I've recently had the chance to reconnect with two past students and found out they're both doing great, interesting podcasts that I want to tell you about.

Gwen MinorThe first is Gwen Minor, who podcasts stories and discussions of the Ancient World! She's at http://gwenminor.com/, where she's steadily building a strong fan base and putting out content so regularly that she's already up to episode 50! My hat is off to her!

Gwen's scholarly book is here and you can find lots of great stories at her site.

Heather StallingsThe second wonderful author and podcaster I want to tell you about is Heather Stallings. Her novel is called False Alarm and it's available here via Amazon. She's been podcasting for 9 episodes now at http://heatherstallings.com/ and will get you right into her story with ease and to your delight! False Alarm takes place in the world of elite athletes and bigtime sports management.

ESPN's own Rod Gilmore said of False Alarm, "it is absolutely dead on."

So check out both of these ladies' websites:

http://gwenminor.com and http://heatherstallings.com/ You'll be glad you did!

Are you a past student who has a podcast to tell me about? Drop an email and let you know! I'd be happy to put your work in an upcoming post. Up next: Jay Langejans!

Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty ImagesWorldwide bestseller and self-admitted social media addict, Paulo Coelho talks today with Julie Bosman about the success he's had and how giving his work away for free has helped him.

Sure, he was afraid when he got a call from his publisher, but everything worked out fine. His view comes down to something like, if it's going to be pirated anyway, why not control that myself?

Ask yourself the same question: if your ideal world involves people taking your work out of the library to read it for free, why not help them get it free now, especially if you know it makes people more likely to give your work a try?

In any case, here's the interview with and article about Coelho. Enjoy!

from NYTimes.comThe following is a second reading for the upcoming October 2011 session of the Author Boot Camp seminar at Stanford. If you're in the Bay Area, the class is still enrolling here, and I hope you'll join us. If you're already enrolled, here's more food for thought regarding the current state of publishing.

In this essay from the New York Times Book Review, Neal Pollack (also here as a PDF for those adverse to signing up on NYT.com), a writer with a few titles to his name and the cred to get his opinions into the Times, makes the case for why he'll self-publish his next book, Jewball. It's definitely worth a read, both for his take on the changing face of publishing today, the necessary expenditures and freelance skill-jobs he'll need, as well as some hard numbers about the financial side including what he'll need to do to turn a profit. Most notably, there's little talk here about the stigma of self-publishing, something that writers faced writ large in the past. (see next posts regarding Barry Eisler)

What's also interesting, is that his plan involves using Kickstarter to cover up-front costs, something I thought only a few insiders had considered. Back in May when this piece came out, I was planning my own Kickstarter plan and feared that Pollack was letting a cat out of the bag. Not so. In fact, my Kickstarter campaign launched last week, reached its funding level in 25 hours and still has twenty-four days to go, allowing fans to pre-order a special edition of my next title and raising awareness about its eBook next month!

[What this means for you: we haven't reached a cultural saturation point for authors using this model. Good news!]

So my advice starts with reading this piece by Pollack. It's well-written, smart and still cutting edge, even four months after its release. Not only does Pollack explain some of the publishing methods I think can be most effective in today's market, they're the ones I'm currently using myself. Scout's honor!

More readings coming soon. Subscribe for FREE here. Also, don't forget that you get extra content on the site once you register here (also free!) For more on the class, go here. 

Over the next few weeks, you'll see new posts here that I'll build off of in my next installment of the Author Boot Camp seminar at Stanford. This next session will be on Saturday Oct. 22 and Saturday Oct. 29 in Palo Alto.

This week I want to talk about John Locke's ebook, How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!, which I first came across at the recommendation of Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff, who's doing great work in the eBook realm in his own right. Locke's also been profiled in the WSJ here to talk about all the "upending" of the book world he's done. I'm looking into all of this as I ramp up and get ready to release my own set of Jack Palms eBooks this fall in October and November—more on that as we get closer.

News flash: this just in via LA Times Blog: Locke has just inked a distribution deal with Simon & Schuster. Look at that!

The Review: Locke's got a lot to offer here for anyone who's thinking of putting out his own eBooks on Kindle or any other format. Chief among my interests in reading this was his stance on the $2.99 vs. $0.99 price decision that he made. Basically, Locke's always gone with $0.99 across the board for all ten novels that he's released, even though he realizes he needs to sell six times as many books at this price to make the same money he'd make selling at the $2.99 level. Still, the $0.99 has its attraction and Locke explains why. This How-To manual, on the other hand, goes for $4.99, which shows you how many fewer writer-buyers there are out there than novel-reader-buyers.

Keep in mind, it's these readers who you want to reach, not the writers who're only a small subset of readers.

Locke has proven himself as a salesman, with years of high-earning insurance sales under his belt, and he's applied the principles he learned there to selling cheap eBooks and eschews things like good grammar and other arcane notions (see his blog post on this here). But don't be fooled; this man can write a good story! This book reads well and his Donovan Creed novels burn your "Next Page" button finger like you were cruising through a Lee Child or other chart-topper's book.

Locke gives his advice on how to blog (infrequently but with great sincerity and appeal to universal emotion), how to put out your eBooks (often and steadily), and how he swears by Twitter to build his online fan/friend base and sell his wares. With an hour on Twitter a day, he says you can meet enough likeminded readers and good people ("One of Us," he calls them) to sell hundreds of thousands of books yourself.

Take special note, however, that a big part of Locke's key to success has been putting out a steady succession of books and having a lot of product available in the (Amazon) marketplace. He currently sells eight Donovan Creed thriller novels on Amazon as well as two westerns in the Emmett Love series, all at $0.99 each, and each of them have spent time in the Kindle bestseller top ten. Another one of his big principles is that sales of new titles lead to sales of back-catalog titles, which is a truism as old as publishing itself. It was actually none other than Michael Connelly who first told me this was how he made money.

My advice: read this book with a grain or two of salt, but read it just the same. There's more than enough worthwhile information here to make this worth your $4.99 and the few hours it takes to read. Who knows? You'll probably go buy a few Donovan Creed novels next.

For more on eBook pricing models, give this one a quick read too.

How to Price eBooks for the Kindle: A Pocket Pricing Guide for Authors and Publishers to Maximize Sales and Royalties with the New 70 Percent Royalty Option

More info on John Locke is available at www.lethalbooks.com

Check out/have a look at the free video below: 34 min on why and how you can use podcasting to promote your writing successfully online.

Podcasting to Platform Writers Digest Webinar from Seth Harwood on Vimeo.