Well just like me you probably scan all your
friend’s blogs often. B. Swangin Webster’s
“Books, Shoes & Writing blog is always insightful, DB Corey
has a gift for humor that keeps his blog interesting. Penny Clover Petersen
always offers an interesting slice of life on “Making the Time to Write” And Christine Verstraete posts
some unique thoughts on the GirlZombieAuthors blog. I like the variety, but sometimes I also
want to follow the writings of people immersed in the topic I am most
interested in.
If the life of a writer and publisher is of
interest to you (and if not, why are you here?) then I can recommend the BookPublishing Insider . Steven Zacharius
is not an author like all the folks above, but he is the Chairman,
President and CEO of Kensington Publishing Corp. Kensington is NOT Random House big, but it is
I think the biggest publisher that can still claim small press cred. Steven knows
what he’s talking about when the subject I publishing whether it’s about the
quality of the product or the tricky business of survival in a very challenging
business. He likes to interact with
other, smaller publishers and what he says always makes sense. Of course he is opinionated, but he is open
to the opinions of others and up for a lively debate as long as it stays civil.
Most recently he’s been a protracted discussion
with J.A. Konrath, the patron saint of self-publishing. Just reading this one
long entry is quite an education, but you really should back-track through the
blog for earlier, equally valuable posts.
For a different spin, I direct you to John Scalzi’s light hearted blog, Whatever . It is one of the longest-running blogs on the Web, and is about… well… whatever Scalzi feels like writing on. Best known as a science fiction author, Scalzi serialized his science fiction novel Old Man’s War on Whatever; it was subsequently published by Tor Books and later nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Scalzi posts constantly, but to get the flavor of why it’s one of my favorites I suggest you drop back 16 posts (!!) to January 26th for the post called, “Every Award-Winning Book Sucks (For Someone)” in which he proves that negative reviews are part of the territory by listing excerpts of one star Amazon reviews of every single Hugo-winning novel of the last ten years. Truly an education for the up and coming author.
So find the blogs that say what you need to hear. These are two of mine. What blogs are must-reads for you?
