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All too often the enormity of writing a novel or a nonfiction book overwhelms writers. They may have spent a week writing an hour each day, come up with only 2500 words, and think they’ll never finish the task. It’s akin to driving through rush hour traffic and wondering if you’ll ever get through this. At…

Often new authors just think about getting their books into paperback and ebook. But potential purchasers of your book don’t just read words on a page or screen; they also enjoy books by listening to them. With the explosion of listening devices that connect to the Internet – from iPads and Kindle tablets to iPods and…

To stop writing is to deny all who helped you become a better writer. No one improves without the support of another. There were the teachers who taught you to read and write. There were the parents, instructors, friends and maybe even lovers who encouraged your love of reading and writing. There were the authors whose…

The key to successful marketing begins long before you actually publish your first book. This should be done to build an audience for your book, so once it’s released you have some potential readers and buyers who can give it traction on a bestsellers chart at Amazon.com and who can potentially write some reviews of it.…

The moment you’ve self-published a book – presuming you’ve done nothing else to set up your business – you’re a sole proprietor. That’s right, you’ve started your own business, ipso facto! A sole proprietor is someone who is the lone owner of an unincorporated business. A sole proprietorship is the business itself. It’s the most common structure…

Sometimes when reading a story, readers find themselves doing a double take and re-reading a page or two. This usually occurs because readers are no longer able to make sense of the narration. They’ve lost their way and are backtracking. As an author, your job is to lead readers through the story. If readers get lost,…

Sometimes writers find themselves unable to move forward with their story because it doesn’t match their vision of what the tale should be. For example, the opening you’ve penned doesn’t perfectly match the outline, making useless the latter’s bullet points of what the rising action should look like. Or maybe a beta reader recommended taking a…

You’ve probably spent years mastering the craft of writing and have authored an excellent book. Hurried, mistake-ridden formatting can nullify all of your good work, though. Simply put, if your book is difficult to read merely because of its appearance, few will bother to work their way through it. At the very least, an unprofessional appearance…

In storytelling, plot and characters are entwined to the point that one really could not exist without the other. Arguably, a story centers on the protagonist (character) solving a problem (plot). A story doesn’t exist if there’s if there’s no character attempting to solve a problem or if the character has no problem to solve. In…