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By Anne Hill:

Authors have come a long way in the past few years. We understand that we have to be marketers as well as writers. We know that the best book marketing involves two-way communication with readers and not just sales pitches. Some of us even enjoy it.

But while blogs and social media have made those conversations easier to have, selling books through Amazon and other online retailers prevents us from connecting with readers at the critical moment of sale. Amazon knows more about who buys our books than we do, by design.

We get sales figures, but we don’t know anything about who bought our books. And the more we know about where our books are being sold and to whom, the better all our marketing can be.

The solution is to sell books directly from author websites—and I don’t mean linking to your book listing on Amazon. Through direct sales, we learn where our readers are geographically, what brought them to the site, and most importantly [...]

#writing #indie publishing #self publishing #indie authors

By Ivan Izo:

When searching for new topics and stories to write, you will often search for inspiration by reading material in the same subject or genre. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it keeps you busy reading instead of writing. Reading is so much easier than writing, isn’t it?

It can be difficult to get good inspiration from other writers because their writing style, topics and background are different from yours. It’s your unique focus that makes your writing interesting, not the ways you’re the same as everyone else. How can you [...]

#writing #inspiration #am writing #amwriting #writing advice

By Joanna Penn:

Two years ago, I gave up a secure career as an IT business consultant for large corporates, earning a six-figure income, to become a full-time author-entrepreneur.

Yes, I understand that writing is not just about the money, and yes, I do value creativity for its own sake. But this is also my life and pays the bills these days.

I also don’t buy into the [...]

#writing #self publishing #indie publishing #am writing #amwriting

By Marg McAlister:

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about characters and the jobs they do. I’ve been looking at careers, trades, jobs, interests for both my own characters and those in assessment tasks I’ve been doing, and sometimes the plot has taken a different path because of what I have discovered. Here are some points for you to consider when you’re coming up with a job/profession/vocation for your character(s). [...]

#writing #writing tips #character development #amwriting #am writing

By Jane Friedman:

Most new authors, upon securing a book contract or planning a book launch, are advised they need to establish a Twitter account, a Facebook page, or [list social media channel here]. Why? To market their book, of course.

This presents an immediate dilemma: If the author is not already active on these channels, of her own interest and volition, she now has the mindset of using these tools to “market”—and the new author may have no idea what that means beyond telling people to like their page or follow them.

No one I know enjoys being a marketer on social media, not any more than people want to be marketed to. It poisons the experience, for everyone.

You might respond: Yeah, tell us something we don’t know, right?

Yet authors continue to use social media—and their online networks—as blunt instruments, posting things that beg people to pay attention and become a buyer or follower. Unfortunately, asking for such attention on a social media network is likely to ensure you won’t be getting any, except for those who already adore you or feel obligated to support you.

Here’s the much better alternative to begging: [...]

#writing #book marketing #am writing #amwriting

By Marcy Kennedy:

One of the most common complaints I hear about Twitter is that it moves too fast and you don’t know what to pay attention to. It’s a valid complaint, but there’s a simple solution—Twitter lists.

A Twitter list can be added to a column in TweetDeck or a stream in Hootsuite so that you’re able to watch only the tweets made by the people on that list.

Once you know how to use them, they become a powerful tool not only for making Twitter more enjoyable, but also for building your author platform. Before I give you my top six ways Twitter lists can help build your author platform, let me tell you how to [...]

#writing #book marketing #am writing #amwriting

By KM Logan

I had been blogging for 2 years and publishing eBooks for one. I was making tens of dollars a month. Then my husband and I were in a bit of a financial bind; Christmas was coming up and there were a few unexpected financial emergencies and a client who hadn’t paid me in 2 months.

Because I’m a bit of a “pull yourself up by the bootstraps person” and I’ve grown quite attached to staying at home with my children, I wrote another eBook at record speed so I wouldn’t have to find seasonal work. Within a week the book was written. Within a month it was edited and formatted. I lined up a blog tour with my blogging friends, got a cover design that was in the budget, and set a launch date.

My book [...]

#writing #book marketing #am writing #amwriting

By Elizabeth S. Craig:

I recently had someone email me asking how he could most effectively promote if he had no time at all to promote.

I know there have got to be plenty of writers in the same fix. If you’re new to publishing and you start researching how to market your book, you could end up very overwhelmed, fast.

The problem is that our books don’t sell themselves. It’s fine not to do any promo, but we can’t expect to be making money if we don’t.

I asked the writer how much time he actually had. If he really had as little as he said (which was basically no time), I figured he could [...]

#writing #self publishing #indie publishing #book marketing

By Joanna Penn:

I’m obsessed with learning about new places, different ways of looking at the world and scouring sources for little tidbits that can bring my story alive.

As well as enriching your writing, your research can also function as extra content that your readers will love. Plus, it can also be a great marketing tool, drawing people to check out the book.

So here’s some of the ways you can share your research with your readers: [...]

#writing #book marketing #am writing #amwriting

By Gabriela Pereira:

We can make big plans and dream up fabulous scenarios but ultimately, we have to come to terms with the fact that sooner or later we will fail at our resolutions.

This is probably not what you want to hear and it’s certainly not something I want to say, but the truth is that as soon as we set a goal, we are opening up ourselves to the possibility that we might fail. After all, if our goals were so easy that failure was impossible, then they’re [...]

#writing #motivation #am writing #amwriting #nanowrimo

By Rebecca Makkai:

“I love throwing rocks at tigers in the zoo,” you say, “but now that the weather’s cold, I need an indoor activity.”

Look no further. Writers are fun and easy to annoy. Minimum effort, maximum rage. Try these 14 simple tricks, and you might never need to pay for the Large Cat House again.

1) Go on Amazon and give the book one star because [...]

#writing #humor #am writing #amwriting #nanowrimo

By Lummox JR:

The other day I was asking about genres, for reasons previously explored, and I took some unexpected flak from another author about not knowing my world well enough. The fact that I left some unknowns in The Affix that I was willing to leave unexplained even to myself meant, he said, that I was not doing my job as a writer. Saying I didn’t know such-and-such was a “cop-out”. It was his opinion that a writer should know every facet of their world in and out, and that holding something back from oneself for the sake of preserving some mystery or wonder—even if doing so does no harm to the story in any way—is unacceptable for a professional. He pushed this to the point of being fairly insulting about it, implying that knowing your universe is the difference between being a good writer and an amateur.

It’s not that I can’t see his point, or even that I think he was trying to be a jerk about it. A writer should know the parameters of the world they’re writing. Even if they write with a [...]

#writing #writing tips #writing advice #writing help #nanowrimo

By John Yeoman:

Do you have a high creative IQ? If you’re a compulsive story writer, chances are you do. But what does IQ mean? Maybe [...]

#writing #creativity #am writing #amwriting #nanowrimo

By Adam Firestone:

I’m the unfortunate soul for whom the movie is ruined when the 41st round comes out of a fifteen round Glock magazine. Or, worse, when the Cadillac is blown sky high when the protagonist shoots it once with his hunting rifle. Moreover, the disappointment increases – verging in fact, on a sense of betrayal – when a book is involved. There’s a greater sense of involvement that comes with imagining the scene than when we merely consume someone else’s vision.

Misery, however, loves company. And so, for the rest of this piece, we’ll be discussing the realities of how things react to being shot. You know, so YOU can go to the movies and mutter disgustedly under your breath “THAT’S not the way it works!”

Vrooom! Screech! and Bang Bang Bang

The scene is a familiar one. The police cruiser arrives at the scene. Officers fling open the doors, leap out and take shelter behind opened doors. It’s so iconic and so dramatic that it’s practically the action scene archetype. And it’s so very wrong. But [...]

#writing #writing tips #writing help #writing advice #nanowrimo

By Janice Hardy:

Adverbs. Writers the world over just shuddered when I said that. The experts tell us to never use adverbs. Adverbs are bad, adverbs are evil, adverbs will sneak into your room late at night and strangle you in your bed. Well, not really. Poor use of adverbs is bad, but adverbs are a [...]

#writing #writing tips #writing help #writing advice #nanowrimo

From the blog Wise Ink:

In Wise Ink’s collective years of experience editing, we’ve discovered that having good mechanics means more than just knowing where a comma should go. It has to do with the words you use, and a lot of the time, spellcheck doesn’t catch mistakes. So, without further ado, here is our list of commonly confused words that muck up a manuscript: [...]

#writing #editing #am writing #amwriting #nanowrimo

By Linton Robinson:

I wrote this in response to an online discussion about things “not ringing true to readers”, even when it’s logical, factual or true life. It’s a problem writers have to come to grips with and it’s tricky because it’s contra-instinctual and comes right out of your blind spot. If you know something is for real, how do you modify it based on what other people might think is more real?

There is also a chagrin factor that might make you [...]

#writing #writing tips #am writing #amwriting #nanowrimo

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