The best part of my job as a writing coach and editor is the opportunity to mentor aspiring authors. A significant amount of my time with aspiring authors ends up on an invoice, but not all of it, not by a long shot. You are probably already familiar with the Wordsmith Writing Coaches “less-than-15-minutes-is-free” policy, […]
A Bad Question That Leads to Good Insights
Here’s a common question that came up in a Facebook group earlier this week. It is more profound than it might seem: “Why should people buy your book and not your competitor’s?” My longer answer: This question completely misunderstands the nature of 95% of the book industry. This kind of competition is real and intense […]
Kickstarter: Mighty Ally of Indie Authors
Brandon Sanderson’s surprise Kickstarter book launch raises $41 million! It passed $4m in the first week… because Brandon did it right. (And he’s already a superstar author, but still, he did it right) Not just indie authors, but everyone in the author community is talking about how to sell directly to readers. After the mind-boggling […]
Print-On-Demand Hardcover Books are Easier Than Ever
As of September 21st, we can now offer our KDP self-published books in hardcover, not just softcover! This is the first major tangible improvement to KDP since they acquired CreateSpace’s best-in-class print-on-demand capabilities, expanding “Kindle Publishing” from ebooks alone to both ebooks and paperbacks… and now, finally, hardcover! Of course, this is still POD, so […]
AudioBookCup is a piracy ring
I don’t spend much time on social media (I might be the only person in America who really should spend more time on it), but I’m glad I was checking notifications this morning. Tom Lennon posted this in a private Facebook group for audiobook narrators about five hours ago. I’ve put Tom’s words in italics […]
The Elusive Logline
At a recent PRESS session, an author was trying to hammer their book description down into a proper logline. This can be more challenging than it might seem, especially because a book description and a logline differ in a subtle but fundamental way. A book description is just that: it describes, to a greater or […]
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