Okay, not really. But I think I'm a die hard fan of his self publishing blog and his youtube videos. He is wry and funny with his delivery and freaking smart. When my husband came to me about self-publishing the zombie novesl, Morris' website was one of the first I hit for information.
Though Morris writes non-fiction books, his advice is still excellent. I am a fiction author, but I have a fan base already (and a freaking awesome one at that) so I feel I may have a head start on a lot of fiction authors heading into self-publishing waters. He's written a book Print-on-Demand Book Publishing: A New Approach To Printing And Marketing Books For Publishers And Self-Publishing Authors that I am extremely excited about reading. I hope to use as sort of a how-to as my husband and I work toward the publication of the first As The World Dies novel. I have ordered my copy and I'll be watching like a hawk for it to hit my mailbox. Morris seriously rawks.
But I've been looking at other resources as well.
The other blog I've been cruising around is the SmallPress Blog. I check it for any news on how Amazon is handling print on demand books along with Writer's Weekly. Amazon has been changing the rules a bit (making small publishers use their print on demand company) and I'm not quite sure how its all going pan out, but I'm watching with great interest. Another resource for keeping up on the latest in self-publishing is the PoD Publishers Yahoo Group.
Because of my budget I'm going to be going with Lulu.com for my trilogy. The books published by Lulu are not a sloppy job at all and I've read lots of good things about the overall quality of not only the books but the service. Their forums are also a really good resource I highly recommend.
I also like Write and Publish Your Own Book. They have a lot of good short articles about every aspect of writing and some very good advice. It's an interesting place to drop by and take a look around.
To learn about publishing as a whole....well...I've been hitting a lot of author/agent/publishing blogs. It's been interesting reading to say the very least. The more I read the more confusing it becomes. It's hard to see a pattern in it all and I'm starting to think there isn't one other than if your manuscript is not what they agent/editor is looking for, its over.
Even the advice on how to write a synopsis or query letter changes from blog to blog, writer to writer, agent to agent. It's kinda...well..nuts.
There is also advice everywhere on how to find the hot market and gear your writing toward it. I remember reading on an author's blog about a year ago how her friend (also a writer) was trying to write paranormal romance. Now this was not that writer's forte, but her publisher was pushing her in this direction and she was at a loss as to how to proceed. So the author friend offered her a reading list of materials so she could figure out how to transfer her writing into the paranormal realm.
When I read this I thought "But aren't we supposed to write about what we know and love?"
Anyway, one last great resource (this is for you KingMonkey), is the Fast Draft and Revision Hell with Candy Havens on her Yahoo Writing Group. I freaking love how she challenges the writers on this group to really push themselves.
And of course, I cannot recommend yWriter enough .
KingMonkey, seriously, the best step to editing your Behind Stone Walls will be transferring it into yWriter. It will give you a whole new way of looking at it. I promise.
Okay, now that I'm done with this late night post because of not being able to sleep, I'm going to try to entice the sandman once more.
Rosenthal is really knowledgable and his POD books are excellent
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