Point of View – Page 32 – J. Scott Coatsworth

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POINT OF VIEW: Amazon Bestsellers and The Long Game

July 23, 2018 by scott

Hey all, This last month, I’ve hit the top of the Amazon charts not once, not twice, but three times. My friends and family have taken notice, and many have contacted me to express their congratulations. It’s an awesome thing to claim the title of Amazon Bestselling Author. But if you scratch the surface, it’s not quite as glamorous as it seems. Amazon books have thousands of categories. There are really big ones, like the overall Romance category, or other general genre ones like Paranormal, Fantasy, and Sci Fi. There are smaller ones, like Gay Romance. Then there are the … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Normalandia

July 16, 2018 by scott

Hey all, As I was thinking about what to write this week, it struck me that I am living in two very different worlds simultaneously. Bizzaro World and Normalandia. In Normalandia, life proceeds as usual. I wake up each morning, get some writing done, and get to work. Mark and I have breakfast together, work some more, and play a card game at lunch. In the evening, we binge-watch some shows on our Roku box, and then get to bed around ten o’clock. In Normalandia, the sun shines brightly outside, the sprinklers come one at 5 AM, the mailman brings … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: All the Pretty Covers

July 9, 2018 by scott

Hey all, A fun one this week. I published my first story, “The Bear at the Bar,” in 2014. Since then, I’ve published more than twenty tales, and about half of them have come back to me as the journals and anthologies they were in have gone out of print. I self-published “Bear” a couple weeks ago, and it did pretty well. 🙂 So I am embarking on a campaign to republish each of my returned short stories, and a few that never saw the light of day. My next one out – Morgan – a short fantasy tale set … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: When Life Intervenes

July 2, 2018 by scott

Hey all, I try to keep this column generally light hearted, sharing news about my writing and tips for my fellow writers. And I am writing – I am plowing through the first part of The Shifting Current this week. But sometimes life picks you up and shakes you hard. So I’m gonna get a little real today. When I heard the news last week that Justice Kennedy had chosen this moment to retire from the US Supreme Court, it was like a physical gut punch. I look back at the steps that got us here – Senator McConnell’s huge … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: My Open Relationship With Book Distribution

June 25, 2018 by scott

Hey all, I’ve just started self publishing, along with my more traditionally published works. “The River City Chronicles” came out last month, and I just published my first re-release, my very first published story, “The Bear at the Bar.” I’m in a bit of a dating phase now, flitting from distributor to distributor to see who I like best. I’ve used Ingram Spark, Amazon, and Direct2Digital so far. Amazon has the biggest arms and the best pecs, but he can be kind of a douche sometimes, and he won’t give me his phone number or email. Direct2Digital is great, but … Read more

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POV: Have Fun Raiding the Castle!

June 18, 2018 by scott

Hey all, This is one of the parts of writing that I love the most. I sent off “Ithani” to the publisher a week and a half ago, and now I am getting ready to start off on a brand new quest – writing the final book in the Liminal Sky trilogy. 🙂 Here’s what I can tell you. The new book, tentatively titled “The Shifting Current,” takes place about twenty years after the close of “The Rising Tide,” which comes out on October 30th. Many folks who knew Old Earth are now older or gone, and the world is … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: The Roller Coaster and the Inner Critic

June 11, 2018 by scott

Hey all, As anyone who knows me or follows this column knows, it’s been a wild month. It was just about a month ago that we discovered how much GDPR (the new EU privacy law) would require of us as a company, and how little time (3 weeks!!!) we had to accomplish it. It also landed squarely in the lead-up to the release of “The River City Chronicles,” my first self-published work. It also happened to be the month when I was due to finish writing Ithani, and one of my beta readers threw me a (much needed) curve ball … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: It’s Here!

June 4, 2018 by scott

Hey all, Last week was a momentous one for me. After two and a half years and lots of effort, “The River City Chronicles” was released on Wednesday, my very first self-published work. The book is now available in eBook and print formats, and I am thrilled to finally have crossed a line I have labored towards for decades. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and almost always had a dream of being a publisher too, though that came a little later. There’s something amazing about having the keys to the kingdom – about being fully in control of … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: It’s Almost Here, and Thanks to Everyone Who Helped

May 28, 2018 by scott

Hey all, Regular readers of this space will know a) that “The River City Chronicles” finally releases in book form on Wednesday, and b) that GDPR took a big chunk out of my hide this month. So… I am kinda freaked out about the whole release thing. LOL… but it will get better. In two days, I will have released my first self published book, and it’s a beautiful thing. I set up a tour (thankfully before I got mired in GDPR) and so many friends came to my aid to help me get the word out on the first … Read more