Author: cjverb

In the book-selling horse race, the long shot moving up fast on the outside is audiobooks. Before the pandemic, although audiobooks were only 10% of the market, they had the most growth. That accelerated in 2020, and it’s continuing in 2021. In a May 7 blog post on goodereader.com,  Michael …

Too prescient and funny not to share! Miguel de Cervantes published Part 1 of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha in 1605. By the time Part 2 came out ten years later, the author — and his subject — had evidently been through the literary mill, from fame …

From Librarian Taryn Edwards at the Mechanics’ Institute Library: Hello, thanks so much for attending Carol Verburg’s presentation on Wednesday. Here is the link to the video (it should be completely ready for viewing by 10am) https://youtu.be/Twbh2zLKX-s Also I pulled out the useful links from the chat. (And I’ve added …

Pathways to Publication, 2021 — Traditional? Indie? What About Amazon? Wednesday, April 21, 2021 – 6:00pm to 7:00pm PDT Presented by the Mechanics’ Institute in partnership with the San Francisco Writers Conference This event will take place via Zoom. Please register via Eventbrite and the Zoom credentials will be sent …

From my publisher, Boom-Books: We’re looking forward to a brand-new year (play it, Pete Townshend!) . . . hoping 2021 will be full of reignited friendships, collaborations, festivities, and hugs. While the late winter Left Coast Crime conference won’t resume in person until 2022, mystery writers and fans are still …

First: this coming Sunday is my first online literary talk, reading, chat, and end-of-2020 celebration, hosted on Zoom by the Mount Holyoke Club of Northern California. At 5 PM on Dec. 6  we’ll kick off a new series called Uncommon Alums, Uncommon Career Paths. Want to join the fun? Email …

This past Friday I ran a one-day promotional giveaway of my end-of-summer novel Zapped: an Edgar Rowdey Cape Cod Mystery. I’ve described my reasons and strategy in my previous two posts. Here are the basics: Publisher: Boom-Books. Publicity platform: The Fussy Librarian. Sales platforms: Kindle/Amazon (direct via the publisher), and …

Goal: run a simultaneous book giveaway on all 5 major e-distribution sites — Kindle/Amazon, Apple/iBooks, Nook/B&N, Google Play, and Kobo. As described in my previous post, I’ve wanted to do this for ages — WITHOUT enrolling the book in KDP Select, as Amazon requires for Kindle giveaways, OR switching its …

Here comes Labor Day, but what happened to summer? I can’t be the only reader missing those long lazy afternoons on a beach or deck with a good book. So I decided to run a one-day giveaway for my novel Zapped: an Edgar Rowdey Cape Cod Mystery, set in a  …