Writing well is hard enough, but to write something funny is seriously difficult. Indeed, much of the humour we see on paper is mostly cartoon-assisted text. And even much of that will depend on the mind of the reader
Book covers are intended to summarize in an image the theme of the book, draw some connection with the title and together, hopefully, invite the prospective reader in. In most cases I was very pleased with the covers of my books, but, it has to be said, I’m quite unsure whether the covers made any difference in the sales of those books.
The apostrophe signals to the reader that expected letters have been left out (but not forgotten): I suppose when people began to take on names, Gronk didn’t need to say, ‘that stick hims’, he said, ‘that stick Jons’ and later it became ‘that’s Jon’s stick’ with that Johnny-come-lately apostrophe stuck in the middle. But what did he say about Gus?
This July is the tenth anniversary of the start of Marlene’s journey with cancer. Ten years is a long time to grieve. But grief never goes away, it just gets quieter.
The concept of quality, and its derivatives – poorly, well, good, badly, worth doing – are largely subjective, and as such there is a certain relativism in the terms.
Every author, surely, wants to be ‘good’ writer, but this illusive standard can be soul destroying.
Now that [Terry Fallis] is a successful published author, he has speaking gigs all over the country. I’m not sure if his fame has reached the US. He mentions enjoying Whitehorse very much, but no mention of Wabash. I imagine he no longer drives himself to give a Wednesday afternoon talk at the Campbellford Public Library, but I could be wrong.
The marketing strategy here is to attempt to lever the word-of-mouth angle (‘word on the street’?), by far the most effective method to draw attention to your book. It’s one thing to tickle somebody’s fancy on TikTok, it’s another thing to get that amused potential buyer to become an actual buyer; she needs one more bit of encouragement. People are much more likely to buy your book if her friend recommended it than if she only saw a video. You need to get people talking about your book, and then friends telling their friends about it.
The Chart looks complicated enough, but if you are an indie author/publisher you have to pick your way through all of that yourself and more, or less. Missing from this chart are the shipping companies, perhaps the only winners in the chain.
An effective sales and marketing plan, whether for books or boats, requires two main elements: having in place a distribution channel, or channels, and bringing
It seems to me that September 1, or at least Labour Day, is more like new year than New Year. In January we drag ourselves back to work or school after ten days of Winter Solstice celebration – knowing we had 90 more days of winter to go. But in September we rouse ourselves from our summer slumbers and get on with life – new plans, new prospects, new purpose.
And then there is the problem of giving and receiving feedback. Giving feedback is hard to do, which is why it is seldom actually done. Receiving feedback is hard because of our tender egos – but we self-protect by not listening, or rationalizing, or dismissing. Accepting ‘constructive’ feedback from social sources is especially hard. Who really wants ‘constructive feedback’? What we want is complimentary feedback, lots of it. How nice to have affirmation of our terrific traits and talents. But then, in the backs of our minds, there lies doubt.
Not only should the cover have a clever and pithy summary of the book which entices browsers to pick it up the and browse through it, it should also have a couple of short and sweet blurbs from noteworthy reviewers recommending the book to hesitant readers. And let’s not make too fine a point of it, anybody who makes the cover of a book with a recommending blurb must be noteworthy to the otherwise ignorant browser.
Never judge a book by its cover’ so goes the saying, but if readers never crack the cover, they will never know what they’ve missed. Not everyone will be interested in your book – not their genre, not in their present mood, they’ve already read one of your books and one was enough – but for those who might be interested in the extent of your book, they need to be captured by the essence and the essence of the book has to be demonstrated somehow in your cover.
I won’t burden you with all of the Objectives I have set for myself in 2021. You won’t be that interested and I know historically my plans have been too ambitious and subject to perturbation from unexpected events. But here are a few:
I’m not sure how other authors do it [research for their books]. Highly successful authors with large revenues, or publisher advances, can hire students and staff to do it for them. But if you’re an independent author (the modern vernacular is ‘Indie’, hmmmm) you do your own. Or if you are mildly schizophrenic, or merely eccentric, you could delegate, to yourself.
I freely admit I have attachment needs. When I am involved with my love interest it is intense and persistent, and I am loyal and
And on other fronts I am proud to state that I have overcome my skepticism of lulu.com and rejoice at having successfully put up my book, Travels With Myself. (Well, I am still skeptical of lulu’s claims that self-publishing a book is as easy as 1-2-3. It is if you have perfect knowledge of Microsoft Word and how it must be formatted in absolute compliance with the PDF criteria in lulu’s print engine.
My author friends said I would never be able to please all the readers all the time, especially family and closer friends. I needed to put their ego issues aside and consider who my ultimate audience was. But that was still not clear to me. What was the real reason for writing this book?
Writing the Dynamics of Management, Mastering the Intangibles of Influencing Others, took ten years, or more – five to get started, two to actually produce
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