Melinda VanLone As I’ve pointed out a few (thousand) times before, your book cover is a marketing tool ... the most vital one you have in your marketing toolbox. It exists for one reason, and no, it’s not to contain printed pages—you could do that with a shopping bag if that’s all you needed. The […]

Penny Sanseveri From a business standpoint, giving something away for free to get a sale may seem counterintuitive. How can giving something away for free help you make money in the long run?   Think of offering those freebies as a marketing expense: the cost of exposure. Free promotions are a great way to get you […]

Jenn Windrow I’m a firm believer in writing what you love, not what you think will sell. For example, I write in two genres that have fallen out of favor with the big New York publishing houses…paranormal romance (PNR) and urban fantasy (UF). And not just any urban fantasy. Mine has the dreaded V-word…vampires.  But […]

by Julie Cantrell The standard advice given to writers is to brand yourself. Find a genre, and stick with it. This strategy has proven successful for many contemporary authors such as Danielle Steel and Mary Higgins Clark, but even Jane Austen had perfected the practice years earlier, and Agatha Christie used it to pen mysteries […]

Laura Drake I read a recent article from Electric Lit. As a professional writer, or aspiring to publication, you need to read it. It's HERE. Go ahead, we'll wait. The facts the article was based on came from the Authors Guild 2018 Survey (you can read that HERE) which said that, "American authors ... incomes […]