Recently a friend asked if I’d ever heard of a particular pay-to-publish company that someone she knew was considering as a publisher for a book. I hadn’t, but I decided to see what I could find out. So I Googled two phrases: [company name] scam [company name] reviews In addition to the company’s website, I [...]
Edited transcript of the video: Do you want to write a book but you just don’t know where to start? When I talk to people about writing a book, the process seems so overwhelming to them. They may have a great story to tell or a great message to share, but they don’t know [...]
Plagiarize: to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own; use (another’s production) without crediting the source (Merriam-Webster) Recently Vice-President-Elect Kamala Harris was accused of plagiarizing a story told by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. President-Elect Joe Biden has been accused of plagiarism several times. Pulitzer Prize winner Alex Haley [...]
Kick-start your marketing efforts with brand new images of your book covers. Creating attractive promotional images of your books and information products takes time, expertise, and money. Even though we have the talent and expertise in-house (thanks to the outstanding photography and design skills of Jerry D. Clement), we use MockUpShots to create shareable images [...]
Self-Publisher's Legal Handbook: Updated Guide to Protecting Your Rights and Wallet Helen Sedwick Ten Gallon Press This is a legal book that’s actually fun to read. As an author (both traditionally and self-published) and a self-publishing consultant (who has ghostwritten and published books for clients in multiple genres), I can’t say enough good things about [...]
If you have ever had a hard drive crash or a computer lost or stolen, you know the importance of real-time data backup. If you haven’t, trust me—it will eventually happen, and you’ll find out the hard way why you need your files backed up to the cloud. There are several good data backup [...]
Whether you’re an author or in some other business, email is (or should be) a key component of your marketing communications. Many authors have substantial social media followings, and that’s great. But you still need to build and maintain an email list. Don’t be totally dependent on the whims of any social media platform as [...]
Can You Really Blog a Book? The often-heard advice goes like this: Start blogging and after you’ve written a sufficient number of blog posts, combine them into a book. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? It’s not. Full disclosure: I’ve suggested this approach to people who want to write a book without hiring a ghostwriter but find [...]
Imagine a platform with more than 120 million readers and no ads where you can publish whatever you want and get paid for it. It's not a fantasy–it's Medium. I was first introduced to this platform in 2019 by someone who asked me to write an exposé about a sleazy seminar company and publish [...]
If you're writing a book, don’t be a one-trick pony. Early in my writing career, when I was freelancing for magazines and before I had the opportunity to write my first book, I was at a writers conference where I heard an editor with a major New York publishing house say this: We don’t want [...]
