From Our Blog
Overcoming Marketing Roadblocks
Sometimes, I think I might be a little psychic—and not always in a good way.
Earlier this summer, I chose our topics for the fourth quarter of 2025. Marketing dread is something I’ve been thinking about for a while as I hear friends and colleagues gripe about how much they do NOT like that aspect of publishing, so that fit for October. Planning for a new year was also a natural fit for December…
Marketing Your Book with Key Phrases
How to find the phrases that sell your books
Anyone who’s paid attention to advertising and marketing can tell you that the right phrases and words get a reaction from consumers. And that definitely goes for the marketing of your books. So how can you find the phrases and words that work for you and sell your unique books to your unique audience?
What’s the point of your marketing? Marketing is…
Beyond Goodreads: Exploring The Storygraph and Fable for Readers and Authors
If you’re a professional author, chances are you’ve had a love-hate relationship with Goodreads. Maybe it’s the clunky interface. Maybe it’s the Wild West of one-star ratings. Or maybe it’s just the nagging feeling that your beautifully crafted book deserves a little more … sparkle. The good news? New kids on the block—The StoryGraph and Fable—are offering fresh alternatives that are built w…
You can never read the same story twice. Some of us complain about returning to earlier favorites only to find they’ve been rendered unreadable by visits from an imaginary being called “the Suck Fairy.” The Suck Fairy brings to our attention the unfortunate assumptions our favorite authors made as they created their fictional worlds: the racism implicit in Tarzan’s superiority over Black Africa…
Book Cover Design: Strategies, Tactics, and AI
Gather savvy authors together and guess what we’re going to chat about? Writing craft, publishing, our latest manuscript woes, marketing techniques, and, yes, book covers.
We asked NINC members what you wonder about when it comes to cover design, and you answered. You wanted to know about book cover strategies, tactics, and the use of AI (artificial intelligence). Even if you didn’t submit a sp…
Substack as an Email Alternative
I was first introduced to Substack by Joanna Campbell Slan, who migrated her newsletter list there in December 2023.
“Substack has brought me 207 new subscribers,” she said. “Since I don’t pay Substack, I count that as a huge win. Previously, I was paying around $120 a month, and the other email list servers sure didn’t recommend me to anyone.”
Should you use Substack to deliver your newsletter…