Inspiring writers to write and get published

Can you describe your book in five seconds?

Getting your book published is tough but getting it to stand out from the crowd is also hard. I asked the founder-CEO of fReado Vikram Narayan just how a writer should be promoting their book and getting it to stand out from the crowd.

His answer was the concept of the Five Second Test.
“Here’s how it works. Let’s [...]

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Why you shouldn't get your short story book published

I recently attended the 20 Photos, 20 Stories book launch. Afterwards I spoke to one of the organisers Nik Perring. Nik is a writer and he asked what advice I would give to a writer looking to get his short story book published. I gave him a truncated answer at the time but the question [...]

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5 rejected best-sellers or the need for a good book synopsis

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone , J. K. Rowling
JK Rowling completed Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 1995 and sent the manuscript was sent off to several agents. Though she quickly found an agent (Christopher Little), the book was rejected by eight publishers before Bloomsbury offered Rowling a £2,500 advance for its publication.

Carrie, [...]

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Help Save Salt publishing

How you can help – a note from Chris Hamilton-Emery:
As many of you will know, Jen and I have been struggling to keep Salt moving since June last year when the economic downturn began to affect our press. Our three year funding ends this year: we’ve £4,000 due from Arts Council England in a final [...]

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Buy the book – get the audio and digital for free!

The debate surrounding book publishing and the use of technology is already a few years old and looks set to rumble on for a number of years yet. It is still unclear what role, if any, digital eReaders will play and if third-party devices such as the Iphone/Ipod will have a significant say in the [...]

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Four things you can do today to sell more books

Put an extract of your book on your blog/website/Facebook page/platform of your choice.
Ask ten high profile writer bloggers if they would like a free review copy of your book, then send them out.
Arrange three email interviews with fellow bloggers and talk about how you wrote your book, but remember not to make the [...]

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Why AmazonEncore matters

A lot has been written about the publishing industry and the role of new technology. My view is that the system is broken. No longer is a publisher needed to stump up huge amounts of cash and expertise to get books into bookshops. Technology and social media has given writers the ability to bring their [...]

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Hits and tips for twittering to more than 100 followers

Twitter is great. It provides a platform to link with like minded people and when used correctly can boost your book sales/business/website hits/blog visits. However, the basic Twitter page is hopeless once you top more than about 100 followers. The solution is to find yourself a Twitter Client. My client of choice is TweetDeck.
The [...]

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Twitter’s @reply error

This week Twitter imposed a change to the way their system operated. In a nutshell they decided that when you Tweeted a message that started with an @reply, this message would only be seen by your followers who also followed the person the message was aimed at.
So what you might ask…
Well it now means [...]

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Free Online Writing Courses

Free online writing courses

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