All the experts these days seem to focus on “growing your list,” as part of your author platform. That’s the primary message – bigger and bigger numbers seem to be the most important thing. How many email addresses can you gather up to proudly show off?Is this accumulation of numbers of readers an exercise in […]

The Insider’s Guide to Author Websites: Set Your FoundationAn author website is the foundation upon which you build your platform. We asked BookWork’s Web Lead, Tyler Doornbos, to share his insider’s perspective on what that should entail… (Adapted from The Self-Publisher’s Ultimate Resource Guide created by BookWorks founder Betty Kelly Sargent and Joel Friedlander, “The […]

Some people are unaware I grew up on a farm. I took part in crop planting and harvesting when I wasn’t feeding and watering animals. I translate lessons from farming to authoring because there is a lot in common, like seasons. You plan and prepare, plant the seeds, grow the product, harvest and when it’s […]

In October of 1983, my husband jumped into a war zone known as Urgent Fury. As far as battles go, the one for Grenada barely registers. In fact, the US government declares 1983 as part of a “non-combat” era. However, the reputation of my husband’s elite unit of US Army Rangers earns him respect regardless […]

When it comes to hiring an author assistant, it can be difficult to know where to start. The possibilities are sometimes limitless, so it’s hard for an author to know which tasks they should hand off to their assistant or which they should continue to do on their own. One of the first things I ask […]

Building an audience is one of the hardest parts of being a writer.It’s hard for a lot of reasons. We want to create. We don’t want to be marketers. It feels weird and wrong to sell these stories that we’ve poured our hearts and souls into. We want to just write our books and leave […]

Did You Win Anything This Week?Week Two #NaNoProMo (National Novel Promotion Month) 2019 is off to a blazing start, with hundreds of commenters, shares, lots of interaction and fun. Most importantly, what have you learned that you didn’t know before, writers? Let’s review our expert’s posts from this last week and announce who won each fantastic giveaway! […]

Are You Ready for Book Marketing? Take This QuizBook marketing involves so many steps. When people come to me, they erroneously think that all they need is social media marketing. Au contraire. Social media alone won’t cause your books to start flying off the proverbial bookshelf. So, take this quiz and see if you’re ready to tackle […]

When my agent sold my debut novel, Little Lovely Things, to my publisher, Sourcebooks, I had no idea what the next steps were. I had an eighteen month run up to publication which seemed beyond an eternity at the time. And my brain was, well, a little frozen by the whole experience. Thankfully, I functioned […]

What Is An Effective Marketing Strategy Anyway?When Bad Redhead Media’s Rachel Thompson reached out to me to write a post about promoting and marketing my books, my immediate thought was is she kidding? I have been an avid follower and fan of Rachel for nearly a decade, trying to emulate her badass self-publishing skills and […]