New authors are confronted with book marketing advice everywhere they look. This person sold 10,000 copies in three months following a system that they’re selling, while that one got on a major television show by sending a video to a Hollywood star. Some of these tactics work may work for you, but others won’t. Navigating this advice can be […]
Chickens, Eggs, and Outlines
Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, shares occasional “reports from the trenches” on his weekly writing blog, describing the state of his current writing project. So I thought I’d try something similar. It may look like I’m cranking out books seamlessly, but most of you see only the finished work, not the process […]
Books for Writers: The Shallows
If you want to read something that gives you chills, check out The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. No, this isn’t the script for the move about a surfer and sharks. It’s a book about the Internet and our brains – a different kind of thriller. I not sure how I missed reading the book when it […]
Ghosts and Other Invisible Writers
“I read invisible writers…” Their words are all around us. I detect them in press releases, blog posts and web pages, even in articles attributed to specific executives. Some of these words are written by ghosts — well, ghostwriters. They intentionally choose to disappear behind another purported author. Invisibility is part of their job or […]
The Five Phases of Book Research
My favorite part is of the writing process isn’t crafting the perfect sentence, making a brilliant point, or polishing words. No, it’s research. That’s a good thing, because as a nonfiction author, I spend a great deal of time actively researching, even when not at work on another book. Sometimes that work doesn’t look like […]
Subscription Guilt Trips
I was having a comment conversation with Robbie Kellman Baxter the other day and… Wait – you don’t know what a comment conversation is? It’s what writers do when they start exchanging ideas and stories in the comments of a blog post, because they’re too lazy to pick up the phone and call, and are […]