Search options (Page 20 of 40)

A very informative survey for those who plan to self-publish. Some of the key findings:

- The survey suggests that self-published authors are not newbies to writing. 40% of respondents reported writing seriously for more than 10 years. Only 10% said they'd been writing for one year or less. Experience does matter.

- Respondents who had been rejected by traditional publishers first and then went the self-publish route earned less than their peers who never submitted their work to traditional publishers. This seems to suggest that a book that isn't good enough for a traditional publisher might not have a bright future in the self-pub market. Quality is quality.

- Investing in your book will pay off. Respondents who received help in copy-editing, proofreading, and story-editing earned 13% more. Those who hired a professional book designer earned on average 18% more. Book covers do matter!!

- The average earnings of respondents was about $10,000 per year.

- What was the single biggest factor contributing to higher earnings in the respondents - time spent writing and editing. The top earners spent 69% more time writing than the average author outside of the high earning group.

- The single most important factor in increasing sales and earnings was submitting books to popular reviewers on Amazon.

You can read a more in depth analysis of the survey here.

http://catherineryanhoward.com/2012/05/ … ng-survey/

Hi all,

I wanted to let you know that Lesson 5 - Punctuating Dialogue has been posted.

http://www.thenextbigwriter.com/posting … ting-21111

In the lesson we cover the major rules for how to correctly punctuate dialogue in your stories.

Sol

Interesting article. My take is that poetry is more ubiquitous than ever, being embedded in songs, commercials, books, and more. I also think the chart on Google searches is not representative as people have changed how they search online. What do you think?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/won … 0217309406

Hi all,

I wanted to let you know we released version 2 of the in-line review functionality today. There are two features which I think you will find useful:

1. X-lines. Now, when you open an in-line review, you will see another tab called x-line. When you click on this, all of the in-line comments given will show, opened, within the body of the content. This eliminates the need to go through and click on every comment to read the in-line reviews and they responses to those reviews. This page will also allow us to create a print-friendly page which we will be adding in the next couple of days.

2. In-line numbers. On both the in-line tab and the x-line tab you will see numbers next to the highlighted text. This tells you how many comments are attached to that highlighted text. So now if someone adds a new comment you can quickly see where it has been added.

3. Video and images. I don't k now how many people will use this feature, but you can now also attach images or videos to your in-line reviews if you want to refer to another source to make a point or show something from a video.

I hope these features make in-line reviews an even more helpful tool in the reviewing and editing process. We'll continue to listen to your feedback so that we can make TheNextBigWriter the Premium community for helping you improve your work and reach your writing goals.

Thanks,
Sol