I asked illustrator Jessica Warrick to help me out testing print quality between Lightning Source and Createspace for her new book, 50 Happy Things. Previously, I’ve always heard that LS has slightly better print quality, but I haven’t recommended it because it’s a pain to work with and the assumed benefits aren’t really worth it.   HOWEVER, in this side-by-side …

I’ve been doing more research for one of my books that isn’t selling well. I used K-lytics to get the data for the teen and young adult category. http://k-lytics.com/teen-young-adult/ They list all the bestsellers of the genre, keywords, categories, etc – you could do the research yourself but I like the easy format they provide. I read through the 100 …

I talk a lot about writing books that sell, but I don’t always take my own advice. Out of the 5 novels I’ve published, most do pretty well with no promotion – but I’ve been having trouble keeping the rank up on one. There are reasons – mostly it’s a less popular mix of genres, so it’s harder to get …

  Exclusive Bonus: Want to make a living with your writing? Download my FREE book launch checklist and discover the step-by-step publishing roadmap I use to launch bestsellers.   2017 The Creative Writers’ Workshop Memoir Workshop Who is it for? The workshop is for those who wish to tap into their life experiences and memories, turning their life incidents into a creative …

First, let me catch you up to speed. I’ve been doing online business for about 10 years. I get pretty good, very specific traffic (people who want to publish a book) and get about 100 optins a day with no ads or promotion. The problem is, I’ve had trouble turning that traffic into real revenue. Most of my sites don’t …

Last year I shared a castle with some writer friends for Nanowrimo and got featured in CNN. We’ve decided we like living in castles and want to do more of it. Specifically, I love how effective I can be with someone when I’m actually in the same room, and can really dig deep and focus on helping them improve their …

  A few years ago I started collecting quotes and book marketing tips from publishing experts – I put them up online and divided them into topics for easy navigating, but forget to tell anyone about it. Someday I’ll organize the content into a book or course, but for now it’s all free. If any section is particularly useful for …

It’s really hard to describe how to make a great author website, so I made a video critiquing 15 real-life examples. These aren’t *perfect* author websites, but they are representative of the type of websites most authors have. If you watch the whole video, you’ll learn a lot about setting up a website for authors. However: None of it really matters …

“Can you really make a living as a writer?” Last year I decided to put my PhD in Literature to good use and write some novels; specifically, I wanted to see whether I could actually make a living as a writer. The short answer is YES. I made about 35K in six months publishing fiction on Kindle (while travelling the …

Last year I rented a chateau in France for Nanowrimo. We got some great press coverage and had an amazing time. All in all, I think we did pretty well. I love the idea of running writing retreats in castles, so I’m doing it again this year. Last year I built a big sales page and offered a ton of …