business Archives

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 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 specific questi…

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…

I led my first writer/reader panel nearly 30 years ago. In many ways, Giving a Good Panel is even trickier than Giving a Good Session. The latter is solely dependent upon your skills and knowledge, but the former requires a degree of cooperation, a balancing of knowledge and time, and a seriously good moderator. Over the years, I’ve seen both brilliant and disastrous panels. This can be easily …

The author business books we immerse ourselves intend to be related to craft, processes (such as outlining for plotters), or productivity for authors. Those are fine and helpful, but I’ve learned valuable lessons from books that are not author or writing focused and believe it’s beneficial to pull ideas from outside our industry to help build a successful author career. The following books help…

Let’s face it—happy readers come back for more. While the digital age has transformed how we connect with our audience, one truth remains: creating lifelong fans beats making one-time sales. The best part? Readers don’t expect perfection. They just want to know you’ve got their back when issues pop up. The common support scenarios Tech troubles. What button do I push? Most SOS calls are about e…

When listing their 10 top horror novels for 2024, The New York Times said we’re in a golden age of horror, which is wonderful news for anyone who writes—or wants to write—in the genre. When I got my adult library card at 13, I went straight for the horror section. That’s what I loved to read and also what I wrote. But when I started thinking about writing for publication, I discovered that the …