Author Nancy J. Cohen

Author Nancy J. Cohen

Author Nancy J. Cohen

Pirates and Pirating

We have seafaring pirates, and we have book pirates. Let’s talk about the former type first. Last weekend, my husband and I went to an exhibit at Plantation Historical Museum about Florida pirates. The seas off the coast of Florida have seen many shipwrecks along with pirates who’ve taken advantage of our broad coastline. I’ve … Read more

Five Stages of Writing

Writing a book these days has five stages. It used to be that you wrote the book, polished your work, and submitted it to a publisher. Then you were done, except for edits, proofreading your ARCs, and some promotion. Now you have many more choices in the publishing arena. Many of us face the challenges … Read more

Reviving Your Backlist Titles – Legalities

Continuing our series about reviving your backlist titles, consider how and where you want to publish these titles. Do you intend to put them into the Kindle Select program exclusive to Amazon? Do you wish to put them up yourself at the various vendors? Or will you use a company like Smashwords or Draft2Digital? It … Read more

Reviving Your Backlist Titles – Revisions

Reviving Your Backlist Titles – Part 3 In addition to reformatting and updating the earlier titles to which you’ve received reversion of rights, will you do a full revision of the work? How long ago did you write it? If you decide to tighten the writing, here is a reminder of what to fix. Remove … Read more

Reviving Your Backlist Titles – Updating the Work

You’d like to reissue your backlist titles now that you have the rights back, and you already have a complete digital file as in my previous post. So now what? Are you going to upload the file as is, or will you be revising the work? I wanted to fix my writing, since my mysteries … Read more

Reviving Your Backlist Titles – Manuscript Preparation

Once you get the rights back to your earlier titles, what do you do with them? Try to resell these books to a new publisher? Put them online as ebooks for sale? Offer them in a new trade paperback print edition? Go through an intermediary such as Draft2Digital or publish them yourself directly to vendors? … Read more

Word Repetitions

When I’m editing my next novel, one of the things I look for are word repetitions. Here is a perfect example of what I mean: Marla took the printout from Keri. They’d better head over to Liam’s house while the day was still young. Later, he’d be busy getting ready for his charity event. She … Read more

Selling Your Book to Hollywood

Brad Markowitz, a Los Angeles-based writer/producer and consultant, spoke at a meeting of the Florida Chapter of MWA on “How to Sell Your Book to the World of Movies and TV.” Here are the notes I distilled from his informative talk. Interviewer is bestselling author Joanna Campbell Slan. Disclaimer: These notes are subject to my … Read more

Permed to Death Reissue

I am pleased to announce the release of a newly revised and updated Author’s Edition of Permed to Death, #1 in the Bad Hair Day Mysteries. This title is available in print and ebook formats. I’ve tightened the writing, added new back materials, and hopefully improved the story with these changes. Isn’t this cover great? … Read more