Mastodon
Close

Selling Your Story

Queries, synopses, blurbs, and packaging tips and advice. Sample topics: writing pitches and back cover copy, book covers, writing a successful synopsis, creating reader expectations, book tours, etc.

Story Tropes: Lazy or Helpful?

Note on top of rose petals with text: Can Story Tropes Be Good?

Every genre and medium of storytelling uses tropes, and they often have a bad reputation—for good reason. All too frequently, they can indicate lazy storytelling or worldbuilding. But they don’t have to be a bad thing.

Pin It

July 27, 2017

Read More

Book Promotion: Getting Out the Word

Product tag with text: Book Promotion Beyond "Buy My Book!"

Many groups and forums for self-published authors compare notes on what works (or doesn’t work) for promoting our work. I’m not a promotion expert—at all. But I’m sharing my experience on what I’ve tried so we all have another data point to consider.

Pin It

July 6, 2017

Read More

Author Struggles: Gaining Reviews

Scattered yellow stars with text: Reviews: Gathering Stars for Amazon

There’s no end to the struggles we face as a writer, including gathering reviews for our books. With Amazon’s algorithms, the quality, quantity, and recency of reviews can affect whether potential readers ever see our work, so it’s important to encourage reviews of our story.

Pin It

March 30, 2017

Read More

The Ultimate Guide to Pitch Writing

Picture of library shelves with text: Pitching Our Story from the Crowd

No matter how we publish, we need to introduce our story to potential readers and interest them enough to want to look closer. Whether we’re pitching and querying agents or enticing readers with back-cover blurbs, we need to grab their attention.

Pin It

January 19, 2017

Read More