C. M. Skiera's Blog

As you may have noticed from my prior blog post and other social media blurbs, I attended San Diego Comic-Con last week. One of the many writing-related panels I attended featured a publisher moderating a group of traditionally-published authors. The panel topic was Publishing Science Fiction/Fantasy in the Digital Age, which was promoted in the Comic-Con guide as a discussion of the impact of the digital age on writing, publishing, reading, bookselling, and the traditional book as we know it. Like at many of the Comic-Con panels and seminars I attended last week, the subject of self-publishing came up, due to what I considered a potentially leading question. What surprised me was the insightful answer offered by one of the panelists. The panel moderator, Timothy Travaglini of Open Road Integrated Media, asked the panel (I'm paraphrasing due to lack of photographic memory) what impact self-publishing had on today's literature. And I cringed. At other panels (and waiting...

Here in San Diego, Comic-Con has been a big deal for decades.  I've been attending every year since 2007 and will be going again this year.  Although Comic-Con started as a comic book convention in 1970, it has grown into an all-encompassing entertainment expo, including writers and writing resources of all kinds (but especially speculative fiction).  Since this is a writing-themed blog, I'll focus on the writing-themed portions of Comic-Con, although it's but a fraction of the total spectacle. Every year, best-selling authors attend the conference, meet with fans, speak at panels, and more.  A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to attend a panel featuring the late Ray Bradbury, one of my all-time favorites.  Hearing Mr. Bradbury speak left a lasting impression on me.  This year I'm excited to see a panel featuring some of the great writers in epic fantasy, including another one of my all-time favorites, Robin Hobb (Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden) wh...

This week I'll present some free online utilities that can help you analyze, count, data crunch, and convert your text.  Although the tools I'll discuss don't address grammar, spelling, etc., these handy utilities are still useful to a self-publisher. Character and Word Counter  with Frequency Statistics Calculator This webpage offers a clever tool for calculating the number individual words in your writing (not just total words--a total for each word). It allowed me to paste my entire first draft of Mirrors & Mist into it (73,000 words), and found I used the word "was" 589 times! Ouch! It also has sort functions and some other data-crunching tools that let you analyze your writing based on the words you've written. EPUB Validator If you're self-publishing through a service like Smashwords, et al, you may not need EPUB Validator; however, it's a good quality control tool to have at your disposal, especially if you create your own EPUB ...

Last week I posted about FastPencil , a self-publishing platform. Thanks to  +Shah Wharton , I learned about Draft 2 Digital , yet another platform for self-publishing authors. Whereas FastPencil appeared somewhat overwhelming with all its options, Draft 2 Digital is nearly the opposite. A clean, uncluttered interface with just five tabs, the  Draft 2 Digital website is simple and easy to navigate. Draft 2 Digital doesn't have its own ebook storefront (like Smashwords) and it currently doesn't distribute to quite as many retailers, however, it current sales channels include: Amazon iBookstore Barnes & Noble Kobo and CreateSpace Speaking of CreateSpace , which is a rather unique option for an ebook publishing platform,  Draft 2 Digital  states:  "We can create paperbacks for any books generated through our conversion service (that is, everything except pre-formatted epub uploads). Simply choose CreateSpace as one of your sales channels at t...