Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve collected a few interesting articles from the blogs of other writers or commentators. Sharing the wisdom here:

 

Author Strength Training: Reading Reviews
I’m not going to link to anything about the Hale mess because if you missed that you must have been sitting under a rock for the last two weeks, but while reading that clusterfuck of complete fail, I worked my way through several blogs and came upon one article that was really interesting. Author N K Jemisin runs counter to the prevailing wisdom about not reading reviews of your work, but instead demonstrates how to use reviews, even bad ones. I found it fascinating.

And also coming out of the Hale debacle:

Five ways to respond to a negative Review
The inimitable Chuck Wendig at Terrible Minds with some very good advice.

 

Celebrate Yourself
Kathleen McLeary on the true thing: we write for ourselves and should celebrate every milestone.

Building an author website
Alison Schiff at Publisher’s Weekly with some tips.

Signing a publishing contract
Brendan Tietz at Lit Reactor on contract terms.

Grant of Rights — or wrongs?
Susan Spann at Writers in the Storm, on what rights we grant or give away when we sign contracts. Maybe read in conjunction with the Tietz article (above).

Ten Lessons from “Plot and Structure”
James Scott Bell reviewing his how-to book, ten years on. It’s one of the very first books on writing I bought. A bible.

Gender Bias—Fact or Fiction?
Julia Munroe Martin at Writer Unboxed, on the gender imbalance in publishing.

Living in a Box—Gender and Genre
K J Charles on gendered children’s books, and how that influences and boxes us in. Lots of gender stuff this week.

A scary-easy way to recognise the passive voice
The Grammerly Blog rejoicing in a simple way to recognise when we’re using passive verbs. It involves zombies. Just sayin’.

Body Parts All Over The Floor
An older post from K J Charles, but well worth looking at. Particularly since it follows on from the zombies!

Things you should know when you’re writing about guns
Chuck Wendig being iconoclastic, as usual, but really also very informative. Bookmark for the day you’re writing detection thrillers or need to off a ninja or three.

Why You Shouldn’t Put your Book on Amazon Pre-Order and Thoughts on Kindle  Unlimited Options
Renee Rose on the Write Sex Right blog. Interesting post on making Amazon’s algorithms work for you.

Author Earnings Report
The quarterly report on Amazon sales and author earnings, particularly interesting this quarter with its review of the impact of Kindle Unlimited.

 

And finally, is anyone registered at author’s database (http://authorsdb.com/). If the answer’s yes, has it been useful?