I’ve had some moderate success doing promotions of discounted books. These two blog posts for the Nonfiction Author’s Association lay out my process and results: Part One covers setting the price, duration, and promotion plans for your discounted sale. Part Two is about evaluating the performance of your campaign Check them out and see if […]
How Shortcuts Cheat the Writer
We’ve all heard those seductive promises: Write your novel in a weekend! Make six figures from blogging this year You can become a best-selling author using ghostwriters Although the titles are fictional, their real-world counterparts abound on the Internet. If you dream of publishing a book or “being a writer,” these promises are compelling. I’m […]
Writing to Persuade: A Book Review
Short Version If you want to change people’s opinions with your words, and particularly if you want to write an opinion piece that makes an impact, read this new book by the former editor of the New York Times Op-Ed page. Writing to Persuade by Trish Hall interweaves fun, behind-the-scenes stories about the workings of the Times […]
How to Set a Deadline that Works
Does your next writing project have a deadline? If not, I suggest you give yourself one. The larger the project, the more important it is to have a deadline. Deadlines make the work better There’s scientific research for this from Dan Ariely, described in his book Predictably Irrational. If you don’t want to read the […]
Why Writing Takes More, and Less, Time than You Think
People often ask me how long it took me to write something: a book, a blog post, a paper, whatever. I suspect what they want to know is this: how many hours did you put into it? I never know how to answer. Even if I tracked my time, where would I draw the line? […]
How to Write about Metaphorical Gray Rhinos
My first job in marketing involved pitching software for database backup and recovery, specifically to reduce downtime and data loss. At that time, databases weren’t as distributed and resilient as they are now, and outages happened more often than anyone wanted. We discovered that many businesses weren’t motivated to invest in backup and recovery solutions […]