MSI Press Blog

  Today's meditation from  Weekly Soul: Fifty-two Meditations on Meaningful, Joyful, and Peaceful Living   by Dr. Frederic Craigie. -20-   The quality of one's life depends on the quality of attention. Whatever you pay attention to will grow more important in your life. Deepak Chopra   Achieving artistic and financial success by the early 1890s, Claude Monet purchased his home in Giverny, France and set to work developing a landscape that would inspire his painting in the last 30 years of his life. He received permission from local authorities to divert water from the Epte River to create a pond for cultivating water lilies. Monet spent long hours in his gardens, tending to them, and joyfully observing the constant unfolding of light, colors, and texture. He commented on his attention to his lily pond:   It took me a while to understand my water lilies. I cultivated them without thinking about painting them. A landscape doesn’t captivate you in just one da...

  Today's meditation from  Weekly Soul: Fifty-two Meditations on Meaningful, Joyful, and Peaceful Living   by Dr. Frederic Craigie. -18-   Like many academics, I spent my young adult years postponing many of the small things that I knew would make me happy, including reading novels for pleasure, learning to cook, taking a photography class, and joining a gym. I would do all of these things when I had time—when I finished school, when I had a job, when I was awarded tenure, and so on. I was fortunate enough to realize that I would never have time unless I made the time. And then the rest of my life began. Christopher Peterson   When I met him, Tim was gingerly making his way back from a very serious heart attack. He had some specific ongoing deficits—I remember him talking particularly about diminished ability to write fluently—but mainly, he suffered from loss of stamina, chronic pain, and the constant shadow of his uncertain long-term future. His st...

It is Tuesday. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side.  Today's topic is, again, marketing. We address the question: What matters in marketing?  Here are a couple of answers from our experience: consistency and presence. What does it mean to be consistent? Be where people expect to find you once they "meet" you on whatever platform you are using. Blogging? Then, if you cannot blog every day (and most authors cannot), blog on specific days so that readers know that they can find you on blogger on Fridays, for example. Or, link up to the blog hops and participate in each weekly event.  Be about what people expect you to be about once they read your book. We write about books--our books-...