I’m finally taking the plunge and launching the non-fiction writing course I’ve been working on since the summer of 2015! The first email lessons will go out on January 11th,…

Read More FINALLY Write Your Non-Fiction Book! A new email course from yours truly!

So it’s been almost two years since I released anything in The Steam and Steel Chronicles, but the third novella is now live on Amazon! The Quest for the Demon…

Read More Book Three in The Steam and Steel Chronicles is Now Here!

I first heard about The Next Big Thing Blog Hop on a Facebook writer’s group, when Kimberly Menozzi posted to ask if anyone was interested in participating. I had no clue what it was, so of course I jumped right in with both feet! ‘Cause what else could I possibly do?

Kim sent me the basics of what the NBT Blog Hop is (I’d done a similar one years and years ago when I first started blogging).

Basically, it’s an Independent Authors game of tag.

One author posts, and then tags five other authors, who each link back to them. Exponentially it is a marketing gold mine, and you my fair reader have hopefully just increased your to-read list. Finding new and exciting authors you may never have found otherwise. Some of us are still writing, others are just being released.

Either way, for you Fiction Lovers, a treasure trove awaits and I’d like to thank fellow Author Kimberly Menozzi for tagging me to participate.

Click the links to find out about Kimberly’s books.
Blog | Purchase link | Twitter Read More THE NEXT BIG THING BLOG HOP

I just came across some pretty disturbing information about the time frames involved in legacy publishing. Right now, from the time a book is signed until it’s actually released is…

Read More Two Years?

So I was thinking about my reading habits due to a few discussions on various websites, and I realized something: for the past six months or so, I’ve been reading a ton of indie published books and books published by very small publishers, and very few legacy published books. In fact, most of the legacy published books I’ve read in the past six months were purchased a long time ago and have been sitting in my to-read pile for awhile.

Since I got my Nook Color back in the spring, I’ve read ebooks by Amanda Hocking (indie), Zoe Winters (indie), Lindsay Buroker (indie), Greta van der Rol (small press), Kimberly Menozzi (small press and indie), Poppet (small press), Calista Taylor (indie), and Randolph Lalonde (indie). Print books I’ve read this year only include Stephen King’s Dark Tower Series (which I started reading last year) and Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker. Oh, and some books I either picked up at places like Big Lots (when they’re $2 apiece for a hardcover), or books that have been shared among myself, my mother, and my grandmother (like John Grisham’s A Painted House). Read More What I’m Reading: Indie vs. Legacy

I was driving home from the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 midnight release one night (my husband’s airsoft team always does an appearance at these things) and we got talking about creative pursuits as a career vs as a hobby. It started out, I think, with a discussion of the music industry. Individual recording artists are often upset about the low royalties being paid out from services like Spotify. They get a fraction of a cent for each time their song is played, meaning they have little chance of gaining any kind of real income from these plays. And so they decry the industry and these services, and say they’re what is killing the music industry.

Independent movie producers say the same kinds of things. They only make a few cents (if that) whenever their movie is streamed via Netflix. Unless their film is viewed millions of times, they won’t make much money off of it.

I hear the same kind of thing coming from a lot of authors. If they’re forced to sell their ebooks at $.99, they’re only making $.35 on each sale. They have to sell thousands of copies to make any money. (The same things are said at $2.99, $4.99, and pretty much anything under the price of a mass-market paperback.)

Part of this has to do with the number of celebrities we see in each of these fields, and pretty much every other creative field. We see the J.K. Rowlings, the Stephenie Meyers, the Stephen Kings, of the world, and we think that that’s what success looks like. We think that all we should need to do is write something great (or not so great, depending on your opinion) and the riches should follow. Read More Writing: Career or Hobby?

There seems to be a certain camp in the writing and publishing worlds that feels like selling a novel at $2.99 is somehow devaluing that novel, and novels in general. The idea seems to be that readers will refuse to pay more than $2.99 for novels eventually, and that will somehow topple the publishing industry.

But no one is asking whether readers should pay more than $2.99 for most books. We’ve just accepted that paperbacks are priced at $8.99-$16 and that hardcover books are priced at $20-$30. And so we feel like ebooks should be priced somewhere along that line, too. But does anyone know why a mass market paperback is priced at $9? Or a trade paperback at $16? Or why a hardcover book is $25?

In the 1960s, a paperback book might cost anywhere from 25¢ up to around $.75 or so depending on the length, publisher, genre, author, and specific year (you can find evidence of these prices by looking at old book covers from that era). Now, a lot of these books were shorter than what we’re used to these days, coming in at around 150-200 pages. They were “pocket books”, in their truest sense: they would fit in your pocket. Read More Why $2.99 Doesn’t Devalue Your Work

I’ve decided to do a bit of refocusing on this blog. It’s been “Cameron Chapman On Writing” for a few years now, and I feel like it’s too restrictive. So…

Read More Some Upcoming Changes

So I try to keep up with publishing news, if only because what’s happening in the industry has a direct impact on how I sell my books. I need to…

Read More A Failure of Logic in Legacy Publishing

From now through Labor Day (September 5th), I’m offering all of my books for $.99. The prices should be updating on Amazon and Barnes & Noble within the next day…

Read More Two Books on Sale Through Labor Day