Anne R. Allen's Blog... with Ruth Harris
Writing about writing. Mostly.
by Anne R. Allen The Harvard Business School recently did a fascinating study of toxic employees and their effect on a company’s bottom line. The researchers discovered the most difficult and costly employees aren’t the lazy ones or the gossipy ones. It turns out the worst are the ones dead-set on following rules to the […]
by Anne R. Allen First I have to say how jazzed I am to be named one of the 16 Best People to Follow on Twitter by book marketing guru Penny Sansevieri at Author Marketing Experts, Inc. Thanks Penny! It’s a great list and I’m honored to be on it. Okay, I know why […]
by Anne R. Allen I had what is known as a “good education.” I attended East Coast and European prep schools and Ivy League colleges. Both my parents were college professors with PhDs in literature. All of which left me uniquely unqualified for my chosen profession: writing novels. Why? Because I grew up knowing […]
by Anne R. Allen Welcome to all our new subscribers! We had one of those crazy lucky streaks this week when one of my older posts 10 Things that Red-Flag a Newbie Novelist, suddenly went viral. Somehow moving the blog from Blogger to WordPress made some of the old posts hit social media radar […]
We’re honored this week to host literary agent Laurie McLean of the Fuse Literary Agency. If you’re looking for an agent, we have great news for you! Although Laurie is not accepting unsolicited submissions, she will accept queries from readers of this blog! Scroll down for more info in Laurie’s bio. And now, here’s Laurie!… […]
by Anne R. Allen Happy New Year! Congratulations if you won NaNoWriMo in November. And even if you didn’t. In fact, you deserve congrats if you didn’t join in the madness at all, and you’ve been writing slowly and steadily all year. No matter how long it took you, pat yourself on the back […]
by Tara Sparling Tara Sparling is an Irish blogger and humorist. I stumbled onto her award-winning blog, “Tara Sparling Writes: A Sideways Perspective on the Bonkers Business of Books” through a Tweet, and I’ve been an avid follower ever since. Her take on the writing life is uniquely quirky and hilarious… and oh, so Irish. Seriously, […]
by Anne R. Allen Last week I talked about some of the writing scams that Ruth and I have heard about recently in my post 5 Scams that Target New Writers. Sometimes we’re contacted by the scammers themselves and sometimes we get questions from readers who aren’t sure if they should accept an offer […]
by Anne R. Allen Welcome to our new blog!! I hope you’ll find our new WordPress site is easier for comments and searches. Because we have a high-profile blog, a lot of people contact us because they want us to promote their services to our readers, usually through contests or deals. Sometimes these services are […]
by Anne R. Allen So what’s this about missing reviews? Go to any author forum or social media group for writers and you’ll see the plaintive posts: “Help! My Amazon reviews are disappearing.” “Amazon rejected my review because they say I ‘know’ the author. I don’t. All I did was friend her on Facebook!” “Amazon […]
by Anne R. Allen Last week I wrote about five delusions that can keep a new writer from professional success. I admit to succumbing to most of them myself at one time or another. Writers need to be a little delusional to embark on a road that we know is fraught with obstacles. It’s the […]
by Anne R. Allen We writers tend to get a tad delusional about our own work. Most of us know the average writer doesn’t make great money, but we secretly believe our own efforts will bring us fabulous fame and fortune. When we start out, we can’t help visualizing our books leapfrogging over all the […]
by Anne R. Allen Should I pay to copyright my manuscript? Will a publisher or agent steal my plot from a query? How can I protect my ideas? We get asked these questions a lot. Until recently, our standard answer was: “Stop worrying about it. Your work is automatically copyrighted as soon as you type […]
Anne R Allen’s Blog With Ruth Harris