Setting Your Own Standards of Excellence
I’ve been looking at the business practices of many of our authors and felt pretty overwhelmed by just how nasty things have gotten.
What is the Tagline of a Book?
When you’re writing a screenplay or a book, one of the first things that a writer may do is create a tagline. This is a single line that describes the work, defining it in some way, and is usually used in advertising a film.
David Farland’s Writing Tips: Stealth Advertising
There are a lot of ways to publicize books. Your publisher might pay bookstores to create special displays or to place your books with the cover facing outward instead of having the spine out. This is called point-of-sale advertising. They might pay “comp” advertising fees to make sure that your book is displayed in five or six key locations in the bookstore, so that the customer has a better chance of stumbling across it.
11 Things You Want When Choosing a Publisher
Most authors don’t think about “choosing” a publisher. Most authors send out manuscripts, sometimes rather blindly, in the hopes that a good publisher will choose them.
But think about this. Before a publisher can respond to your manuscript, you have to initiate the contact. You’ll never get a good publishing deal without first choosing to send the manuscript out in the first place.
For most authors, the publisher might just be a name that they see on a list. The author doesn’t necessarily know if the publisher is a good one, a great one, or a terrible publisher—and publishers do run the gamut from fantastic to mediocre and down into terrible and hellish.
Make the Bookstores Your Partners
Most authors have no idea how to sell books, and I’m always interested in new techniques. Earlier this year, the folks at Bridge Publications re-released the classic post-apocalyptic novel Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard and were faced with a challenge: How do you push a book that is a re-release? In the world of […]
How I Hit Number One on Wattpad
How to Succeed on Wattpad
Have a professional looking cover. I can’t emphasize enough how important this is! That is how most readers on Wattpad will discover your writing, and the cover has to convince them it’s worth checking out.
Post as clean a copy as possible. Readers will forgive the occasional typo, but if the story is riddled with errors, it’s unlikely that your story will take off. With over 100 million uploads, the readers have plenty of other options.