The biggest question facing any writer is what to blog about. You’ve got lots of options:
• Future appearances – Upcoming book signings/readings, guest speaking appearances, and appearances on radio and TV broadcasts all can be promoted on your blog. After the events are held, be sure to blog about them as well, giving pictures from the event if possible.
• Mentions of your book – Anytime your book or yourself appear in a newspaper, magazine, newsletter or blog, write about it. Include links to the articles or reviews. Other bloggers particularly will appreciate the plug and are likely to remember you for your next book.
• Updates on the author’s next book – If a reader likes you enough to follow your blog, they’ll be curious when your next book is coming out. You probably don’t want to give too much away about the book or you run the risk of giving a spoiler. But you can about your progress and maybe some of the research you’re doing.
• Announcements of your other published work – Plug when articles or stories you’ve written have come out in magazines or in online journals.
• Awards received – Should you receive any awards for your writing or if penning nonfiction related to the subject matter you write about, announce them.
• Your thoughts on other books – Focus on books in your genre or on your subject matter. Don’t write a scathing review lest you sound like you’re trying to plug your book.
• Your tips on subject matter – As a published author, you’re now an expert! If you’ve penned fiction, you may focus on the craft of writing. If you’re authored a nonfiction book, share advice about your subject matter; for example, my Hikes with Tykes blog covers gear, medical emergencies, great trails, hiking games and activities, and more, all related to hiking with children.
• Answer readers’ questions – Such questions might include seeking of advice about the subject matter, wondering why certain events occurred in your novel, or inquiries about your background. Be polite and helpful to such readers, even if they’re question shows they’re a jerk.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 350 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my self-publishing guidebooks:

Suffering from writer’s block or need to add some spunk to your writing? The problem may be that you need to change up your routine.

To that end, try this tip:

Open a dictionary or a thesaurus to any page and select a random word. Do this four more times, and carry the list of words wherever you go. When you find yourself with down time, write a paragraph about how the surroundings you are in – the conference room, the landscape passing by you on the bus ride, a store while waiting in line – exemplify that word. Better yet, select the words for your list from a story you’re penning, focusing on incomplete images or concepts in your manuscript.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

Another page you’ll want on a website promoting your book is an “About the Author.” Readers love to learn more about the author of a book they’re reading. If writing a nonfiction book, the author’s bio helps establish you as a qualified expert to write about your book’s topic, encouraging potential readers to purchase your writing. Finally, it gives the media information to add to any articles or blog entries about you.

Write the bio in third person, as if someone else were telling about you. This will sound more professional on your website.

There are no hard and fast rules about exactly how the bio will read. There are some aspects about your life that you may want to get into the bio, however:
• What do you do for a living?
• Have you won any awards (writing or otherwise)?
• Is this your first published book? If not, what are the titles of the other books you’ve published?
• Has your writing appeared elsewhere (magazines, newspapers, blogs, etc.)?
• What makes you qualified to write the book (this is particularly important for authors of nonfiction books, not so relevant to novelists)?
• Where did you graduate from school, what is your highest degree, and what was it in?
• Where do you reside?
• Is there a blog or website about you or the book readers can be sent to? What is its name and URL?

Using answers to the above questions, here are a couple of author’s bios that can be models of how to write one (The first is for my nonfiction book Hikes with Tykes; the second is for the author of a novel):

Rob Bignell is a long-time journalist, editor and hiker. He and his son Kieran have been hiking together for the past four years. Before Kieran, Rob served as an infantryman in the Army National Guard and taught middle school students in New Mexico and Wisconsin. His newspaper writing has won several journalism awards, from editorial to sports reporting. In 2001, The Prescott Journal, which he served as managing editor of, was named Wisconsin’s Weekly Newspaper of the Year. Currently he is CEO and owner of Inventing Reality Editing Service. He lives with his son in Southern California.

Bro Craig grew up in Coos River, Oregon, a third-generation Oregonian. As a child, he learned the value of friendship, honor and hard work. After graduating from Marshfield High School, he spent a year at Willamette University then transferred to the University of Oregon, earning a bachelor’s in marketing. During the next 35 years, he worked in the agriculture, aquaculture, forest products, and electronics industries. He obtained his commodity trading license, securities license, and Manager’s Food Handlers permit while starting, buying and selling businesses. He always had been encouraged to write about his adventures and experiences in life, and upon finally sitting down to pen them found his passion. Thus, “The Letters.” This is his first of many novels to come in which he mixes fiction with nonfiction, leaving the reader questioning.

The author’s bio that you write for your website also can serve as the biography that appears on your book’s back cover or at the end of the book.

Finally, include a photo of yourself on this page. Readers not only like to learn about an author’s background, they like to see what she looks like. Usually a head shot is fine, but make sure it doesn’t look like an amateurish snapshot or one of those police mug shots.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 350 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my self-publishing guidebooks:

“The writer’s genetic inheritance and her or his experiences shape the writer into a unique individual, and it is this uniqueness that is the writer’s only stuff for sale.” – James Gunn

“When we see a natural style we are quite amazed and delighted, because we expected to see an author and find a man.” – Blaise Pascal

“Make it new.” – Ezra Pound

“When you take stuff from one writer, it’s plagiarism; but when you take it from many writers, it’s research.” – William Mizner

“Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself.” – James F. Stephan

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 350 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my self-publishing guidebooks:

“There is no need for the writer to eat a whole sheep to be able to tell what mutton tastes like.” – W. Somerset Maugham

“My writing is full of lives I might have led. A writer imagines what could have happened, not what really happened.” – Joyce Carol Oates

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” – Henry David Thoreau

One can no more say, “To write stay home,” than one can say, “To write leave home.” It is the writing that makes its own rules and conditions for each person. – Eudora Welty

“I write with experiences in mind, but I don’t write about them, I write out of them.” – John Ashbery

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 350 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my self-publishing guidebooks:

An excellent way to promote your book, especially if you write nonfiction, is with a speaking career.

As you’ve authored a book, you’re an expert on the topic you’ve written about. People will want to hear you provide insights on the topic, learn a little about how you wrote the book, and discover some interesting insider info about you as an author. You can sell your books at a table following the speech.

To become a public speaker, begin by selecting a topic you’ll speak about. Make sure it relates to your books. The topic should be focused and narrow; if you wrote a nonfiction about car maintenance, for example, “how to fix your car” is too broad but “6 Hacks to Keep Your Car from Breaking Down” is perfect. The speech should be written to last about 20 minutes, though you may want to have sections marked that can be pulled or added should an event require you speak a shorter/longer period. Usually a double-space typed piece of paper equals two minutes of speaking.

Next, you must promote yourself to land speaking gigs.

Start on your author’s site with a web page that focuses on your speaking services. The text on the page should explain what you speak about in no more than a couple of paragraphs, six sentences total. You may want to use a bulleted list to make it easy to scan. Include a bio of yourself; the bio should be written to answer why you are qualified to talk about your subject. Include testimonials on your page. At least three, but no more than a dozen, are needed. Each testimonial should speak to a different aspect or talent – you’re an engaging speaker, you’re knowledgeable and informative, you’re asked by groups to come back and speak again. At the page’s bottom, include the logos and names of companies or organizations to which you’ve spoken.

If your author’s page doesn’t have a contact page, add one, and include a link to it on your speaking services page. You also may want to list your rates, especially if they undercut your competition; often when someone looking to book a speaker comes to your page, they’re already interested, and the deciding factor is how much you charge.

Be sure to get yourself business cards for your public speaking service. This is a great item to hand out with books you sell and whenever networking.

Speaking of which, you’ll need to do a lot of it to land speaking jobs. Attend conferences, workshops and events related to your book’s topic and let everyone there know you’re available. You also can write an introductory letter to heads of organizations that regularly have guest speakers, though this is like a cold call; you’ll land a few jobs but most letters won’t net a response.

As you give speeches, keep track of the questions asked afterward. The questions can point you in the direction of several new blog entries you might write and even products you might provide; for example, if the you’ve written a book about how to ski, you’ll almost always get the question “What are some great ski trails in this area that you’d recommend?” That sounds like the beginning of a ski trail guidebook.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 350 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my self-publishing guidebooks:

When discussing fiction, sometimes the terms “story” and “structure” are used interchangeably with “plot.” But a story is not a plot or the story’ structure. While this misuse of terminology may seem trifling, it unfortunately mangles many beginning writers’ conception of what plot is, ultimately harming their manuscripts.

A story is an account of how characters react to events. This means not just their physical but their intellectual and emotional responses. As such, a story is more than plot – it is about characters. These events take place someplace and sometime, so setting also is an aspect of story. The events are told from a particular perspective, so point of view is an element of a story as well. There may be a message when telling this account, so theme can be part of a story. Craftsmanship matters, such as the writer’s style, and also can be considered an element of story.

Children, when asked to recount a story, often merely tell about the events that involved conflicts – that is, they only tell or write about the plot. Though they will mention a character’s name for convenience’s sake, they don’t tell how the character grew. The setting often is skipped, and point of view and theme is entirely ignored.

Likewise, if a writer thinks of a story and plot as being synonymous, then short shrift is given to the characters, setting, point of view and theme. The result will be flat protagonists, locations that don’t really enhance the story, selection of a point of view that isn’t the best for the tale (or even a mixing of multiple points of view), and a hazy, poorly developed theme. Instead, plot needs to be thought of as one of several complex components of a story.

Likewise, structure is not story. Neither is it plot exactly. Instead, structure is the way the plot is organized or arranged. For example, a plot might be structured via an inciting incident-rising action-climax-falling action-denouement. Or it might be the hero journey/quest story. Or it may follow a format as television shows uses with a teaser, parts whose lengths are determined by commercial breaks, and a closing. Each of these pieces are elements in the way a plot is structured.

Often beginning writers don’t think much about which structure they will use. Instead they simply begin writing a series of events that involve conflict between characters. This can result in an uneven account of those events, perhaps with too many pages spent on the opening. Or possibly the events don’t build enough tension to merit the climax that is written. Or maybe loose ends aren’t tied up in the end.

Thus, understanding the difference between story, plot and structure isn’t just an academic exercise. It really can help you fully plan out exactly how to best tell about the events you’re recounting.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my guidebooks for plotting your story:

Suffering from writer’s block or need to add some spunk to your writing? The problem may be that you need to change up your routine.

To that end, try this tip: Observe other people while in a public location. As you don’t have the full context of what they’re talking about or doing, make up a situation they are in – planning a heist, fleeing an alien assigned to assassinate them, deciding where they will hide a dead body, and so on. Now wrap their gestures and snatches of conversation into this situation and create a scene or even a whole story.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks: