How To Help Your Favorite Author

Book launches are important to writers. Much like the way Nielsen Ratings uses sweeps periods throughout the year (Feb., May, July, Nov.) to determine numbers used in setting TV advertising costs, publishers use the first week of a book's sales to gauge a writer's popularity. These are the writer's die-hard fans, or fans in the subject matter of which the author is deemed to excel in writing about.

First week sales numbers determine many factors: how much more publicity money the publisher will free up to promote the book; whether they will continue to employ a writer or set him loose; and, if they do keep the writer, how much his or her next advance will be. Most authors will only make a best seller's hit in the opening week. The majority of books do not have long-term sustainability. Only a fraction of all the books ever published remain in print years after they come out.

So how can a reader help an author?

Blood of Ten Kings Giveaway: Goodreads.com

Guardians of Aandor Series from TOR Books (Macmillan Publishing)

The third book in the Aandor trilogy is out on Dec. 4, 2018, and to celebrate, Goodreads is hosting a giveaway for five hardcover copies of Blood of Ten Kings, signed by the author. The giveaway runs from Nov.1 to Dec. 1, 2018. Your odds of winning are infinitely better than the Powerball, so tell your friends, sign up, and get ready to own one of the best fantasy novels of the year.

Pushing The Envelope In Fiction; Navigating A PC-Centric Media Universe

[This article was originally published at civilianreader.com]

So you're going to be a writer? Awesome. You are never going to please everyone, so own it; the thin-skinned have no business being authors (or auteurs). Words have put the most popular and successful authors on the painful side of a controversy (Sometimes it's intentional.) That said...keep an open mind to the opinions of critics and friends. If you are going to create fictional scenarios that skirt the edge of mass acceptance, know why you are writing those actions. When George R.R. Martin decided to have brother and sister lovers in Game of Thrones, he was setting up the premise of the entire series. The question of legitimate authority and unraveling of Westeros as a society came out of that relationship. Everything that happens in your story, no matter how taboo, should serve the narrative.

Lysa Arryn: The Poster Parent For Attachment Parenting

Sorry, but when I saw the new TIME cover out this week, this was the first thing that came to mind. Yes, for a serious writer I am a bit of a Geek. If you haven't watched HBO's Game of Thrones, or read TIME, the reference may be lost.
(This is definitely a parody, folks.)

















Ed Lazellari is a blogger, humorist, and fiction writer. His novels Awakenings and The Lost Prince from Tor Books are available at Barnes & Nobles and Amazon.com.