A great way to promote your book is by guest blogging, which is writing, for free, content that appears on another person’s blog. It’s sort of like being a guest host of a television program.

Most bloggers are more than happy to post your guest blog, as it reduces their workload and gets other readers (specifically those who follow you social media, because you’ll promote your guest blog) to take a look at their site. Some may ask that they have the opportunity to guest blog on your site in an exchange.

Guest blogging is a natural promotion tool for authors of nonfiction books. Simply write about topics that your book(s) address – bonus points if you can connect them to what’s current in the news or industry. Novelists, short story writers and poets also can find material to pen, though. It might involve tips for writing in your genre, self-publishing or promoting your book, or a nonfiction article about a topic that plays an important role in your book (such as creating a scientifically-plausible FTL device if you wrote a space opera novel).

Get started by listing a dozen or so blogs related to your book’s topic. For example, if you wrote a book about day hiking with children, blogs about hiking and parenting would work.

Next, make a list of a half-dozen or so topics that you might write about for those blogs. Make sure that those topics haven’t been covered in at least six months to a year on those blogs (And even then, that may be too soon for a blogger to post about it.).

Contact each of the blog owners via email to see if they would be interested in your guest blog. Include your list of topics with the email and ask which one they would prefer.

If they give you a green light on a topic, cross it off your list and get to writing the blog. Make sure you follow their blog rules for length and format. Also, don’t go heavy on plugging your book in the article; you can mention your book but always do so in relation to your topic, which should be the focus of the blog. You might even save the book mention for the blurb about who you are that appears at the end of the blog.

Note that you didn’t pen the blog until after the idea was accepted. Don’t waste your time writing a guest blog that never gets accepted, unless you can, of course, post it on your own blog later. In any case, you want to tailor your blog to the guest blogger’s readership, and you can’t do that until you know who you’re writing for.

Also, write a unique blog for each site. Most bloggers don’t want to run something that appeared elsewhere and likely will reject your article if you submit it (or be very upset with you if finding out afterward that it ran elsewhere).

Always promote your guest blog on your various social media. Don’t worry about this driving away readers from your blog. In fact, it’ll do the opposite. Readers will hold you in higher esteem if you’re guest blogging. The guest blog site owner also will appreciate your efforts and likely invite you to write another article.

Limit the number of a guest blog posts to any one site, however. As the number of readers at most blogs rotates slowly, any more than a single guest post a year at just means you’re hitting the same potential buyers of your book who already had the opportunity to make a purchase.

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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 decade, I’ve helped more than 300 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 book marketing 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:

For 10 minutes, write down the thoughts going through your head. Then read what you wrote. Spend another 10 minutes writing down your observations about your thoughts.

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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:

Anyone who’s used the English language knows from direct experience that multiple spellings of many words exist. Such is the case with this set of words.

Firsthand (all one word) is an adjective meaning that the information was obtained from personal experience or an original source; to wit: Thanks to the outdoor navigation course, we had firsthand experience using a compass. In this sentence, firsthand shows the kind of experience (which is a noun) that one had.

Firsthand also can be an adverb, as in: We’d seen firsthand the horrors of living in a war-ravaged country. In this case, firsthand shows how something was seen (which is a verb).

This is a North American spelling; in Britain, first-hand usually is used.

First hand (two words), however, is improper (no matter how well one knows English).

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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:

“Often with good sentiments we produce bad literature.” – Andre Gide

“In a good play, everyone is in the right.” – Fredrich Hebbel

“A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.” – Joseph Conrad

“Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it’s about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustration that it creates.” – Mordecai Richler

“The task of a writer consists in being able to make something out of an idea.” – Thomas Mann

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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:

The time you’ve set aside time for writing has arrived at last. You’ve been looking forward to it all day; pen and paper are before you, a cup of tea is brewed. Nobody is around so you can concentrate.

And yet you can’t.

You just can’t focus on writing, for your mind is firing off a hundred messages about anything but writing – what you need to do when you’re done writing, planning for the weekend, images of that good looking guy/gal who smiled at you in the coffee shop…

Bringing pen to paper, you try to focus on writing. A sentence comes out. Good. Then comes those distracting thoughts again.

You want to slam down your pen in frustration. How difficult can writing be?

What you really seek is to be “at one” with your writing, in which you are fully engaged in your writing, in which you know exactly what to write next and how to write it in the best way possible. You seek fluidity.

How do you achieve this merging of action and awareness, this intense, undivided focus on writing?

The first step is to write at a time when you are most creative. That time is different for everyone. For me, it’s the hours between breakfast and lunch. For others, it’s at night, for some the hour after they wake up. Experiment to figure out what that time is for you and then stick to writing during that period of the day. If you write when you are most creative and productive, you’ll be better able to remain focused during it.

Next, you must ensure that you have something to write about, that is, something to focus on during your writing session. What you choose to write must fall into a sweet spot between your skills and what is challenging. Sitting down to write a novel cold turkey probably is too high of a challenge. You may be able to handle writing a description of a setting or a character, however. Now select a random picture of a landscape or of a person and write a description of it. Your unfamiliarity with the photo makes this challenging, yet descriptive writing is within your abilities. The result is you will possess a sense of personal control and a feeling that you have the potential to succeed.

Before you start writing, focus yourself on the present moment. Do this by taking three deep breaths and thinking about how writing makes you feel alive and powerful, of its pure enjoyment. This helps quell any anxiety you may be feeling yet also heightens your senses.

Then begin writing. As doing so, train your mind to focus. Write for a minute; write anything, no matter its quality. The next day, write for two minutes, again remaining unconcerned about the quality. The day after that, write for three minutes. Keep adding a minute every day after that until you’re able to focus on nothing but writing during the time you’ve set aside for it. You may initially find that much of what you’ve written isn’t particularly great, but that’s all right. You’re goal is to train yourself to focus. Besides, you may find that various ideas from those sessions lead to several new stories that you can work on during future sessions, making focusing easier.

You’ll know that it’s working when writing becomes effortless. Time will slow and nothing will exist but you and the words you write. Yet, when you’re done with the session, you’ll be amazed at how quickly time passed.

When not writing, you still can prepare yourself to get “in the zone” during your sessions. Meditate daily to develop a sense of mindfulness. This gives your brain the ability to manage distractions, to be more self-aware so you can identify your true skills and what will be a challenge, all while growing your confidence. The end result is that during your writing session, you will feel uninhibited and somehow going beyond yourself. You will feel in tune with your writing and with the universe.

The fact is we’re happiest when in the flow because nothing else matters to us – not our stress, not the distracting irrelevant thoughts, not the inner negative voice that creates anxiety. We are in a positive mode filled with purpose and confidence.

And who wouldn’t want to be in that state when writing?

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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:

We’ve all experienced this before: You want to get hold of someone but don’t know how. You could look them up online and probably find their email and phone number, of course…if only you could remember their name. Every time you try typing in something that seems close, you come up nada.

It’s in such a situation that a low-tech solution would solve your problem: the tried-and-true business card, kept in your trusty wallet.

Whenever you meet someone who might be interested in any way in your book, give them your business card. Besides ensuring that the other person remembers your name and has your contact information, a business card provides you with credibility and validation. After all, if you weren’t a legitimate author with a book to be reckoned with, why would you have gone to all the trouble of having business cards made up?

In short, business cards create connections for you.

What to put on your business card? Every card should contain your:
• Name as it can be found online or on a book cover
• Title/position, which might be “Author of (your book’s title)”
• Email address
• Website address
• Other contact info (such as phone, fax, snail mail)
Anything more than this – except maybe a recognizable logo for your books if you’ve published a series of them – just clutters up the card.

That’s only one side of the business card, though. On the flip side, you may want to include an “advertisement” for yourself. Commercial writers, for example, include a list of services on the back of their cards. Fiction writers might include a brief synopsis of their current title.

Most business cards boast a fairly bland appearance and are printed on cream-colored paper. That’s okay, though, as the card’s purpose is to provide your name and contact information. To make yourself stand out, though, consider having the tone of your card’s lettering reflect the book’s genre or subject (such as a gothic-styled typeface if you’ve written a book about vampires), but don’t be tacky.

Who should you give your business card to? Anyone you connect with who’s interested in buying your book, literary agents who might want to represent your book, publishers who might want to print your book, designers who might want to illustrate your next book’s cover, reporters who might want to interview you about your book, etc. Writing conferences are great places for handing out such cards but carry them with you wherever you go – you never know when you night run into someone who shows an interest in your book.

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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: