writing.
Self-publishing has the potential to increase earnings and allow us to build relationships with readers directly, without having to hope they stop by at the next signing.
Yes, I am trying to post here more often. Thank you for noticing. If you want to sign up for my newsletter and claim your collection of free ebooks, go here. Thanks!
I’m doing some much-needed cleaning and re-organizing here at home, and need to clear our bookshelves of some of our author copies.
Therefore, we’re running three giveaways this month via Goodreads. The following books are available, and ALL are autographed. If you’re interested, definitely check them out quickly. The first giveaway ends in just a week’s time!
Update: All giveaways have closed.
Yes, I am trying to post here more often. Thank you for noticing. If you want to sign up for my newsletter and claim your collection of free ebooks, go here. Thanks!
Just a reminder for anyone who is looking for signed copies of my traditionally published books: The best way to get autographed copies is to order them by phone from the two independent bookstores in the town where I live.
Both Malaprop’s and the children’s bookstore Spellbound will take orders, get me in to autograph the books any way you like, and ship them out to you.
Both stores currently have stock on all my titles, and ordering from them is simpler than mailing me the book and having me sign and return it to you.
As always, if you already have a book and would like a signed bookplate, contact me via the contact page. A good season to all!
Yes, I am trying to post here more often. Thank you for noticing. If you want to sign up for my newsletter and claim your collection of free ebooks, go here. Thanks!
In 9 days, Denise and I will be presenting two talks at indieconf — “the conference for web professionals” — in Raleigh, North Carolina.
We did one talk last year and had a blast. The attendees were drawn from a mix of different professions but they were all somehow connected to web work.
Oh, and they were largely a group of freelancers. That’s key for my wife/coauthor and I because we’ve been freelancing for more than a dozen years and have published The Money Book for Freelancers, published by Random House.
Last year, our indieconf talk focused on things freelancers can do to take their finances to a new level. This year we’re switching it up and talking about how you can become a freelance money geek.
What’s the diff? Well, we’ve noticed in the last year that a lot of people fail to grow their net worth as freelancers because they don’t really get jazzed about money. Don’t misunderstand this: Everyone loves money. They love having it. They love spending it.
But unless you’re an accountant, investment geek, or a financial obsessive, you’re probably not in love with the concept of finances. That lack of enthusiasm can lead you to make some mistakes, such as not investing regularly or not sending out invoices in a timely manner.
Our talk, entitled “How to Be a Freelance Money Geek,” is going to try to give you some basic tips for how you can warm up to the idea of interacting with your money on a regular basis.
The second talk, entitled “Publishing As Marketing,” will tell people how they can harness the self-publishing revolution to build their businesses. Most people are aware that they can easily publish an ebook today. But the excitement around doing this tends to focus on genre fiction. Everyone wants to crank out the next sci-fi/fantasy classic or some work of mystery, horror or romance. That’s fine. I’ve done it myself and will continue to do so. It’s fun.
But if you’re running your own business, you could tap your expertise and publish a book that will establish your credibility on a topic, grow your outreach list, and establish a new revenue stream. We’ll show you what we mean in this talk.
Tickets to indieconf are going fast. As I write this, you have 9 hours and change to sign up for the early bird rate of $129. After that, you have to pay $149 for this one-day event.
The organizers of the event have given us EIGHT FREE tickets. So if you’re interested, here’s what you can do.
Broadcast this post via Facebook or Twitter. (Grab the 140-character insta-Tweet below)
Send me a note via email that you’ve done so. (Grab the email on my contact page.)
This is a first-come, first-served offer. Beyond giving these two talks, neither Denise nor I are affiliated with indieconf. We don’t get a dime of your conference fee, should you choose to attend. We just think it’s a well-run conference put together by some very fun people. We hope you’ll be able to join us, hopefully free of charge!
* * *
If you want to broadcast this post, copy this insta-Tweet:
#Freelancers: author @JosephDAgnese is giving away free tix to @indieconf! How to get one: http://bit.ly/tgrCFh
Yes, I am trying to post here more often. Thank you for noticing. If you want to sign up for my newsletter and claim your collection of free ebooks, go here. Thanks!
I don’t know how many times people ask to pick my brains about such things like how to get a book published or how they can start writing for glossy magazines or how they can be a rich and famous author. I try to be helpful, but like a lot of writers, I regard whatever success I’ve had to be the result of mixture of luck and hard work.
So when people ask me how they can do what I do, I offer two pieces of advice:
Figure out how to be lucky.
Spend 20 years trying to a writer, and sometime in the 21st year, things will really start to happen.
Now I have an answer for people who want to know how to break into magazines: Get Brad Swift’s book.
My friend W. Bradford Swift (aka “Brad”) is a writer, a coach, a doctor, and a careful thinker. He’s written about 350 articles for magazines and managed to be a paid author and writer for about 25 years.
He’s done what I don’t have the patience to do: He’s thought carefully about what it takes to generate, pitch and sell articles to newspapers and magazines, and he’s put all these life lessons in a book entitled, From Spark to Flame: Fanning Your Passion & Ideas into Moneymaking Magazine Articles That Make a Difference.
Yes, I know everyone says print is dead, but people still buy and read magazines because picking up a specialty magazine is one of the quickest way to plug into a hobby, genre, or world that you happen to care about.
And if you know enough about that world to be a fan, chances are you could be making money writing about what you know.
That’s the message of Swift’s book: You can be making money off your expertise.
It’s easier than you think—if you have the right tools.
To promote the book, Swift’s making an offer you can’t refuse: He’s offering to give you a free copy of the book. He’s betting that if you like it, you’ll tell others about it.
Some people can’t give their books away. (I know because I’ve tried.) But Brad, who has been a business and life coach for the last twenty-odd years, had 115 people clamoring for copies within the first 12 hours of his giveaway being announced. He’s pledged to give away 1,000 copies. That’s a huge number. With those odds, it’s worth getting your name in the hat.
I thought I’d talk to him about it.
Who needs your book, From Spark to Flame?
It’s written for the person who may have read a magazine article at some point and thought, “Hey, I could have written that,” but then didn’t know how to go about writing an article, getting it published and getting paid for it. So, any aspiring writer who’d love to see their name in print both at the end of a magazine article and on a pay check for their writing could benefit from the book. It outlines a proven, systematic process I’ve used through the years to write, publish and be paid for more than 350 magazine articles.
Approaching magazines is not rocket science. Yet why do so many freelance writers and new freelancers have trouble with this essential step?
I think many writers get stopped by several different blocks. One of the biggest is that the size of the magazine marketplace is so large it can be hard to know where to begin to market your material. So, many writers end up like a deer caught in the high beams of a car — they’re frozen into inactivity.
The other big block can be simply not knowing the process — the steps it takes to turn an idea into a magazine article that some editor is willing to buy.
I once heard you say that the process of article generation is a little like a Taffy Machine. Can you explain that analogy? How does the analogy help us?
It comes from one of my fondest memories growing up spending summers at the beach. My childhood memory of a taffy machine was this magical metallic box. The store owner would pour in the syrupy goop at one end, and at the other end would pop out multi-colored, wrapped pieces of taffy. Wonderful.
For years I wrote for magazines while watching many other writers who I considered much better at the craft than I struggle to get anything published. I finally realized I had developed my own version of a Writer’s Taffy Machine. At the front I pour in the sweet ingredients of passion-filled ideas. At the other end pop out checks with my name on them. Everything in between is what the book, From Spark to Flame, outlines in rich detail.
If you can hammer home one thing every freelance writer must do to be a success in this world, what would it be?
Purposeful patience blended with persistence. It’s really so important with just about anything we do in life. Having now been on planet earth for a little over six decades and coached and written for over two of those decades, one of the ways I see people failing most often is by quitting too soon.
I believe anything that’s really worthwhile and that truly makes a difference in the long term takes a while to come into fruition. So, the blending of those 3 ‘p’s are vital. Purpose: knowing who you are and why you’re alive. Couple that with the patience to not quit when you hit the inevitable obstacles that will arise, and staying persistence in bringing your dreams into reality. That might sound trite, but I’ve seen it over and over again how well it works.
Once upon a time, you were a veterinarian. How did you go from spending your days with pets to spending your days coaching and writing?
Well, in between the two I burned out...big time. I hit a “dark night of the soul” period where I lost my own sense of purpose and meaning in my life that led me to abuse alcohol and then drugs. The downward spiral continued to the point where I seriously considered suicide.
Fortunately a dear friend found me in this state of emotional and spiritual breakdown and offered to help me get some help. During the recovery phase I discovered the power of working with coaches, reframed my purpose in life, and realized that coaching and writing were two great ways to express that purpose.
Isn’t the whole idea of writing a book to sell it? Why are you giving away so many copies of From Spark to Flame?
I’m still asking myself that question. Here’s the answer that has come to me thus far: I feel I’m making another transition in my own life on purpose that includes a deep desire to help other writers use their talents to express their own purpose while collectively helping to create a world on purpose — my term for a world that works for everyone with no one left out.
I believe in the “priming your pump” approach. Giving away something that I know in my heart can be of real value to other writers is my way of priming the pump on this new Purpose Project. Like the rest of my life, this is just another experiment that I feel guided to try out.
It’s also my way of bringing attention to the Visionary Writers Manifesto Bloginar that kicks off on November 1. During the bloginar I’ll be sharing My Manifesto for Visionary Writers — Creating a World On Purpose with the Written Word in short blog posts and asking for feedback, comments and questions from the readers.
Already, we’ve had people claim their free copy of the book from as far away as India, Australia, the United Kingdom, Spain, Canada and of course, the USA. That feels really good.
Okay, we’re sold. How do we get our free copy?
Well, first you mail me a check for...no that’s not right. Go to this page on my blog, W. Bradford Swift – Visionary Author, and you’ll find all the details there.
The giveaway ends on Monday, November 24. I’ve also added a few incentives to encourage people to take me up on the offer and to share it with their friends. It would also be great if people would share in the comment section how they heard about the book giveaway, and anything else they’d like to share about writing. My writer’s Facebook page is here.
Thanks, Brad!
Yes, I am trying to post here more often. Thank you for noticing. If you want to sign up for my newsletter and claim your collection of free ebooks, go here. Thanks!
I don’t know what it is with me, books, and gardening. When I’m out working in the yard, I make connections between the task at hand (raking, mowing, planting, etc.) and scenes in, anecdotes from, and authors of various books I’ve read over the years.
This past weekend, I was harvesting the last couple of things from the yard for the season (above), then set about yanking up some weeds that had covered at least part of the beds.
I was amazed how easily the weeds were coming up by hand. And immediately, a scene from The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss, popped into my head. In the scene, the weary wizard Kvothe (pronounced “quoth”) is masquerading as a humble innkeeper named Kote. When he asks a neighbor to borrow a pair of leather gloves, the man wonders why he needs him. Kote instantly “remembers” something his grandfather once told him. I had to look up the passage later, but here it is:
Kote shrugged. “My granda always told me that fall’s the time to root up something you don’t want coming back to trouble you.” Kote mimicked the quaver of an old man’s voice. “ ‘Things are too full of life in the spring months. In the summer, they’re too strong and won’t let go. Autumn . . . ’ ” He looked around at the changing leaves on the trees. “ ‘Autumn’s the time. In autumn everything is tired and ready to die.’ ”
It’s a great passage and certainly one to take to heart when the leaves are falling like crazy. Of course, there is some chicanery in this scene. Kote needs the gloves for another reason entirely. Just what he intends to do with them, I’ll leave you to discover in the pages of this great fantasy novel and its sequel, The Wise Man’s Fear.
Yes, I am trying to post here more often. Thank you for noticing. If you want to sign up for my newsletter and claim your collection of free ebooks, go here. Thanks!
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