It can seem impossible. How do you know if you’re focusing on the right marketing tactics? How do you know which strategy will work for you? What if you’re missing something?We’re here to help! Bethany Atazadeh and Mandi Lynn have each successfully marketed multiple novels and want to help you discover the best marketing tactics for YOU—starting with the book itself.Your book is your MOST powerful marketing tool.In these pages, we’ll walk through the ten fundamental aspects of your book that can make or break sales, and help you get them right! We’ll discuss genre, covers, titles, blurbs, formatting, editors, taglines, keywords, categories, how to develop a marketing mindset, and how to choose the right marketing strategies for you. This book is PACKED with information to help you succeed. Get your copy now!From indie authors Bethany Atazadeh and Mandi Lynn, please enjoy the first book in this new series, Marketing for Authors.

    Because of this experience, I self-published my next book, What the Plus!, and learned first-hand that self-publishing is a complex, confusing, and idiosyncratic process. As Steve Jobs said, “There must be a better way.”With Shawn Welch, a tech wizard, I wrote APE to help people take control of their writing careers. APE’s thesis is powerful yet simple: filling the roles of Author, Publisher and Entrepreneur yields results that rival traditional publishing. We call this "artisanal publishing"--that is, when writers who love their craft control the publishing process and produce high-quality books.APE is 300 pages of tactical and practical inspiration. People who want a hype-filled, get-rich-quick book should look elsewhere. On the other hand, if they want a comprehensive and realistic guide to self-publishing,APE is the answer.

    In this straightforward how-to, he offers down-to-earth guidance on crafting an effective and meaningful online platform.In Platform, you will learn how to:Extend your influence, monetize it, and build a sustainable career. Get noticed and start earning money in an increasingly noisy world.  Learn to amplify, update, polish, and organize your content for success.Platform goes behind the scenes into the world of social media success. You’ll discover what bestselling authors, public speakers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and other creatives are doing differently to gain contacts, connections, and followers and win customers in today’s crowded marketplace.With proven strategies, easy-to-replicate formulas, and practical tips, this book makes it easier, less expensive, and more possible than ever to stand out from the crowd and launch a business.

    He shows you how to transform anxiety into "productive elation," how to separate vision from revision, and how to develop your own writing agenda.This book, based on his writing seminars, research into dreams and creativity, and film development, is, as the New York Times states, "crammed with the sort of useful advice that it seems to take some people years to learn."

    Now the techniques of this renowned school are available in this book.Here you'll find: The fundamental elements of fiction craft—character, plot, point of view, etc.—explained clearly and completely - Key concepts illustrated with passages from great works of fiction - The complete text of "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver—a masterpiece of contemporary short fiction that is analyzed throughout the book - Exercises that let you immediately apply what you learn to your own writing.Written by Gotham Writers' Workshop expert instructors and edited by Dean of Faculty Alexander Steele, Writing Fiction offers the same methods and exercises that have earned the school international acclaim.Once you've read—and written—your way through this book, you'll have a command of craft that will enable you to turn your ideas into effective short stories and novels. You will be a writer.Gotham Writers' Workshop is America's leading private creative writing school, offering classes in New York City and on the web at WritingClasses.com. The school's interactive online classes, selected "Best of the Web" by Forbes, have attracted thousands of aspiring writers from across the United States and more than sixty countries.

    Brimming with examples, quotes, and case studies that include an illuminating discussion of Max Perkins's editorial collaboration with F. Scott Fitzgerald on The Great Gatsby, this book proves how fundamental editing is to great writing. Bell also offers strategic tips and exercises for self-editing, and a series of remarkable interviews, that take us into the studios of established authors such as Michael Ondaatje, Tracy Kidder, and Ann Patchett to learn from their various approaches to shaping their work after its initial creation. Much more than a manual, The Artful Edit inspires readers to think about both the discipline and the creativity of editing and how editing can enhance their work. A vigorous investigation into the history and meaning of the edit, this book, like The Triggering Town and The Elements of Style, is a must-have companion for every writer.

    Through encouraging coaching, shared memories, and open-ended questions, the process of producing a personal history becomes intriguing and engaging.With Legacy the possibilities expand: a personal record is preserved—with its myths, traditions, joys, pains, gains, and losses; a family opens a potential dialogue that will last for generations; the writer has an opportunity for insight and resolution; the culture of a time and place is noted; the tradition of personal story is revitalized, and our present and future find nourishment and knowledge in the past.Either as a gift that can act as a shared experience as the memories are recounted or as a personal way to take account of one’s experiences, often long since forgotten, Legacy is indeed a way to get one’s story down.

    The stories in this book-by a wide range of professional writers, novelists, journalists, freelancers, poets and screenwriters-will give readers insight into the human trials, tribulations and triumphs of writers, and writers a source of inspiration and commiseration. Whether readers are beginning writers, seasoned pros or wannabes, the stories of purpose, passion, endurance and success contained in Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul will inform, entertain, uplift and inspire them. In its pages, they will learn important lessons on: the importance of perseverance, the value of being yourself, the process of discovering your own voice, the need for mentors and allies, and the power of following your heartfelt dreams. Contributors include: Sue Grafton, Steve Allen, Dave Barry, Agatha Christie, Art Linkletter, Terry McMillan, and more.

    In a story or a novel the "I" who tells this tale can be, and often is, an unreliable narrator but in nonfiction the reader must always be persuaded that the narrator is speaking truth.How does one pull from one's own boring, agitated self the truth-speaker who will tell the story a personal narrative needs to tell? That is the question The Situation and the Story asks--and answers. Taking us on a reading tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century, and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, or Marguerite Duras.This book, which grew out of fifteen years teaching in MFA programs, is itself a model of the lucid intelligence that has made Gornick one of our most admired writers of nonfiction. In it, she teaches us to write by teaching us how to read: how to recognize truth when we hear it in the writing of others and in our own.

    Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart - to take pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot's Middlemarch. She looks to John Le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue and to Flannery O'Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail. And, most important, Prose cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which all literature is crafted.

    She'll help you understand what show, don't tell means, teach you how to spot told prose in your writing, and reveal why common advice on how to fix it doesn't always work. With in-depth analysis, Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It) looks at what affects told prose and when telling is the right thing to do. It also explores aspects of writing that aren’t technically telling, but are connected to told prose and can make prose feel told, such as infodumps, description, and backstory. Her easy-to-understand examples will show you clear before and after text and demonstrate how telling words change the prose. You'll learn how to find the right balance between description, narrative, and internalization for the strongest impact. These examples will also demonstrate why showing the wrong details can sound just as dull as telling. This book will help you: Understand when to tell and when to show Spot common red flag words often found in told prose Learn why one single rule doesn't apply to all books Determine how much telling is acceptable in your writing Fix stale or flat prose holding your writing back Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It) is more than just advice on what to do and what not to do—it’s a down and dirty examination and analysis of how show, don’t tell works, so you can adapt the “rules” to whatever style or genre you’re writing. By the end of this book, you’ll have a solid understanding of show, don’t tell and the ability to use it without fear or frustration.

    What's more, this revised and expanded edition contains updated reading lists and organizational references, as well as the latest information on word processing and illustrating with computers. There's also a new chapter on writing plays for children, and innovative suggestions for handling difficult contemporary issues such as AIDS. From character sketches to bound books, author/editor Barbara Seuling shows how to get involved and work toward success in today's world of children's literature.

    They drive us to act out our dreams and ambitions, and shape our politics and beliefs. We use them to construct our relationships, to keep order in our law courts, to interpret events in our newspapers and social media. Storytelling is an essential part of what makes us human.There have been many attempts to understand what makes a good story – from Joseph Campbell’s well-worn theories about myth and archetype to recent attempts to crack the ‘Bestseller Code’. But few have used a scientific approach. This is curious, for if we are to truly understand storytelling in its grandest sense, we must first come to understand the ultimate storyteller – the human brain.In this scalpel-sharp, thought-provoking book, Will Storr demonstrates how master storytellers manipulate and compel us, leading us on a journey from the Hebrew scriptures to Mr Men, from Booker Prize-winning literature to box set TV. Applying dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to the foundations of our myths and archetypes, he shows how we can use these tools to tell better stories – and make sense of our chaotic modern world.

    How? By taking the fear and mystery out of dictation. By providing exercises designed to nurture and connect parts of the brain used during dictation. By offering specific tips to remove the discomfort that causes most writers to abandon dictation. Fool Proof Dictation is the only ebook of its kind, focusing primarily on the mental process of dictation. It’s a self-paced training system that streamlines the dictation process. There are warm-ups, practical exercises, and an easy to follow routine for dictating your scenes.Fool Proof Dictation serves both absolute beginners and writers who’ve tried dictation but grew discouraged, eventually giving it up. This system offers an ease-of-use that will surprise everyone with how effective and gratifying dictation can be!This ebook details the method I use when I dictate fiction. It also explains all the exercises I’ve used over time to train my brain for effective dictation. On top of that, it includes enough prompts to keep those exercises working for months!

    Like Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler, Sara Paretsky and Thomas Harris, you, too, can learn the trade secrets of quality detective fiction.It's true.  Just one year from now, you can deliver a completed mystery novel to a publisher--by writing only on weekends.  Authors Robert J.  Ray and Jack Remick guide you through the entire mystery-writing process, from creating a killer to polishing off the final draft.  Each weekend you'll focus on a specific task--learning the basics of novel-writing, the special demands of mystery-writing, and the secrets professionals use to create stories one scene at a time, building to a shivery, satisfying climax.  Using Agatha Christie's The Body in the Library as a model for the classical mystery tale and Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park for the hard-boiled mystery, this unique step-by-step program gives you all the information you need to reach your ultimate goal: a finished book in just 52 weeks!  Let two successful masters of the genre show you how...Discover: Why you must create your killer first The tricks to writing dialogue that does it all--moves your plot, involves your reader, and makes your style sizzle How to "bury" information (and corpses) for your reader to find Why you should NOT build your book around chapters Special techniques for clearing writer's block Plus: examples from Sue Grafton, Dashiell Hammett, Patricia Cornwell, Thomas Harris, Raymond Chandler, and more.