promotion tips

By Amy Collins Unless you’ve been living in the back of a cave for the last few months, you know that there has been a lot of changes to how Amazon handles their customer reviews. At the same time, getting reviews onto Amazon and into the GoodReads system is more important than ever. What do […]

BY JUDITH BRILES ON MARCH 21, 2019 By Judith Briles Amazon: Love it … or hate it … but, you gotta deal with it. “Why are my reviews being removed?” is an ongoing question that authors ask. There isn’t a live program that I do that it doesn’t surface. Scratching our heads, few of us can figure

For years book awards and book contests have drawn in authors from a variety of book topics. I’ve judged several of them, including the Benjamin Franklin Awards from IBPA, Writer’s Digest, and several others. Book awards, in their most basic form, are designed to shed light and praise on the best books in a particular

When is the Best Time of Year to Release a Book? In Hollywood, there’s a pretty set calendar for when movies are released: horror movies are usually released around Halloween, high-concept blockbusters in the summer, Oscar movies start in November, movies that aren’t blockbusters or Oscar contenders in February. Does the book trade follow the

Last month, I wrote a refresher post comparing Smashwords and Draft2Digital. This month, I think it’s probably time for a refresher post comparing KDP Print and IngramSpark. First up, KDP Print Owned by Amazon, KDP Print is possibly the most popular U.S. site for distributing self-published paperback books. Pros: Publishing through KDP Print is free. The

BY SANDRA BECKWITH ON MARCH 18, 2019 By Sandra Beckwith When I was in college, one of the girls in my dorm terrified us with the “true” story of “The Hook,” a killer with a hook for a hand who attacked a couple in a parked car. The storyteller insisted it was true because it happened