I'm probably one of the few authors on the planet who enjoys marketing her books. For me, thinking up fresh ways to get the word out about my novels is almost as much fun as creating the story and the characters.

For my first novel, Freezing Point, I held an...

I miss my Borders. The Borders bookstore on Hall Road in Utica, Mich. was my hangout. I'd drop in whenever I was in the mood to browse for books, and inevitably, I'd leave with great armfuls.

There's a Barnes & Noble a few miles away from my still-empty Borders. I've...

If the Internet seemed slow last Sunday, it might have been because around the world, literally millions of new e-reader owners spent a fair part of the day downloading e-books.

It's too early to know exactly how many e-readers were sold this year as holiday gifts. But on December 5,...

For many non-Detroiters, striking images of decaying buildings are all they know of the city. But not every vacant building is in ruins. Many downtown buildings are structurally sound and architecturally beautiful. They're just -- empty.

Thanks to Detroit native Jeff Freedman (RESULTCO), some of these empty store...

"House" for "horse." The number 1 for the letter l. Strange, random characters where accented characters should be. If you read e-books, you've seen mistakes like these, and more. Most are mildly distracting. But at times, the mistakes get so bad that readers have to stop and back up and...

When a bookstore closes, it's always a loss -- for the community, for readers, and most especially, for authors. The impact of the closing of 600 Borders bookstores is incalculable.

But as the last of the 600 stores are shuttered, I've discovered that Borders has given authors a parting...

Self-publishing a book has never been easier -- or potentially, more lucrative. Frustrated by the slow, conservative pace of traditional publishing, writers are abandoning their agent search in droves to stride out into the Brave New Publishing World.

But as they weigh the financial pros and cons, there's one potentially...

This past holiday season, hundreds of thousands of e-readers were given as gifts, spurring a massive explosion in the number of e-books flying off virtual shelves that shows no signs of stopping. Many of these new owners have discovered websites where e-books can be downloaded for free -- legitimate websites,...

Not long after U.S. Airways Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger dramatically landed Flight 1549 in the Hudson River, his memoir sold at auction to publishing house William Morrow for between $2.5 million and $3.2 million. In another auction, Tina Fey's book of humorous essays went from $5.5...

I'm a novelist. Like virtually every author who's had a book published in the 21st century, I use social media to reach out to potential readers and to spread the word about my books. I'm grateful for the readers who've chosen to follow me on Facebook and Twitter as a...

Some argue there's no such thing as an audiobook. After all, a book is something you hold in your hands. Okay, maybe a book is also a file you download onto your preferred electronic reading device, but no matter the form, a book is still something you read. It has...

I've always wanted to be a scientist. But in the early 1970s, I dropped out of the University of Michigan, and married a stoneware potter. Two years later, we moved to Michigan's Upper Peninsula with our 6-week-old daughter as part of the hippie/back-to-the-land movement. While we lived in a tent...

When my first environmental thriller published in mass market paperback in October 2008 from Berkley, it had a good run. Freezing Point is about a solar energy company melting Antarctic icebergs into drinking water whose plan goes terribly wrong -- think "Jurassic Park on Ice" -- and my publisher selected...

Chaitén volcano in Northern Patagonia, Chile came to life on May 2, 2008 for the first time in 9,000 years in a major eruption. Since that time, the eruption has never stopped. The town of Chaitén at the base of the volcano was evacuated at the start of the eruption...

How much should an e-book cost? The answer varies widely, depending on who is asked. Most traditional publishers price their authors' e-books the same as the print version, reasoning that the costs associated with publishing, marketing and promoting a title do not disappear when a book is...

No one knows exactly how many books are published in the United States every year. Bowker, the leading provider of global book information, estimates 288,355 print titles were published in 2009. Add to that what Bowker considers "non-traditional" books (reprints, titles in the...

By its simplest definition, a thriller is a story in which things go very, very wrong. Whether the threat comes from an erupting volcano, escaped nanobots, a political assassin, or bomb-toting terrorists, the pattern is the same. As the story progresses, the situation deteriorates, until it seems as though there...

As part of the fallout from Borders' recent bankruptcy announcement, 200 stores are scheduled to close. Unhappily, my favorite Borders bookstore is one of them.

I happened to be in this Utica, Michigan store when my agent called to tell me we had an offer from Berkley to publish my...

Agents attend conferences because they're looking for new projects; authors attend because they're looking for an agent - what's wrong with scheduling time for them to sit down face to face?

From talking to authors and agents, and from observing how pitch sessions are handled at other writers conferences,

When literary agents aren't talking on the phone, writing contacts, making pitches, striking deals, handling clients and generally doing what literary agents do, they're reading. Hundreds of query letters every week. Sample pages. Full manuscripts. Their clients' work. Royalty statements. Contracts. But what do they pick up for their own...