Peter M. Ball

"Conan, what is best in life?" "Getting back into the swing of things."

Things worth remembering in the self-publishing space. The amount of money earned form sales is not the same thing as the profit you get to take home and live on. The folks who spend a lot to make a lot of sales with high expenses are not necessarily doing better than you are.

Interesting narrative convention of the original Masters of the Universe series: many mid-level plot problems can be resolved by diverting a river or smashing a wall.

It makes a clean divide that makes for a much easier ethical line on my end. Brain Jar profits gets spent on promoting and supporting Brain Jar authors and systems. GenrePunk money gets spent promoting and supporting me.

The old Brain Jar editions are still on sale until we've depleted our hardcopies, after which I'll be re-releasing things under the GenrePunk label.

I published my own books when I started @BrainJaPress. I know there'd be a learning curve, and I didn't want to fuck up on someone elses hard work. Those books did okay too. Award nominations. Decent sales. Respectable reviews. And I learned an awful lot.

A random selection of good books. Ack Ack Macaque by Gareth Powell. Hoodtown by Christa Faust. Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. A random selection of bad books. There are no bad books. Just books that aren't to my taste as a reader.

And your to-do list will feature entries like "Launder towels" instead of just "Do the fucking laundry."

Writing advice advocates for the power of using strong, accurate verbs to describe action. Productivity advice promotes the pairing of verbs and goals to provide clarity around your next step. Practice both long enough and they'll evolve into habits.

I often have to walk away from online writing groups because this shit makes me so fucking angry, and there really is no choice beyond swallowing the rage because trying to engage these folks with reality is *really* not welcome.

And, naturally, you can't point this out to people directly without being painted as the asshole, because the worst place to be is standing between an aspiring writer with a loose grip of the industry and "the one opportunity that will change everything".

Every now and then I run across writers who make a big deal of being *nominated* for a prestigitious award, and they often show up with graphics to accompany the news.