I'm an author and author coach, and I love helping new writers achieve their dreams. Check out the resources I offer and sign up for my newsletter!
Meet CURIOS: A New Era for Authors
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Hello Reader, The Anthropic SettlementMarch 30, 2026 is the deadline to submit a claim in the $1.5 billion Anthropic Book Copyright Settlement. Was your book illegally uploaded by Anthropic? Check the ISBN, publisher, or author name to find out. Filing a claim is quick and easy. https://www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/ You can get additional information about the Settlement or download a mail-in Claim Form at www.AnthropicCopyrightSettlement.com. RIP NanoWriMoNaNoWriMo--National Novel Writing Month--is no more. In April, 2025 the organization disbanded. Problems caused by financial mismanagement and prolonged deficits led to its closure. However, NaNoWriMo's planning tools are still available, and if you're looking for character cheat sheets or strategies for planning a new novel, you can grab the NaNoWriMo prep workbook at Scribd or find an editable version here at Maison du Livre. The goal of NaNoWriMo was to help authors do a 50,000 word quick-and-dirty rough draft during the month of November. That's 1667 words per day. It's amazing what Thanksgiving looks like when you're holed up in your bedroom and the rest of the family is lounging on the couch downstairs! CURIOS, a new tool to connect readers and writers I'm generally skeptical about shiny new tools. Learning how to use them takes time away from writing, and the results are often underwhelming. However, I have a small (as in teeny, tiny) micropress, and I've been looking for a solution that would allow me to bypass Amazon and sell books direct from my website. Why is this a benefit to me and why might it benefit you?
Now, what if authors with a CURIOS account could keep 100% of sales? What if CURIOS handled distribution of the book and dealt with taxes and fees? And what if CURIOS functioned a lot like BookFunnel, a tool that authors routinely use to distribute ARC copies and reader magnets? Right now CURIOS distributes ebooks and audiobooks, but in the next few weeks, they're also going to set up a print-book distribution system, most likely in partnership with one of the other well known book vendors like BookBaby, LuLu, or the like. Take a look at their video. I've been meaning to write a full blog post about this tool, but I've been busy setting up a storefront. www.curios.com/GCPpublisher I'd like you to get in on the ground floor, but only if this is something that would be of use to you. www.curios.com/Joinmlmacdon29 Brief News About MeSo, very brief update. I've moved five times in the past three years--Chicago to Santa Rosa, Santa Rosa to Cotati, Tempe to Tempe, Cotati to Los Gatos, Los Gatos to Tempe. Books, books, books!!! Seventy-five boxes of them donated to the City of Mesa Library when we closed up our house in Tempe. And then more books made their way to the landfill when I moved to Los Gatos. (My husband is a professor at Arizona State, and we still have an apartment near campus.) Now I'm back at my desk, and I promise you'll hear from me on a more regular basis. Marylee MacDonald |
Hi! I'm Marylee MacDonald
I'm an author and author coach, and I love helping new writers achieve their dreams. Check out the resources I offer and sign up for my newsletter!
MARYLEE MACDONALD Hello Reader, I want to let you in on a secret that took me years to accept: your first draft is not supposed to be good. I'm serious. The goal of a first draft is not to produce publishable prose. The goal is to get the story out of your head and onto the page. That's it. Everything else comes later. I used to write a sentence, hate it, delete it, and rewrite it. I did this for hours. I produced almost nothing. A wise writing teacher finally told me: "Marylee, you can't...
Hello Reader, How will readers know your book exists if you don't have some way to let them know when it comes out? You absolutely need to think about what comes AFTER you finish writing. Apart from uploading book files to Amazon, every writer needs a website presence. A website presence doesn't mean a blog. There are simpler and cheaper options, such as doing an interview on somebody else's website. This Week's Ten Questions Feature This week I'm featuring an interview with Lorraine Dusky....
Hello Reader, I had such a terrific response to my last email that I had a great idea. I thought it would be cool to create a page on my website where you could download many of my popular tips, cheat sheets, and pdfs. Here's the page. Feel free to download everything at one time, or just come back when you need specific help. Here's the page--> https://wp.me/P7nsfn-5L You may have written the best book in the world, but if readers don't know about it, you're sunk. Here are examples of two...