Here something instructive about building suspense in mystery fiction by using unreliable narrators, from Jane K. Cleland, posted on Jane Friedman’s blog. Do you use these techniques?
Category Archives: writing novels
Step By Step Instructions for Promotion of your Book with Twitter Ads
You may want to partake of this comprehensive advice on how to run and manage Twitter Ads.
I’ve written a couple posts about Twitter Ads now, and most of the feedback I’ve gotten has been: SLOW DOWN! People want a step-by-step on how to (hopefully) reproduce the success I’ve had with Twitter Ads. And I’m the kind of fella who gives the people what they want! (Occasionally, if I feel like it.) There are roughly a zillion steps, so I’m going to do this in a bunch of blog posts.
Before we begin, I need you to take a minute and count how many books you’ve written. I’ll wait. (doo-be-doo-be-doo…) Back? What’d you come up with? Is it one book? If so, then I’ll wait while you go finish the next book. Because what we’re going to do is run a break even advertising campaign. It isn’t going to cost you any money in the end, but you aren’t going to make any money either. This…
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» 15 Publishers of Mystery Novels That Accept Submissions Without an Agent
A list I’ve been looking for a long time! As is so often the case, found it through Chris the Story Reading Ape. Hope you find it useful!
Reblogged on WordPress.com
Source: » 15 Publishers of Mystery Novels That Accept Submissions Without an Agent
Filed under business of writing, Publishing, small presses, Writing, writing novels
How Much Should You Spend On Self-Publishing Your Book?
What about it, folks. Is this what it costs to self-publish? If you had to choose and were paying these prices, where would YOU allocate your funds?
I received an article with this information and wanted to share. Although I didn’t use Reedsy for editing and my book cover, I found I fell within most of the pricing ranges.
One thing I didn’t see on this infographic was the Q&A time with the editor. I certainly had questions as I moved through the process and the last thing I wanted was to be left hanging if my editor said, “this doesn’t work in the plot.” I’ve worked with previous editors who would make a comment and instead of being able to ask a few questions you had to make the changes, submit, and pay again. I’m not clear what Reedsy offers, but if you’re looking for an editor, it’s an important topic to ask about.
By Maryann Yin on May. 2, 2016 
Until Next Time…
Formatting in Word for PC users
Here’s a detailed post by Melinda Clayton from Indies Unlimited on stripping unwanted formatting from your Word document before submitting it to Kindle. Her directions apply to PC users. I use a Mac, and was able to format my books fairly easily following Mark Coker’s directions for Smashwords. In both cases, making sure you have a clean document is essential.
My InDesign experience is much more complicated. I’m close to submitting to Ingram and will see how it works. More on my crazy journey into InDesign for IngramSpark coming soon!
May Be A Reason Your Editor Is Crabby…
Here’s a comprehensive “editor’s POV” discussion shared by Chris the Story Reading Ape. In my experience, careful reading of directions and the ability to follow them is a learned skill. On the one hand, as a teacher (and as many of my fellow teachers regularly lamented), getting students to follow written directions was one of the greatest of pedagogical challenges. Yet I’ve found myself misreading directions or missing an important caveat or guideline—especially when I’m trying to do something technical online :-(. So I can’t be too judgmental!
Have you ever been in an editor’s shoes? How has the experience affected your own relationship with editors?
To find out why, click on the link or Author Donald J Bingle’s photo below:
There-May-Be-A-Reason-Your-Editor-Is-Crabby
Advertising/Marketing for Indie Authors
Brittney Sahin often shares her experiences as a savvy Indie author. This post has lots of good marketing information.
Up until a few weeks ago I was paying $50 to have Facebook ads/banners created. I am not great at graphic design, so I didn’t think I’d be capable of creating my own. But when I saw how much I could purchase images from shutterstock.com (5/$50), I decided I needed to create ads/banners/teasers on my own.
This information is probably old news to most, but if I can even help 1 person I’d love to share what I have learned. After a lot of research I discovered canva.com. This website is amazing. The price for each ad/banner/design is between $0-1. Hmm. Free/$1 or the $50 I was spending before–not a tough decision. I can create so many different ads/banners/teasers.
I spent a lot of time playing around with it, and I am still learning, but here are a few sample ads/banners/teasers I have created. Just note- be careful for the ratio of text to image for Facebook…
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April 27, 2016 · 10:06 am
A Good Review on Basics: Avoiding Writing Scams
This piece from Just Publishing Advice
distills some important basic considerations to attend to for those of us trying to learn the book-publishing and marketing process. I get “requests” to submit manuscripts quite often and have usually wondered who it is that’s so desperate to see my work when traditional agents turn down hundreds of submissions each week. This article helps to put the situation in perspective.
How to Tell Which Self-Publishing Company is Right For You
A really informative checklist!
Filed under writing novels
A Serious Question about Goodreads Giveaways
While there seem to be many “advisors” out there telling me that Goodreads Giveaways is a path to selling books, I’ve been reading an awful lot of negatives from people who’ve actually run them. Has ANYBODY who has actually run one found it to be a route to selling books? If so, please share your real-life positive experiences and explain to us how you made the process work. Ideally, I’d like to know if this can be a good route to more sales from people who do NOT already have strong or established platforms. Thanks!
Just Can't Help Writing 