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publishing

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My Rules for Publishing (2017 Edition)

Back in 2015, I wrote a post called My Rules for Publishing [https://www.cjchilvers.com/my-rules-of-publishing-for-2015/], which was got pretty popular (in the circles I hang out in at least). I figured it was time for an update. My updates are in red. 1. The blog is the most

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The Economy that Never Dies

Hugh MacLeod [http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=028de8672d5f9a229f15e9edf&id=187680278e#awesomeshare] : > "Business Insider projected in 2015 that over the next twenty years, we’ll lose 47% of our jobs to robots. So what’s protecting the other 53%? > Creativity. The fundamentals of humanity. > We will

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Good Questions

Kevin Kelly [https://twitter.com/kevin2kelly/status/564936801207341056]: > "When answers become cheap, good questions become more difficult and therefore more valuable."

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Mindful Reading...and Publishing

Patrick Rhone [http://www.patrickrhone.net/reading-thought-2/]: > "In an effort to be more gentle with myself I’ve come to embrace my reading as a part of my practice. I call it Mindful Reading (more slowly — the opposite of speed reading). The idea that my lack of speed

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Reasons to Buy Paper Books

It helps to remember the things a paper book can do that ebooks still can't. 1. 30+ years of scientific studies have shown reading from paper improves comprehension and retention of information better than reading from a screen. Here's [https://www.wired.com/2010/05/ff_

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You'll Go Blind

> “Journalists' favorite topic is journalism. Bloggers' favorite topic is blogging. Readers' favorite topic is anything but those.” – Dave Pell I've been guilty of this too much lately. I don't want to put limits on what is post-able, but this is a trap

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Give It Away

Tim O'Reilly explains on when it makes sense to give your product away [https://signalvnoise.com/posts/306-sunspots-the-upstream-edition]. This is another reason to blog/tweet/instagram/share anywhere with regularity: > "The less people are aware of you, the better idea it is to give your product

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Start Something Small to Build Something Great

I wrote yesterday [https://www.cjchilvers.com/why-i-wont-sell-my-books-on-amazon/] about my first real product: a well-designed hardcover book I carefully created over years and nurtured through the entire production and distribution process. It was a huge project. If I had it to do over, I would've started much smaller

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Why I Won't Sell My Books on Amazon

You can still find my books on Amazon, but it's not because I want them there. For Kindle books, it may be a necessity, but for all other formats (and especially for indie physical books), Amazon has proven to be a horrible experience for both the publisher and

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You Shouldn't Need to Be Forced to Respect Your Reader

This past week Google decided pop-up ads and newsletter sign-up forms are such a bad experience, they will penalize sites still using them starting in 2017 [https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easily-access-content-on.html] . I've been running newsletters since the 90s. I know they're bad for