Great Advice

[Dana King]

I expect everyone who stops by this blog is at least familiar with the name Joe Konrath. He's a successful midlist writer of crime fiction, with a six-book series to his credit. Recently he's branched out into horror and science fiction. You can't miss him at a conference: no one works the room as tirelessly as Joe. In the promotion department, he's James Brown, the hardest-working man in publishing. The numbers of signings and guest blogs he's done while still knocking out a book a year are staggering.

I've read a couple of his books, and they're not my cup of tea. That's on me. They're solidly written, funny, and are good stories well told. I'm just not into serial killer/mass murderer stories. I only mention it to show my comments below aren't a matter of me promoting someone I'm already in the tank for.

Joe has a blog titled A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, which is highly recommended by people a lot smarter than I as a place to learn about the writing business from the writer's perspective. He's on the leading edge of the electronic publishing issue, and is selling books both electronically and in print. His ideas on each are well worth reading. It's definitely worth checking out in light of the recent (current?) Amazon/Macmillan pissing contest.

Don't stop there, though; scroll on down. Around the end of last year, first of this year, Joe wrote a series of posts every writer should read and be aware of. The links are below. Take a few minutes and check them out, then more than a few minutes to ponder them. Well worth the time.
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/01/luck-you.html

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-i-know.html

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2009/12/resolutions-for-writers-2010....

[I. J. Parker]

Thanks for the links, Dana. Konrath deserves our respect for his unswerving efforts to succeed in a hostile environment and for sharing what he's learned with others.
There is a trade-off, as Konrath will admit sometimes: the time you spend promoting your books cannot be spent on improving your books. Still, in the end, he may be quite right that success doesn't come to the polishers, but rather to those who move the product quickly.