Blog | Page 8 of 11

Welcome to the month of December, the time of year when many authors are both looking back at what worked and what didn’t go so well over the past twelve months … while at the same time, we begin to plan in earnest for the next year of writing, releasing, and marketing. For those of us who attended the NINC conference, as well as perhaps a few other author education events that take place in th…

When I was a brand-new, green author who knew next to nothing and had no clue about how to promote my just-published first book, a wise friend told me that I needed a website. She sent me to Godaddy.com to buy my domain name and then constructed the basics of a very rudimentary website for my author business and books. To me, it felt like magic. Nowadays, thanks to some generous author assistan…

Of my 16 self-published books, only half are in audiobook format. This is mostly due to the significant underwriting cost of bringing each to market (from $1,500 to $3,000 each). I have tried various methods for getting these to market, including selling my audio rights to a traditional publisher and self-publishing—either by underwriting the cost myself or royalty sharing with no up-front cost…

It would be impossible to sit down and list every LGBTQ+ stereotype that might pop up in a work of fiction. For one thing, stereotypes change as society changes, and they can be hard to pin down, it’s more a feeling you get while reading than a specific image. A stereotype might only be noticeable to someone from the group being depicted, which means that authors writing outside their own exper…

Cozy mysteries have been popular since the days of Agatha Christie. Readers enjoy these stories that are a subgenre of the traditional mystery. Detective stories, police procedurals, and courtroom dramas also fall under the mystery umbrella. In a traditional mystery, there’s a murder that must be solved. Missing persons or theft are other possibilities, as long as they present a puzzle for read…

We’ve all heard the widely accepted advice given to authors who want to succeed in today’s crowded fiction space: write a series, stick to popular genres and sub-genres, and target a wide audience. This all make perfect sense and has yielded enviable levels of success for many authors. But sometimes going for the widely popular just isn’t the path for us, and deciding to go a niche route is a v…