In a few days, I'll be in New York City for the 2013 Backspace Writers Conference--not as an attendee, but as the conference's organizer.

We're going to see some wonderful projects at the conference. Some authors will sign with agents they meet this week. One panelist on...

Every week literary agents receive hundreds of query letters from aspiring writers who are hoping to interest the agent in their project. Why then, would agents take time from their busy schedules to go to a writers conference and meet yet more writers in person?

I've worked...

I'm 10 years old. My Big Ben-style alarm clock has stopped working. Maybe I wound it too tightly, maybe it's just worn out. Whatever the reason, the alarm hasn't gone off in days.

I know I can fix it, if only I can get a look inside. When I tell...

I love action. Not in real life. In real life, I'm a writer, which means I spend 90 percent of my day sitting in front of my computer. Oh, once in a while I get up, stretch a little, put on my shoes, and walk out to the mailbox to...

In 1971, I was 18. I didn't wear makeup, didn't do anything with my hair aside from washing it and letting it air dry, didn't wear a bra. I was too young to be a part of the Haight-Ashbury hippie movement, but I was definitely a sympathizer, an all-natural flower...

In an ocean of self-published titles, two questions keep bobbing to the surface: How can readers find quality e-books, and how can authors of quality e-books find readers?

The answer to both questions may well be the newest development in Internet-based book promotion: author collectives.

Author collectives are groups of...

This week, New York Times tech blogger David Pogue admitted to illegally downloading a copy of Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity for his 15-year-old son after he discovered he couldn't purchase the book through traditional channels. He admits he knows what he did was wrong, and says he...

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...