What It Means to Be a Writer, Part 4 => Negotiating Contracts

September 6, 2012
This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series What It Means To Be A Writer

So you’ve decided to try writing a book: you’ve come up with the idea, sold it to a publisher, and perhaps used an agent in the process. The next step is to negotiate the contract. For those entirely new to the process, and even to those that have been around the proverbial writing block a few times, contract negotiating can be intimidating. If you’re using an agent, the agent will take care of this for you. If not, it’s up to you.

When I took a class on getting published (many years ago), the instructor informed us that you can negotiate contracts offered by publishers. Great! Just one hitch: most people don’t know what to negotiate! In this post, I’ll explain exactly that.

Continue Reading...
In Uncategorized ,
permalink

What It Means To Be A Writer, Part 3 => Using an Agent

August 29, 2012
This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series What It Means To Be A Writer

What agents do, and whether or not you need one, is an important topic for any professional writer. If you only think you have one book idea in you, you probably don’t need an agent. If you hope to do more writing, let alone attempt a career partially based on writing, then you have a decision to make. In this post, I’ll provide some information as to what an agent does. Understanding the role of the agent should help you make the decision, should you be in that situation.

Continue Reading...
In Uncategorized , ,
permalink

New Design Coming This Week

August 27, 2012

This version of the blog (i.e., this look) is about two years old now, which is plenty old enough in blog terms. After months of delay, this week I’ll finally put up the new look. Mostly this post is a heads-up (i.e., if you see anything amiss, please let me know), but I also wanted to explain my thought process in coming up with this new design. As many of you are trying to learn the behind-the-scenes steps and mentality in creating a Web site, I hope this will be of use to you. Continue Reading…

In Web Development ,
permalink

What is Larry Thinking? #59 => Frameworks and Yii

August 20, 2012

In this edition…

Continue Reading…

In PHP, Ruby, Web Development , , , , , ,
permalink

Scaling Lessons Learned at Dropbox

August 17, 2012

I recently came across a good article titled Scaling Lessons Learned at Dropbox. In it, the author, Rajiv Eranki (the second engineer hired at Dropbox), explains how they successfully managed to scale Dropbox from 4,000 users to 40 million. It’s a very interesting read, presenting many good, concrete solutions to a problem that most of us are never fortunate enough to have. A bit technical at times, yes, but worth the read.

In Web Development
permalink