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Our guest blogger is Australian crime writer Melissa Pouliot. Melissa’s books are inspired by the disappearance of her cousin Ursula Barwick and the publicity from her debut Amazon bestseller Write About Me, resulted in a new investigation into Ursula’s disappearance. As part of the release of her fifth novel FOUND, Melissa has offered to share …

Lessons Learned From The Self-Publishing Journey – Guest Post by Melissa Pouliot Read More »

Have you ever had the experience of having some free time where you know you can write, thinking “great, I can finally get a lot of work done on my book today,” and then reaching the end of the day and realizing you haven’t written a single word? For some reason doing the dishes, the …

3 Productivity Tools To Help You Write More Read More »

If you took part in NaNoWriMo, whether you reached the 50k goal and “won” or not, at the end of the month there can be a feeling of uncertainty and even loss. You’ve had this big, month-long project that has been your sole focus of attention, but now everything is over. What on earth are …

What To Do Now That NaNoWriMo Is Over Read More »

When it comes to editing, it’s important to realize that there are several different levels of editing you can get for your book. Unfortunately, there is no clear set of terms that everyone agrees on – two people may use the same term to mean totally different things! In this article, I’ll try to make …

What Are The Different Types of Editing? Read More »

Imagine this: your new book is finished, and ready for upload to Amazon! You have several other books already available, so you put in the Amazon links so readers can easily buy them. You send your book off to a friend, just for a final check. She writes back and says the book looks great …

Why Don’t Amazon Links Always Work on the iPad and iPhone? Read More »

“There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying.” – Robert Evans A trap that some books can fall into is presenting one set of information as the “truth” of the world, or what has happened. Everyone knows this truth, and everyone believes this truth. …

The Multiple “Truths” Of Every Situation Read More »

When I’ve been talking with authors about options for section breaks, there have been a few times where I’ve had an author comment that they read somewhere that you can’t use blank lines for section breaks in an ebook. The first time I heard that comment, I must admit I was very confused. A blank …

Can You Use Blank Lines As A Section Break In Ebooks? Read More »

The easiest way to explain what I mean by “links suddenly appearing in an ebook” is to show you. Imagine I’m writing a book on the evacuation of Dunkirk during World War II, and I have this paragraph in it: (Yes, I know it wouldn’t make sense as part of a book 🙂 You’ll see …

Why Do Links Suddenly Appear in Ebooks? Read More »

The great thing about self-publishing these days is that there is a huge amount of advice available for authors on how to do things. But for some people, that huge pool of advice can be a detriment. Start reading up on self-publishing, and it won’t take long for you to find all sorts of articles …

Don’t Let All The “You Must Do This First!” Advice Stop You From Publishing Read More »

Whenever we start work formatting an ebook, one of the first things we ask for is the front cover image. And now and then, after we have asked for the cover the response we get is “Amazon say you shouldn’t include the cover in your book.” And the author is correct 🙂 . If you …

Why Amazon Say “Don’t Include a Cover” Read More »