Do you ever catch yourself thinking, “I’ll never sell,” or “I’m not talented enough”? If so, you’re not alone. We’ve all been there, doubting our abilities and waiting for some magical moment when we finally get chosen. But guess what? That thinking is backward! If we believe that it’s not our turn, that we’re not […]
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The Pros and Cons of Blogging for Fiction Authors: Weighing Time Costs Against Marketing Benefits In the digital age, authors are no longer confined to traditional routes of getting their work noticed. Blogging has emerged as a powerful tool for fiction writers to build their audience, engage with readers, and establish a personal brand. However,
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Way back in February 2018, when this site was so new it still smelled of fresh paint, I wrote a post, “What to do when life tries to derail your plans“, which included lots of advice on hanging tough. But sometimes, hanging tough isn’t the smart thing to do. I’m currently in the middle of
Life has derailed me. (Just a bit) Read More »
Following up on last week’s post about finding more time to read. Once you’ve got back to reading for pleasure, which is key, you’ll quickly come across “other” reading. Call this purpose-driven reading. For example; While videos aren’t “reading” per se, they can be treated in the same way as reading for the sake of
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Squeezing Reading Into Your Life And why you should try. All authors are told to read more. We’re told that frequently. Most of us came to writing because of a love of reading, so reading a lot was never the issue. As soon as the ambition to write fiction is born, and we start to
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The idea of marginalia (notes written in the margins of a print book) will either make you recoil in horror, or nod sagely because you’re already a compulsive note-taker. This excerpt from Mortimer Adler’s How To Read A Book is worth your consideration: When you buy a book, you establish a property right in it,
Marginalia and the Fiction Author Read More »
As soon as you start learning how to market your books, you trip over a lot of earnest advice about improving the SEO on your site. There are gurus, books, courses and very expensive plug-ins out there designed to boost your SEO rankings. And you should ignore all of it. What is SEO? Just in
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How often do you think, even in the back of your brain, “I’m too busy to write!”? Especially if you are working any sort of alternative revenue stream, or have a day job, writing becomes much easier to off-load with the justification that this thing over here is paying the bills and deserves your attention.
Busy Is Good. Busy is GREAT. Read More »
One of the most-visited posts on this site is “5 Types Of Writing Sprints – And Why You Need This Tool“, with “Tailor Writing Sprints to Maximize Flow” a close second, along with “Increasing Your Hourly Word Rate“. They all deal with word sprints. Word Sprints are exactly what they sound like. Writing at maximum
A New Type of Sprint! — Graduated Word Sprints. Read More »
Slightly off the beaten track today. At Stories Rule Press, we offer a formatting service to authors: Give us your manuscript and we will produce validated ePub and Mobi files that you can upload to the retail sites without issue. We’ll also do print layouts. But recently there’s been a rash of manuscripts come in
Cleaning Up Your Manuscript for The Best Formatting Results Read More »
