Category Archives: Big Courses

The special SELF-PUB modules for How To Think Sideways Self-Pub
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How not to be THIS self-publisher.

How not to be THIS self-publisher.

I took a break from putting together a cool HTTS Hotseat today with a writer who needed to know how to create a villain for her story.

Got out a notebook, wrote out the existing modules in How To Think Sideways, and figured out how to streamline the HTTS Self-Pub course.

URGENT!

All current Think Sideways Classic students, as well as all Think Sideways grads,
will get ALL the new modules, and will keep all of the old ones.

If you are in Think Sideways Classic
or have graduated from the class,
DON’T BUY HTTS Self-Pub!

HTTS Classic students and grads
get ALL the old modules
and ALL the new ones.

The modules I’m removing from of HTTS Self-Pub are:

  • How To Discover (Or Create) Your Project’s Market
  • How To Design Compelling Queries, Proposals, And Sample Chapters
  • How To Work With Editors, Agents, Marketing Departments, And Artists, And NOT Wreck Your Project
  • How To Deliver What You Promised And What They Want On Deadline

I’ll be replacing them with:

  • The Special Skills of Self-Pub Market Creation
  • Identify and Connect With Your Target Reader
  • What To Do When You’re Writer, Publisher, Art Department, and Marketing And How To Schedule Your Time
  • How to Deliver What Your Readers Want

 

A low-priced Self-Pub version of How To Think Sideways?
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Discount HTTS for the Self-Publishing Writer?

Discount HTTS for the Self-Publishing Writer?

Self-pub has become the way to go if you want to write and make a living at it. The last few years, my self-pub has paid the bills, and my commercial pub hasn’t. Among commercially published writers, I’m not alone. The majority of commercially published novelists are working a “real” job just to survive.

Successful self-pubbed writers are doing better. You can read sites like http://jakonrath.com/ and http://lethalbooks.com/ and those of other self-pubbed writers who are making a full-time living publishing themselves.

If you aren’t a big name, online self-publishing is the new midlist.

This is the thing I wanted to do with Rebel Tales…

…but what grew naturally out of improving tech and online markets is a million times better than what I’d planned. Why? Because YOU control your career, and you get to keep all the money. You’re not splitting it with a publisher who takes almost everything, and an agent who takes 15% of what’s left.

Sales of Kindles and Nooks and iPads (and iPhones) are all up, and these are all instant-gratification bookstores you carry around in your pocket. Or purse. Meanwhile, print book sales are falling, and brick-and-mortar bookstores going out of business.

What You Need To Know To Self-Publish

There are two types of knowledge you need in order to self-publish successfully.

The first is the technical stuff—how to get ISBNs, how to format your own book or hire someone to format it for you, how to price it, etc.

You can learn that ANYWHERE.

The second knowledge you need is a thousand times more important. You need to know how to write books worth reading.

I can teach you that.

So I’m putting together a stripped-down, just-for-self-publishers version of HOW TO THINK SIDEWAYS: Career Survival School for Writers.

How To Think Sideways for the Self-Publisher

The objective of this course is to be about half the price and about 60% the size of HTTS, and to give writers who KNOW you want to self-publish:

  • the writing skills you need to succeed at it, without all the Japanese Bowing Etiquette involved in commercial publishing,
  • to give you the contacts you need to publish your own work professionally,
  • and to get you out there doing it.

Lean, mean, focused.

HTTS Self-Pub will contain none of the stuff on query letters or dealing with editors. NOTHING on manuscript formatting for submission. Nothing on how to write a synopsis or an extended editor outline. None of the walkthrough. None of the frills I threw in like first drafts of my novels. Well, maybe ONE first draft.

It also won’t include on-site workgroups.  To keep the price low, I have to cut somewhere, and setting up and maintaining private workgroups is a major pain in the kiester.  You’ll meet lots of folks in the community.  If you want to create a private workgroup via e-mail on on a password section of your blog, you can certainly do that.

HTTS Self-Pub will include:

All the writing lessons, writing techniques, writing checklists, and writing course videos.

You’ll also get full member access to the following Writers’ Boot Camp boards:

  • Eureka HTTS (you can read this board now to discover what students learn from this course)
  • Renegade Marketing
  • Help!
  • Questions About Your Lessons HTTS
  • Writing Discussion HTTS
  • Idle Chatter HTTS
  • The new Resources for Self-Publishers board, which will hook you up with the folks who do professional e-book formatting, packaging, cover art, editing, and copyediting, writing blurbs, any anything else you need to help you succeed.  (If you OFFER these services, contact me now about getting your place on this board.  Currently I have about 2000 active writers in the private community.)

My objective with this course is to create successful professional career writers in the new Yes-You-Can-Live-On-Your-Writing online midlist.

The full course, with the walkthrough and future upgrades and a multitude of other cool things, comes in two speeds (6 month and 12 month)  and three flavors: Single Payment $399, 6 month subscription 69.95/month, and 12 month subscription $37.95/month.  If your dream is to publish commercially, (or if you want the BIG boost in help you’ll get from the Walkthrough upgrade) this is the course you need. 

The stripped-down HTTS Self-Pub will have one speed and one flavor.  6 months, $37.95/month.

If you’re not, no reply is necessary.

If you are, please post a YES. What I’m trying to do here is get a rough level of interest to decide whether setting up the extra site and revamping the course materials is worth my time.

So all I need to know from you now is, are you interested?

IMPORTANT!

If you’re already an HTTS student or HTTS Grad, you’re getting EVERYTHING in the Self-Pub course, PLUS the walkthrough, the private workgroups, and the Walkthrough boards, blogs, etc. Just log in to get the stuff as it goes live.

Heads Up on the Book That Changes Publishing
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Last week, like a zillion other writers, I received notice of the publication of John Locke’s How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in Five Months.

I bought it.

It fits PERFECTLY with How To Think Sideways and How To Revise Your Novel.

I’ve been focusing heavily on teaching the traditional path to publishing because I’m good at it, I know how to do it, and I know how to show others how to do it. And one look at the Eureka! boards will show you my students are succeeding.

BUT…self-publishing has been as good to me as professional publishing. The only problem is, I can’t teach what I do with self-publishing because my method starts with, “First, sell 32 novels to top New York Publishers…” and ends with writing non-fiction. Not exactly a path most of you have any interest in following.

Certainly not a way to sell your fiction yourself.

EVERYTHING changed when I read John Locke’s book. He made himself into the first self-published million-seller, and then he wrote a book on how he did it. It’s a good book, and the parts he goes into detail on are genius.

But HE DOESN’T COVER EVERYTHING. He has whole vast swatches where he says “You’re going to have to learn how to do this yourself.”

I realized reading through what he’s leaving you to figure out on your own that I ALREADY KNOW this. Every bit of it. The week six lessons are on developing your own personal genre, finding your target market, and writing books to that target. These are steps in Locke’s process.

So the Walkthrough for WEEK 6 of How To Think Sideways—Finding Or Creating Your Market—is going to be be the step-by-step on what John Locke left out and said you were going to have to learn on your own.

His book is available as an e-book via Kindle, Nook, and iBooks, and there are software readers out there you can get for your computer if you don’t have one of these e-readers.

Please understand that I CANNOT and WILL NOT reveal the parts of his system he covers in depth.

He earned his $4.99, and I’m not going to violate his copyright—so to get full benefit from Week 6, you’re going to have to get a copy of John Locke’s How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in Five Months.

This is about building your career yourself—controlling your fiction, making sure that you and your hard-earned career don’t get dumped into professional publishing’s “didn’t do as well as we had hoped” bin after three books. I’ve been there. Remember? It sucks, and here’s the thing.

YOU DON’T EVER have to be there.

This is your path to full-time writing if you want it, and I’m going this route with some of my own work.

This is the book, the system, the process I’ve been waiting for. If it’s what you’ve been waiting for, buy his book and get ready for Thursday, when the Week 6 Walkthrough Talkthrough: What John Locke DIDN’T Cover goes live and I walk you through the rest of how to make his system work for you.

Here are links to buy the book. They are NOT affiliate links. I want the man to keep full price on each sale—this book is that much of a game-changer:

Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Sold-Million-eBooks-Months-ebook/dp/B0056BMK6K
Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/how-i-sold-1-million-ebooks-in-5-months-john-locke/1103948392
iBooks: From your i-device, go to iBooks and search “John Locke 1 million ebooks”

Three Weeks Of The Think Sideways Walkthrough
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I forgot. I’ve just been swamped, and I forgot to post here to let folks know that I have three sampler pages from the How To Think Sideways Walkthrough available for everyone to use.

You get the complete content, including audio and downloads, for the first page of each of the following three weeks:

Week One: Break Thinking Barriers

Week Two: Create Your Sweet Spot Map

Week Three: Calling Down Lightning

I think you’ll find these help you work through areas of your writing, from what you can’t get started or keep writing, to how to figure out what to write about, to how to get story ideas when you have NO ideas.

Bracing For The Storm
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I’ve been doing HTTS Walkthrough prep and setup all week.

Site set-up, lesson template setup, student set-up.

Today I did workflow setup. Because I’m doing two projects at once, and because one is nonfiction and one is fiction, and because they are inextricably locked together like Siamese twins—and because both are MASSIVE projects, either of which could sink me if I don’t plan well—I built something different.

I made organizer wallpaper for my desktop. I then set up my desktop with all my templates and files and folders either to the side, or right on the spot where I’ll need to use them. Workflow is top to bottom, and left to right.

And Saturday is my day off, dammit. Except for today.

Organizer Wallpaper for Desktop

A bit of organizational coolness against the coming storm. I’ll let you know how it works.

The Last Moon & Sun and the Think Sideways Walkthrough
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More than a month after I intended to start, (due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control™), today I’m beginning The Last Moon & Sun…which is not the title of the book, but I have to call it something until I have a real title.

This is not a little project. This is…well, mammoth.

Why?

One: I haven’t written in the series since I finished Book II, The Silver Door, in June of 2008, so I’m going to have to go back and redo my research in the first two novels—but this time I have to look for different things.

Two: I have to toss all of my outlines and plans for the series—I’d carefully planned out seven tightly-woven books. Unfortunately, I have to END the series with book three. Which means I have to come up with a whole new story for the ending.

Three: By the time readers have the chance to buy this book, it will be several years since the previous one. So The Last Moon & Sun cannot be part of the linked sequential series I’d laid out.

It has to answer all the questions I asked in Books 1 and 2…but because of the time gap (caused first by me having no clue how I could end the series in one book, and then me spending all of last year with either family health problems and emergencies, or my own) I now have to REINTRODUCE the questions, so readers who didn’t know Books 1 and 2 existed will still get a complete story in The Last Moon & Sun—while at the same time making sure readers who DID read the first two books will get all the answers they were hoping for, a fresh story that blows them away, and something good to remember when they finish the final page.

What I have to do:

The book is going to need some elbow room. The first two ran about 100,000 words apiece.

I’m aiming for 150,000 words for this one to keep it within bounds, but it may go longer, if I need more than that to tell the story.

I have a huge risk going into this. I don’t have (or want) a contract. I want to be able to do this the way it needs to be done, and that means I don’t want an advance that has to be paid back hanging over my head if the publisher doesn’t like the story I come up with, or doesn’t like the length of the book and wants me to rip out half of it and remove one of the two main characters, for example (because, gee, THAT’s never happened to me before), or wants me to change the story in ways I don’t like.

I’m hoping to write something magnificent, something my editor and publisher will love. I want to absolutely blow their socks off. But if I end up with another Hawkspar situation on my hands, I want to be in the position to say, “Fine, thanks but no thanks.”

This is going to be a challenging ride. Big book, tough development cycle, compressed writing time—the sort of book that will generate a lot of learning experiences for me.

And, if you come along with me, for you.

I’m going to be adding mostly-weekly demonstrations on how I apply the techniques of How To Think Sideways to my own work to the course.

Why mostly-weekly? Because if it takes me longer than a week to work through one section of the process, I don’t want to half-ass the information I put up on that section, and I don’t want to screw up the book. So if it takes more than a week, it takes more than a week. The full lessons are already in there here, and if you get ahead of me, you can drop back to previous lessons to see what I did.

As happens with every book I write, I’ll make some discoveries on how to write better, more richly, more efficiently, more passionately, and more deeply while I’m doing this book. Anything I discover, I’ll pass on to you. Any tools I come up with, any worksheets I create for my own use, any techniques…you’ll get them as I figure them out.

I’ll make time to be on the boards to answer a few questions, to ask a few questions, and to set up some specific discussion topics.

And I’m adding one other thing. Each week that I post my own Walkthrough, I’ll also be offering a one-hour brainstorming session to one student. I’ll record that session and include it in the course so you can see not just how that week’s techniques work for me, and how they might work for you, but how another student can apply them to his or her work—getting that third perspective can be enormously helpful when you’re facing situations you hadn’t anticipated.

Any active HTTS student or course grad will be able to apply for a brainstorming session. (Once you’ve been picked for one, you can’t apply again, though.)

I’ll pick the student whose question and story problem will make what I think will be the best demonstration for that week.

The brainstorming sessions will be free.

Now here’s the thing.

I haven’t raised the price on How To Think Sideways ever. It’s been at its debut price since I opened the doors in 2008 and the first class started through with me.

I didn’t raise the price when the course I thought would take four months to present took six months, and then seven.

I didn’t raise the price when I added the How NOT To Write A Series (And Why You Don’t Want To) course as a graduation gift.

I didn’t raise the price when the private Think Sideways writing community took off and became this amazing place where dedicated writers gather to work, to brainstorm, and to send off and frequently sell what they’ve been writing.

I didn’t raise the price when I added in the core elements of Grad Novel, including a marketing forum and a lot of private development work I did on the currently-sidelined Dreaming the Dead. (The book I’m finishing after I do The Last Moon & Sun.)

But this is going to be a MAJOR upgrade, so I’m going to raise the price.

Through the end of April, you’ll still be able to get into class for $25/ month for 12 months or $47/month for six months. When you join at that price, you’re grandfathered in at that price, and as long as you don’t quit, you stay at that price all the way through to the end of the course.

May 1st, though, prices are going up.

If you’ve been wanting to take How To Think Sideways this is the last time you’ll be able to get it for the introductory price.

I hope you’ll join me on what promises to be a wild charge into the deep, dark thickets of novel writing.

  

Decided to give BOTH courses as scholarships
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Quick note:

I’ve decided I’ll give anyone who buys Jeff Walker’s product creation and launch course through my link scholarships for BOTH the How To Think Sideways novel-writing course, and the How To Revise Your Novel course.

If you buy through my link, you get Think Sideways AND Revise Your Novel.

The course goes live at 2 P.M. EST today.
(But you can still sign up now and get the “We’re live” notice directly from Jeff. It’ll still count.)

To get both courses:

  1. Purchase Jeff’s course through my link. You’ll get a sales receipt, I’ll have that sales receipt number, and that’s how you’ll validate your scholarships.
  2. You have to graduate Walker’s course—you can’t drop out and request a refund. If you do, you’ll lose both scholarships. (Though of course you’ll still be able to save and use any lessons you received before you quit.)
  3. If you already have either of my courses (or both of them), you can designate ONE person who can either take the one you aren’t going to use yourself, or designate that person to take BOTH of them.
  4. You cannot split your scholarships between TWO other people.

I explained more about why I’m offering scholarships, and more about Jeff’s course and why I recommend it in the Full-Ride Scholarships post.

Finally, here is my link if you’re interested:

http://hollylisle.net/courses/Jeff-live

Full-Ride Scholarships for Think Sidways and Revise Your Novel
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I have recommended Jeff Walker in the past for writers who need to know how to self-promote and how to create income to pay for their writing—he taught me, and changed my life in doing so.

He has a new class coming up.

But the price can be steep (depending on who you are). When I bought it, I had to do so on the payment plan, and we had to divert money from other things so I could do that. It was the best investment I ever made, but making it was still tough.

I think the course is so important—if you actually use it—that if you take it, and buy through my link, and stay in class, I’ll furnish you with a full scholarship to either of my flagship courses: How To Think Sideways, or How To Revise Your Novel.

Writers who do this will that way get both the knowledge to write (or if you’ve already written, to revise) your work into the best stories you can tell—and you’ll know how to promote it. And a WHOLE lot more.

Even if you don’t take the course, you can get an amazing amount of information free from Jeff simply for signing up for the free videos, blueprints, case studies, and other things he’s giving away.

This is my link. Go sign up, see what he’s offering.

There’s no commitment and he won’t spam you. Jeff Walker is my personal exemplar of integrity on the internet.

NOTICE: Jeff asked me this year to be an affiliate. I accepted. Why? Because this course changed my life; made it possible for me to stop cringing when the phone rang because my publisher was six months overdue paying me and the credit card companies were calling; put me in control of my writing career.

My rule for recommending courses is this: I only recommend things I have paid full price for, that I have used myself, and that I have had success with greater than the price I paid for the course. I make no exceptions no this rule.

Use this link to investigate his course, and, if you purchase and stay, to get a scholarship to either of my two big courses.

How To Write A Series is now live
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This is later than I’d planned—this week held a couple
of difficult surprises.

But I worked through the weekend, and the first part of the stand-alone version of How To Write A Series is now available.

  • If you don’t know the 192 types of series, or when to use them…
  • If you want to avoid breaking your series by skipping critical limitations…
  • If you need to know how to design a skeleton world before you start writing…
  • If you are unfamiliar with the Rule Of Significance and why your series lives and dies by it…
  • And much, much more…

You can now start the four-week intensive course, and be working on your first lesson in about five minutes.

Please remember that by joining now you’ll be part of the first class to go through, and I’m creating the course just ahead of you as you’re taking it, so things like transcripts and low bandwidth downloads will take a few days to show up.

Anything that’s still in the works is marked PENDING.

The How To Write A Series Course is here:
http://novelwritingschool.com/courses

I hope you enjoy this course as much as I’m enjoying creating it.

Cheerfully,
Holly

P.S. If you’re a How To Revise student, you’ll receive the course as a free graduation gift.

If you’d rather take How To Write A Series when you graduate
from How To Revise Your Novel, and you’re not already a
student, you can sign up here:

http://howtoreviseyournovel.com

P.P.S. If you’ve already graduated from HTRYN, you can start
the course now. Look in Bonus-1 on your student page.

Here’s your login link:

http://howtoreviseyournovel.com/login.php