Anyone who writes knows that sometimes your worst enemy is yourself. Maybe you know what you want to write but you just can’t get it onto paper; maybe you don’t have any idea what to write but you know you want to write something. Don’t panic! This happens to the best of authors. Having writer’s…
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Conducting Interviews
Recently I got a call from a PR agent who had set up an interview for me with one of her clients. She wanted to let me know how much the client had “enjoyed” the interview — a rare experience, apparently. She also wanted to let me know that if I needed more information, I…
Convention Etiquette 101
Do you ever attend writers’ conferences? They can be great places to meet agents, editors and other writers, and networking opportunities abound. To make the most of those opportunities, make sure you follow some basic rules of etiquette. In this article, Dan Janal outlines some behaviors to avoid at your next writers’ conference. The people…
Is It Research or Plagiarism?
Hi! I am a beginning freelance writer. I am writing an article in which I’ve based some of my ideas on texts I used in college. Will I be sued if I don’t ask the authors’ permission? They say that “stealing from one source is plagiarism, but stealing from many sources is research.” Is this…
Creative Branding Techniques for Introverted Authors
Introverts are people who live on the quiet side of life, who would rather sit at home and draw or read than go to a party. They’re not the ones who readily schmooze a meeting, shaking hands and nudging shoulders with everyone or squeeze their way into a huddle of strangers at a business conference….
5 Rules Every New Author Should Follow
How to Avoid Common Mistakes and What to Do Instead This article is a follow-up to 5 Mistakes New Authors Often Make. If you are a new author, the whole process of taking your book from planning to promotion may feel like an obstacle course. But it needn’t be, if you follow five basic rules…
Review: Write a Book without Lifting a Finger
Do you think that those celebrities write their own autobiographies that everyone is dying to read? Maybe you didn’t even know that they liked to write. The truth is that they probably don’t. Many actors, athletes, politicians, business leaders and others use ghostwriters to write their books. if you have something to say but not…
Prepare Before You Start to Write
The most important writing tip of all: Prepare before you start. I have been advising and coaching writers for years now, and the best writing tip I know is to spend time on preparation before you start writing. It doesn’t matter whether you are writing a report, an essay, an article, a white paper, a…
What is Self-Publishing?
With the proliferation of inexpensive “pay-for-publication” options, this has become a confusing question. Many writers believe that “self-publication” refers to any mechanism by which the writer bears the cost of publication — including subsidy electronic and print-on-demand publications. Many vendors encourage this belief, as “self-publishing” tends to sound more respectable than “subsidy publishing.” As a…
Kindle Publishing: Why and How to Create a Marketing Plan for Your Kindle Ebook
A very experienced information marketer I know has ventured into Kindle publishing of both fiction and nonfiction. When I asked her what she was doing off Amazon to promote her Kindle ebooks, she said that aside from enrolling her works into Amazon’s KDP Select program, which allows her to make her books free five days…
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Cathy Stucker's Publishing Blog
Unexpected Marketing Results
Over the years I have done a lot of marketing. Some things got better results than I expected, others…not so much. But many things delivered different results than I expected. This is one of the magical things about marketing.
Let’s talk about how this might apply to selling your books. Say that you have set up a book signing event at a local coffee shop. You make posters for the coffee shop to put up and you create a small display in the store. You send out press releases to local media announcing the event and talking about you and your book. You send email announcements to everyone on your email list, call your friends and relatives and tweet the news out to the world. This is going to be huge! You’d better bring hundreds of books!
The day comes and your big event draws 12 people, only 3 of whom buy your book. (Some just don’t buy and some of the others are friends and fans who already own the book and just came for moral support.) Your big event was a failure. Or was it?
Reading to Children
As a teenage babysitter, I loved reading to the kids I watched. They would bring out a huge stack of books, and when I finished reading one they would beg me to read, “just one more.” We often spent the evening with the television off, reading story after story. My mother read to me a…
How to Overcome Writer’s Block [INFOGRAPHIC]
I believe that writer’s block doesn’t really exist. If you are a writer, you write. However, there is no question that the words come more easily at some times than at others. What can you do when you are finding it hard to get the words from your brain, through your fingers and onto the…
Kindle Countdown Deals – Put Your Kindle Book on Sale to Sell More
Amazon has announced the Kindle Countdown Deals program for Kindle in the US and UK that allows authors and publishers to offer limited-time promotional discounts on Kindle-exclusive books, including those in the KDP Select program. Customers can see the regular price and the promotional price on the book’s detail page. A countdown clock, telling them…
15 Grammar Goofs That Make You Look Silly
This infographic from Copyblogger features some of my favorite grammar pet peeves. Making these mistakes can brand you as an amateur, so learn when each choice is correct and make sure your spelling, grammar and punctuation are correct before sending your writing out into the world. Of course, knowing the correct choice does not free…
How to Get Your Book Reviewed On Amazon
Book reviews sell books. Although we all like to see glowing reviews, surprisingly even some bad reviews can sell books. However, getting reviews can be challenging when you are a new, unknown author. Here are some tips on what you should (and should NOT) do to get your book reviewed on Amazon and elsewhere. Go…
29 Ways to Stay Creative
The folks at Creattica shared this infographic with 29 ways to keep your creative juices flowing. 1. Make lists. 2. Carry a notebook everywhere. 3. Try free writing. 4. Get away from the computer. 5. Quit beating yourself up. 6. Take breaks. 7. Sing in the shower. 8. Drink coffee. 9. Listen to new music….
How to Promote Your Book on Twitter
Can Twitter sell books for you? Well, no, not all by itself. But Twitter is one of the tools you can use to promote your book. Writing your book was the first step. Now it’s time to promote it so that you achieve your publishing goals. Whether you published to make money in royalties, generate…
Writing Advice from Elmore Leonard
Elmore Leonard is a prolific writer who has entertained us with more than forty novels, including , , , , and many more. Hollywood is an Elmore Leonard fan, and many of his books have been made into movies. Leonard began writing while still working in advertising. He published a short story in Argosy magazine…
The Right Way for Authors to Blog
Blogging is a great way for authors to stay in touch with their fans and attract new fans, too. For many authors, though, blogging seems a little scary. How do you set up a blog? What do you write about? How do you get people to read your blog? Here are some tips to help…