As many of my readers know, I am hard at work on a collection of three short stories that will be published later this year as Three Billy Maddox Stories. I’ve finished one story, “Billy and Darla”, which is available for free over at Instafreebie. The next story, “Green Bay Outsiders”, is under development and will likely be longer than expected but that’s not a bad thing.
[Read more…] about Why Most Coming-of-Age Stories Miss the Point
Literary Fiction
Happy New Year – Here’s to 2017
I am writing to wish everyone a great holiday season and a happy new year. And if you don’t celebrate the holidays, then have a happy December 22, 2016!
Some of you have heard from me a LOT lately, especially those authors who have expressed interest in my survey (under development) to promote your works to readers who enjoy independently published works of literary fiction. On the other hand, there are a lot of you who haven’t heard from me in a while, particularly those who have expressed interest in my novel, Billy Maddox Takes His Shot.
2017 Literary Fiction Reader Survey – Feedback Requested
I’ve posted before about hearing from readers when it comes to learning how they find independently published works of literary fiction. So I have put together a survey with 8 questions (actually 9 questions, but one asks for an email address, which doesn’t count). Its brevity is intentional and will hopefully make readers want to participate. The more you ask of people, the less likely they are to respond and all that. On the other hand, the questions still need to be meaningful, and I think they are.
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A New Model for Marketing Literary Fiction: 2016 Literary Fiction Survey Results
Earlier this year, I launched a literary fiction survey to get feedback from independent authors about the kinds of books they had written. The survey was made up of only a few questions, the most intriguing of which asked each author about which category they believed their stories belonged in. For example, was the literary story they had written about family? Was it about abuse? Or was it about the nature of meaning, etc.? The survey was short and directed.
I then offered authors who had participated in the survey the chance to expand on their views by responding to a series of more open-ended questions about literary fiction. The result was 17 author interviews out of 27 survey responses.
Read on for the survey responses as well as my argument about what I think a logical next step is to make these results valuable.
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M Pepper Langlinais: A Conversation About Writing and Literary Fiction
M Pepper Langlinais is the 17th author to participate in my interview series with independent authors of literary fiction. If you publish independently and wish to participate, please click through the image on the right column of the screen that reads “Call for Survey Respondents: Indie Authors of Literary Fiction”. If you wish to receive email notices when future interviews are published, click the link toward the bottom of this post, just above the bio.
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Next Steps for the 2016 Literary Fiction Survey
This post will provide an update on the literary fiction survey and the question & answer series I launched earlier this year. I received a surge of interest over the late spring and summer, but the final interview in the queue, with M Pepper Langlinais, is scheduled to publish later this month. She will be the 17th author to participate.
My original intent for the survey was to get the participation of 75 authors. However, I’m beginning to see value from taking this ongoing survey and interview series in a different direction. Before I tell participants about that (and solicit your feedback), I have a favor to ask.
[Read more…] about Next Steps for the 2016 Literary Fiction Survey
