Writing a Business Plan For Your Book: the Development Timeline

Today we return to the series on How to Write A Business Plan for Your Book with a look at the fifth section of the business plan: the Development Timeline. The “Development Timeline” section actually consists of multiple timelines, one for each phase of the author’s work. When preparing your timelines, use a calendar and establish concrete dates (at least, to the extent you can)–but also remember, this is YOUR timeline, and unless you’re under contract, the dates can change. Sometimes, they even change if you are under contract…but that’s less common, and trickier. You can also plan your timelines in block-style increments

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Ninja Architecture, Part 2: Secret Exits

  During my research trip to Japan last summer, I spent some time at the Iga Ninja House & Museum in Iga-Ueno. Iga remains a small town, surrounded by mountains and reachable only after several changes of train (including a tiny, slow-moving local train that meanders through the mountains at a pace even I could outrun on a bicycle, but I digress). The ninja house is a reconstruction, but contains a number of unique architectural elements found in actual shinobi (the Japanese word for ninja) homes during the medieval era. Last week, I shared some photos of secret caches for hiding weapons, money,

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Something To Crow About, by Larry D. Sweazy

Please welcome fellow Seventh Street Books author, Larry D. Sweazy, who’s taking over the blog today to talk about one of my favorite birds, which also features in his newest mystery, A Thousand Falling Crows (Seventh Street Books, 2016).   Larry D. Sweazy is the author of twelve novels, including A Thousand Falling Crows, See Also Murder, Vengeance at Sundown, The Coyote Tracker, The Devil’s Bones, and The Rattlesnake Season. He won the WWA (Western Writers of America) Spur award for Best Short Fiction in 2005 and for Best Paperback Original in 2013, and the 2011 and 2012 Will Rogers Medallion

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Spotlight on Oscar the Abalone

My abalone has a first name, it’s O-S-C-A-R…. And here’s Oscar now:   He’s learned to come to the top of the tank when he’s hungry, because I clip his seaweed to the top of the tank, and he knows to find it there. He’s even smart enough to reach his snout above the top of the water, searching, if he can’t find food at the top of the water. (Which is smart, because seaweed floats, and sometimes he has to feel along the surface to find it.) He doesn’t see well, except for light and shadow, but he has an excellent sense

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Choose to Live the Dream

Today, in the United States, we recognize the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., During his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963, Dr. King issued a call, and a challenge, to the American people which sadly, remains unfulfilled. In his words: “When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be granted the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit

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Avoiding Copyright Infringement When Creating Images Online

Today, I’m pleased to introduce a guest post by K.M. Robinson, a professional photographer and writer I met on Twitter. We share a respect for copyright and a dedication to helping writers and other artists understand not only how to protect their rights, but how to show respect for the rights of others. And now, I’ll turn the blog over to K. M. Robinson: To learn more about image copyright, creating your own imagery, marketing, branding, and designing for authors, there is a free online course, Author Bootcamp, being offered during February 2016, that will equip authors to more effectively

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Woman with a Blue Pencil: Making the Invisible Visible

 Today, I’d like to welcome fellow Seventh Street Books author Gordon McAlpine, for a guest post about his new release, Woman With a Blue Pencil (Seventh Street Books). Welcome, Gordon! Gordon McAlpine is the author of Hammett Unwritten and numerous other novels, as well as a middle-grade trilogy, The Misadventures of Edgar and Allan Poe. Additionally, he is coauthor of the nonfiction book The Way of Baseball, Finding Stillness at 95 MPH. He has taught creative writing and literature at U.C. Irvine, U.C.L.A., and Chapman University. He lives with his wife Julie in Southern California.  Woman with a Blue Pencil is published by Seventh Street

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Writing a Business Plan For Your Book: The Competitive Analysis

Today, we continue the ongoing series: How to Write a Business Plan for Your Book. (If you missed any previous installments, you can find links at the bottom of the post.) Last week we finished off the marketing section by looking at how to plan your post-release marketing (spoiler: “write another book”). This week we leave marketing behind and move to the fourth section of the business plan: the Competitive Analysis. Writing a competitive analysis requires analyzing your work in comparison to other books in the marketplace, looking for strengths and weaknesses, and brainstorming ways to enhance your strong points and minimize the reasons a buyer would bypass your

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Spotlight on Magellan

I’ve owned a few seahorses over the years, and all of them are special-needs pets, but none is quite as special (or as needy) as Magellan. When my seahorses arrived from the breeder early last December, I didn’t notice right away that one of them was different. Seahorses often eat poorly the day they arrive from the breeder, and since three of the four had similar snakeskin patterns it was hard to keep them straight that first afternoon. By morning, however, it was clear that one of the baby seahorses wasn’t “normal.” Unlike the others, who snicked up food as quickly as I

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