From Our Blog
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Blurring the Lines: The Artistic Challenges of Blending Truth and Imagination
Fact and fiction. As a writer of historical novels, I find it endlessly intriguing to play with how to entwine the two. History has always fascinated me—I find the grand tapestry of the past is woven with so many richly colorful and textured threads that help us understand the present. And so, I’ve always enjoyed adding real historical events and real historical figures to my stories, though, f…
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After a recent interview with my author friend, she proudly shows me the covers for the next four books in her Christian romance series. My marketer’s eye immediately sees that the designs mimic each other too closely and aren’t distinguishable from one another. Their muddy color palette won’t pop against competitive titles, especially as a thumbnail online.
Wanting to support her success, I pr…
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Finding Your Hot Premise: Boiling Down Your Story Idea Into the Simplest Terms
We’ve all had that experience of stepping into an elevator, realizing you’re in there with an editor or an agent, and he or she asks you what you’re working on. As you stammer out your long-winded answer (starting off with the classic “Well, it’s complicated”), the moment ends (i.e., the elevator door opens) and said editor or agent goes their way. Could you have made use of that opportunity by…
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Authors are always on the lookout for ways to garner more publicity for their books. One way that’s been around for quite a while is to enter a contest. But there are many contests out there, and some of them charge high fees to enter, or require that you mail printed books to judges at your cost.
The first thing to consider is what you want from the contest or award. Is there a cash prize, whi…
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Unlocking the Power of Pinterest: Discover How Pinterest Can Elevate Your Author Platform, Connect With Readers, & Boost Book Sales
An author’s job: It’s not just writing It’s no secret that only half an author’s job is the actual writing of a book. The other half falls squarely in the realm of marketing. If you’re like me, spending that much time trying to build your brand and reach a wider audience is not what you want to be doing.
Social media While it’s true that social media has become a critical component of marketing…
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Traditional publishers offer the whole gamut of getting a book to market. Certain titles can receive attention from everything from editorial crews to marketing departments to teams devoted to online and digital sales. There could even be the boost of imprint-wide campaigns as well as outreach to influencers. The author, however, drives few, if any, of these decisions.
On the flip side, publish…