Thursday, February 14, 2008

A Catch All

Skating in here by the skin of my teeth. (And thank gawd I live in the pacific time zone!)

I've had a very crazy, extroverted week, so I'm just going to point your attention to a couple of items of interest I bumped into this week.

Since one of the aims of book promotion is to acheive high enough sales numbers that one can (presumably) generate a living wage, I thought science fiction writer John Scalzi's article on the down and dirty of writing income was very interesting and informative.

Also, believing that knowledge is power, I find this survey of advances that the romance industry pays, very interesting as well. I wish someone would do this for children's publishing. Anyone up for a project!

And lastly, lest you think I've completely gone over to the dark side of publishing (ie: money, money, money) here is a link to m0re of Josephine Damian's conversation with Donald Maass.

Until next week!

2 comments:

Mary Hershey said...

Hi, Robin!

So sorry to hear you've had such a WEEK! Hope you are off today and plugged into your favorite renewing circuitry.

LOL at this line from John Scalzi in this article you've linked us to! "...when it comes to money — and specifically their own money — writers have as much sense as chimps on crack."

The part II of the Donald Maass entry is tre'-sensational! Very timely for me. Danke.

Mary

Jennifer R. Hubbard said...

Re the Scalzi material--I went to a conference once where they said that only 5% of writers make their living from their writing. Everyone else has to have another job too. I don't know how accurate that stat is, but I don't find it unbelievable.

Re the Maass excerpt--I hope to keep working to improve my writing always. Even if I should get more success and attention in the future, I never want to plateau in the quality of my writing, to stagnate.