Tips to Keep Momentum in Your Writing

It doesn’t matter what kind of work you do: especially if the project is a long one, there often comes a time when you lose momentum. Momentum, of course, is that forward-motion or energy that powers us through our activities toward completion. Writers, perhaps more than many others, need this propulsion to keep the work […]

Five Ways to Make the Most of Your Writing Journal

Writers have been using journals of one kind or another for as long as there have been writers. Among them, Victor Hugo, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway and J.K. Rowling who famously wrote out the first draft of her first Harry Potter book in a journal in a café in Scotland while on government […]

Five Ways to Make Your Life More Creative

Writers get it – at least most of the time. It just may be the case, though, that there are people among us who don’t understand why it’s important to cultivate creativity in our lives. What these people don’t understand is that creativity is not confined to those who follow artistic lives. It’s important to […]

Six Common Mistakes New Writers Make

Albert Einstein once said, “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” If you’re a new writer, you’ll inevitably make mistakes. We all make mistakes – especially when we’re embarking on a new path. Writing is no different. Over the past thirty years, we’ve learned a lot about writing and publishing […]

The Making of a Bestselling Book

What is a bestselling book? As a writer, if you haven’t already achieved the status, you may have a goal, or perhaps just a hope, that one of your books will someday become a bestseller. A definition of the term is a good place to begin our discussion. The Oxford English Dictionary, arguably one of […]

Should You Revive an Old Book Manuscript?

Every writer we know has old manuscripts. With the advent of electronic publishing and the completely open wild, wild west of self-publication, the temptation to simply open up the old files and see what flies out is so tantalizing as to be almost too good to pass up. But before you do that, it might […]

A New Approach to Story Ideas for Writers

At the best of times every writer we know is always looking for new ideas. Sometimes they’re ideas for the next or even current project. Often, though, they’re put away in a journal, worked on from time to time, and there for the taking when writer’s block creeps in or just when you need to […]

New Year’s Resolution 2020: Learn to Pay Attention

If you’re an avid reader, you probably think about books a lot: you think about what you’re currently reading (you love it, you hate it, you wonder what will happen next, you don’t care what will happen next, what you plan to read next—I need a book, I already have three books), or what you […]

Publishers on YouTube: Why you might enjoy them

Why in the world does a small publisher have a YouTube channel? Aren’t we supposed to be focused on books? Well, like our recent post about our love affair with book trailers, we also think that videos make great companions to books. Of course, this works best for nonfiction. On our fall list is the […]

Myths in the World of Writing & Publishing: Let’s Get Real

It’s easy to publish a book in the twenty-first century digital world. You just sit down at your computer, write, format, cobble together a cover and press publish. It’s just that easy. Then you sit back and wait for the money to rain down upon you and fame to follow. Right? Not so much. You […]