Joseph Rhea

Being an author means having to be brave enough to put your writing out there for the world to read, and judge. The first part is what most of us strive for, while the second is what many first-time authors dread. They say you have to be "thick-skinned" to be an writer, and that's true. The best way I've found to handle negative reviews is to look at the reviews of any of your favorite authors. Do they only receive glowing, 5-star reviews? No. You honestly can't please everyone, nor should you even try. However, after a dozen or so reviews, a pattern should start to appear, and that pattern ought to tend toward the positive side. In other words, you can brush off a few negative reviews, but if most readers are having a problem with your book, then it's probably time to reexamine your writing. Is it poorly-edited? Is the plot incoherent? Are your characters flat and lifeless? Is your dialogue stilted and predictable? If you honestly have to answer yes to any...

Some people spend their free time building model airplanes, watching TV, or washing their cars. A decade ago I spent the better part of two years building my own "Artificial Life" simulation inside a computer, using my own "simplified" versions of genetic algorithms. I called it "Cyberdrome" and eventually wrote a science fiction novel of the same name, loosely based on this "game." Here's a flashback to some of my notes from that period, that were posted on my very first website back then. 20 October 1999 Work has resumed on the Cyberdrome Simulator, our 3D digital recreation of Cyberdrome's Infected Program Zone. Our current version contains 36 memory sectors, with each sector covering a scaled area of 25 square miles, for a total of 900 square miles of cyberspace to explore! In addition, each of the 36 sectors now contain up to 1000 independently moving Artificial Life forms, which means almost 36,000 new enemy programs are n...

Two years ago, I remember a period during a 99c sale (which was rare back then) when my book was selling something like one book every hour, and I was elated. 20-30 books a day was spectacular, but I spent all of my time watching the sales rank, worrying about every little change. Then six months ago I stopped having sales, stopped most social networking, and tried to concentrate on my writing. As expected, my sales eventually died off, down to something like a book every few days, but I was actually content, because I had sold something like 4,000 books and thought maybe that was it. Time to let the other Indies have the spotlight and get my next book out. Then, just as an experiment, I decided to join Amazon Select last week and try a 2-day giveaway. After an astounding (to me) 11,000 free downloads in 48 hours, I assumed my book--now priced at $3.99--would return to never-never land like so many others. But it was not to be. Since then my book has been selling 5-10 copies every h...

When it comes to giving your novel a title and a cover, sometime what you, the author, envision is not what your publisher's marketing people come up with. For Indies, the job is both simpler and more difficult. Simpler, in that you have full control of every aspect of the book, including cover art and title. More difficult, in that what you think is "perfect" might not actually draw in that many people. Or worse, potential readers are actually driven away by either the title or artwork. I bring this up because a few days ago I tweaked the title of the Kindle version of my book as a test, and already I am seeing increased sales, especially overseas. Basically all I did was change my one-word title, "Cyberdrome" to "Cyberdrome (a science fiction thriller)." I don't know if this change helps it show up in searches, or what, but it does seem to be boosting sales right now. I probably should have done this originally with the paperback because ...