Writing and Publishing News

When is the last time you had quiet time to sit and write whatever you wanted for an entire morning or afternoon? Do you ever get free time to just write without interruption? It seems as though, for most writers, life gets in the way and writing takes a backseat to work, family, entertaining, travel [...]

It may seem contradictory, at times—what you hear from publishing professionals. But this is only because we each have different areas of strengths, interest and passion. We have varied backgrounds—some professionals come directly from publishing houses or literary agencies, others are relatively new to the industry, but they’ve learned rather quickly, others, like me, have [...]

I listened to Mark Levine, author of The Fine Print of Self-Publishing, in a teleseminar yesterday. The teleseminar was presented FREE for SPAWN members—just another benefit of joining SPAWN (Small Publishers, Artists and Writers Network). I’m sure that our members who listened in learned a great deal about the publishing industry—at least from Mark’s perspective [...]

As I said in a recent blog post, I am rewriting my book, Over 75 Good Ideas for Promoting Your Book. It will now be Over 100 Good Ideas for Promoting Your Book. You may wonder if there are more ways to promote a book now than there was in 2000, when I first produced [...]

How many of you could write a fresh, informative blog post every single day of the year? I take it for granted. I write my blog entry every day as part of my morning routine. And I try to do so with you in mind. When I mention this to people, they give me a [...]

Have you ever wondered when you can stop promoting your book? How many promotional activities do you have to pursue in order to sell enough books? And by the way, what is “enough” books? I can tell you—and I have told you, by the way—that your book will sell for as long as you are [...]

Do you collect resources? When you read a book related to writing, publishing or your field of writing, do you always check for a resources page section? When you write a nonfiction book or article, do you typically include resources for your readers? Resources are important for researchers. If you are writing a book, you [...]

What are you doing today toward promoting your book? What did you do yesterday? You’ll find that book promotion is sort of like a snowball. The more energy you put into it—the more results you will see. But with book promotion, sometimes the effects of your efforts aren’t apparent right away. I believe that’s why [...]

I teach and preach about the process of landing book reviews for your new (and even older) fiction or nonfiction book. But does anyone listen to me? Apparently not! Even long time members of SPAWN, who have access to years of my articles and posts featuring how to get your book reviewed, have been brainwashed [...]

Those of you living in California know that we’ve been dealing with a lot of rain this week. Even if you don’t live in the West, you are aware of the nonstop rain, flood and mudslide warnings, thunder storms and even a few tornadoes (one hit a mile away from where my mother lives in [...]