Writing Advice: Take Opportunities

This is also an advertisement of sorts.

One of the pieces of writing advice that I have not been good about following is: get paid as many times as you can for the same work. This means that once something is published, look for places offering reprints (for short stories usually), get it published as an audiobook, get it included in other collections.

I’m usually too busy writing the next one to think about marketing my existing books, but last year one of my friends pointed me to an ad for a StoryBundle someone was putting together.

StoryBundle, if you’re not familiar, is a service that—per its name—bundles together usually about ten novels or even series of novels as e-books to sell at a discount. The idea is that there’s a theme, and people familiar with one of the authors might get the bundle to try out some new authors who write in the same genre. Some money often goes to charity, some to the authors, and hopefully it all helps us self- or small-published folks spread the word to our fans so they can discover more of us.

Anyway, this StoryBundle’s theme was Magic Schools, and the organizer was someone I’d met through one of my Clarion friends, so I sent him The Tower and the Fox, and it was accepted! I’m not expecting to make a ton of money (the last time I was in a StoryBundle, with Black Angel, I think I made under $100), but it’s exciting to be in there next to some very cool authors. I don’t know them all, but I know the person who put the bundle together and I trust his taste.

So if you like magic school stories, here’s the bundle. More importantly, if you know someone who likes Harry Potter, or magical fantasy in general, but isn’t necessarily a furry, you could point them to this bundle (http://storybundle.com/magic) and they’ll get a sneaky furry book in there with the others (two of the other books have dragons, but I don’t count those as furry).

And as a general piece of writing advice, even after a story is published, keep an eye out for places you can get paid to publish it again. It’s very nice to get paid again for work you’ve already done.