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In most stories, someone causes the problem that vexes the main character. This character is called the antagonist. Examples of well-known antagonists include the Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz,” Sauron from “The Lord of the Rings,” and Scar in “The Lion King.” Usually a story is not told from the antagonist’s perspective. In…

If as a self-published author you wish to separate your book sales from your personal income, you’ll need to keep separate bank accounts. Getting a bank account for your royalties, however, is a bit more complicated than simply going to the bank and opening one. Generally, you’ll need to ensure your business has a different name…

As Goodreads is the place for readers to hang out, it also ought to be the place for authors to focus a good part of their book promotion efforts. After all, if you wrote a book about the history of tractors, websites focusing on tractors may attract many nonreaders, but Goodreads members interested in farm equipment definitely will be inclined…

One excellent way to sell more books – and to finally quit your day job – is to build your book into a business. This strategy more readily lends itself to nonfiction authors. Writers who’ve published multiple books on the same topic or in the same genre also will find it even easier going. However, many…

When writing chapter titles and section headers in nonfiction books, you’ll want to use a consistent style. For example, if one section title is written as What Hiking Apparel to Buy for Children, but the next one is written as Where to buy hiking apparel, the styles are inconsistent as the former is capitalized but the latter is…

Readers who have reached the end of your novel are prime candidates to talk about your book. One great way to encourage them to do so is by adding a reader’s guide. This provides some boost to members of a book club or a reading group who want to recommend that your title be added to…

A number of companies offer “publishing packages” – often costing several hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars – to format your book, design a cover, and then upload it so it can be sold online as an ebook or paperback. Are such services worth the cost? The straight answer is no. The whole idea of “self-publishing” is…

One way to make your writing more vivid is to use sensory details rather than internalized ones. Sensory details (blue, sour, loud, smooth) are specific rather than general. Internalized details (angry, pleased, innocent, civilized) amount to using fuzzy words and give no real impression of what is being described. Consider this passage, written using internalized details:…

Your book presentation is over, and you’re probably feeling a great sense of relief. You put a lot of work into it, readers and audience members likely responded favorably to it, and you’ve got a few extra bucks in your pocket from book sales. You probably are even inspired to go out and write a hundred…

One of the problems of living in our era of fast-paced technological change is that we don’t have a good sense of when such products that are such a common part of our lives today actually existed. Should a writer not do the proper research and so include a device common today in time period in…