One Honest Indie

“Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.” ― Seth Godin, Poke the Box

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Books Recommended for Writers

10/15/2024 by Debbi

Hi! It’s me. 🙂

Hi. Yeah, I’m just going to quickly talk about a few books I have with me that I highly recommend. I’ve just started this book and I can already tell you I highly recommend it. I mean, I can already tell that this is going to be an awesome book. See that book? See? See? Okay. I Could Have Written a Better Movie Than That! How to Make Six Figures as a Script Consultant, Even if You’re Not a Screenwriter. Interesting. Very interesting sort of tagline there. Derek Rydall, Rydall? Anyway, don’t you love this? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff out there about screenwriting, am I right? And about writing in general. Let’s see. Oh, but the table of contents, I thumbed through this thing and I’m like, okay. Yeah, yeah. Good. Excellent. Whoa! I can tell this is going to be awesome. Okay. Now the other thing I wanted to mention was this book.

 

 

This is absolutely essential reading. Digital Property: Currency of the 21st Century. Yes, yes, yes. And I’m telling you, this is a real education.

Oh, by the way, it was published in 1997, and it’s every bit as relevant today, every bit.

Travel Writing 2.0. This is an excellent book. Whether you intend to become a travel writer or not, just reading about how much work is involved in becoming a paid blogger is an education in itself. I mean, there’s a bit of, I don’t know when this was published, but it was before all this social media started taking over, and everybody had to be a social media star. You don’t have to be a social media star. You don’t, I’m not sure that a person who does that is necessarily happier because of it. I think there’s a lot that people don’t question about this stuff. Anyway, this is a really good book, and it’s got some great points about how much work is involved in blogging, what it means to give value as a blogger, and I would love, so love to do some more traveling and do this kind of stuff.

Anyway, having said all that, I took a look at this and no, I cannot in good conscience recommend it. In fact, it’s just advice on how to hop from one platform to another. No, no. The last thing I need is to get on more social media. The best thing to do is to get away from social media. I mean, not to get away from it entirely, but to use it properly. There. I said it. Use social media properly.

If you have all these followers on TikTok, is that going to last forever? I sold thousands of downloads and look at me now, it’s like, what does it all mean? Well, I’d like to think that the work was meaningful enough. People liked it, and that helped. But to see your fortunes come crashing down, simply because you don’t go along with somebody’s strong arm technique or the mob mentality that I had to become exclusive to Amazon, it’s devastating to your self-esteem on top of everything else that was hurting me.

So anyway, this turned out to be longer than I expected. Don’t rely on social media for happiness, period. Okay, that’s all. I’m done, I guess for now. And just be real. Be kind to yourself. You don’t have to hustle all the time. You shouldn’t. It’ll just wear you out. So having said that, I’m glad to have had the time to be able to say that and just articulate that point. And thanks for listening and be good to yourself. Be seeing you.

The Bottom Line(s) from Seth Godin — Part Three

05/30/2023 by Debbi

Photo by Rebe Pascual on Unsplash

This seems to be turning into a habit series of posts I hadn’t planned to write. But here they are, anyway.

And here’s where we left off.

Continue Reading

This is Marketing

04/18/2023 by Debbi

Pretend this is me.

A brief series of marketing and publishing lessons.

There will be a quiz at the end. (Spoiler alert Hint: There are no wrong answers.)

This is marketing

APRIL STORY: There Be Dragons by Jane Burfield

SHORT STORY: Double Trouble by M.E. Proctor

Sardines — a great story starting and ending w/ the same sentence

Interview with Author Albert Waitt

And this is publishing.

Yellow Mama Webzine

Bristol Noir – Curiously Dark Fiction

And this is blogging.

Mesdames of Mayhem – A meeting place for deadly minds

Jacqueline Seewald – award winning author

And this crowdsourcing.

HitRecord

And here’s something all writers will need to know.

Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence

It’s what you might call a “long read.” They’re supposed to be popular, right? Or was that last week?

PLUS, the 12 best ways to promote affiliate links. Not that there are any in this particular post.

Quiz:

  1. What’s the difference between publishing and blogging?
  2. What’s the difference between publishing and crowdsourcing?
  3. What’s the difference between marketing and blogging?
  4. What’s the difference between crowdsourcing and marketing?
  5. Which one of the websites linked above could I reprint entirely without violating copyright law?

PS: I lied. There is only one correct answer to #5.

Also, if you answer #5, can you tell me why you reached the conclusion you did?

PPS: And is this blogging, publishing, marketing or what? But, clearly this is publishing, right? 🙂

PPPS: I wrote this in the hope of winning an award for most sarcastic Socratic blogger ever! 🙂

PPPPS: And you are Number Six! 🙂 And what exception to copyright infringement does this video fall under?

 

FINAL THOUGHT

Luck in Literature

Further Thoughts About Seth Godin’s Blog

06/21/2022 by Debbi

Photo by Rebe Pascual on Unsplash

Here are few more thoughts I had while reading Seth Godin’s blog.

About “Life by anecdote”

The truth is pretty much what you’re willing to believe.

Now, what else can I sell you today?

PS: Believe whatever you want.

Here’s a link to the source.

About “Shift your tech time horizon”

Learn to use technology to your advantage. And try not hoarding your insights.

And don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.

Here’s a link to the source.

About “Swap the line”

Here’s a utopian/dystopian idea for a possible/improbable way to transact business.

You get to execute it.

Have fun!

PS: Far as I can tell, the rich still get the most benefit from this arrangement. Along with the uber-powerful geek squad entrusted with creating/maintaining it.

Press “1” if you disagree. Press “9” if you’d like to disagree in Spanish.

Press “5” for an endless series of tutorials on how to do the above without buttons.

Note to Seth: Life isn’t always fair. You know that.

Here’s a link to the source.

About “A future of retail”

You won’t succeed in business until you realize your product isn’t about you. And yelling about your product’s greatness won’t build trust with potential customers. Neither will spamming people with “great deals”.

Note to Seth: Interesting, isn’t it, that a certain great big online bookseller decided to open its own chain of bookstores, eh? Then, shut them down! Ahem …

Here’s a link to the source.

About “Contagious commerce”

Early adopters do change the world. Now, if only someone had taken me seriously in 2011, when I said Amazon was creating a bad situation for indie authors in the long run, when they offered us chump change in exchange for being exclusively published (three months at a time) with them.

Funny how being one early adopter can have so very little effect on anything.

And the lesson learned: If you want to change minds, you have to change hearts. You have to be both empathetic and rational. It requires authenticity and resilience. The ability to observe, listen, and plan.

I’m trying. That’s all I can do.

Here’s a link to the source.

About “Zero percent market share”

Being everything to everyone online is a losing strategy.

But, if you want to spend your energies on it, feel free. No one’s forcing you to do anything.

PS: (And these are my notes and my opinion.) Amazon’s the exception. They want to be everything for everyone, while not sacrificing quality or worker health and safety. And look what a great job they’re (not) doing.

Think it helps that they own a whole swath of the Internet?

Here’s a link to the source.

About “The hedonic buffet”

We get to choose what to do and what not to do. The problem often comes in having too many choices. So often we fall back on habit or desperately follow some random person’s advice.

Figure out your “why” (why do you get up in the morning, for instance) and focus on that. Because you are the sum total of your choices.

Here’s a link to the source.

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Meet Debbi

Welcome to my writers' corner of the Internet. I'm a novelist, who also writes short stories and screenplays. I hope to share the benefit of my experiences as an indie author with dystonia since 2009. I also post a lot of book reviews, because I love to read and learn new things. I hope to share that knowledge with you.

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