Michael Ashley

FastPencil is a startup so I thought I should share the experience with my friends. This is the view from my desk looking out at our 12 foot conference table. We practically live at that table and on the whiteboards tacked to every wall. I love this environment. The only thing I miss is my old green couch... When you work on a team sometimes you have to sacrifice for the greater good and the old green couch was too battered to survive the vote. But I got to keep the conference table, and though it's bigger than a ping-pong table, I love that it will fit 10 people easily. Now I'm pushing for a net so we can actually play ping-pong on it! FastPencil rocks!

Bits of Destruction Hit the Book Publishing Business: Part 4 is the final installment of his analysis of the book publishing industry. Part 4 is particularly interesting for FastPencil because he talks about the trends with respect to the author.

I have been working on a new novel and I'm aiming at 75,000 words. But I can't decide if Twittering and Blogging are getting in my way, or helping me out. What I'm finding is that Twittering and Blogging are much easier so I do it often. But working through the story on FastPencil is more fulfilling and gets me closer to my ultimate goal of publishing another book. So I came up with my Theory of Continuous Writing: It doesn't matter where you write, what you write or how you write it... just keep writing. 1. Tweet, Scribble and Share all day long to keep your ideas flowing. 2. Blog daily to practice writing complete sentences and tying ideas together. 3. FastPencil at least once a day to keep the novel moving forward. When you look at writing from this perspective it's easy to see the value in each medium. The more you write, the better you become and the closer you get to achieving your dreams.

Joel Orr is one of the few people who see the tsunami coming and understand how FastPencil sits at the crest of the wave. A free book-writing portal is his recent article in the Examiner.com where he outlines the pro's and con's of self-publishing with our new technology.

WGN TV in Chicago put FastPencil up against Lulu in a little self-publishing story. The key point they make is that FastPencil helps you write and collaborate on your book from the very beginning, while you are still writing it. Come join the fun, it's free and you'll get the support you need to finish your book and publish it. Check out the video on WGN .