Anne R. Allen's Blog... with Ruth Harris
Writing about writing. Mostly.
by Anne R. Allen On Friday morning at 7 AM a couple of weeks ago, the landline phone woke me with a call from a woman who wanted to know if I was the author of Food of Love. I said yes, it’s one of my titles, along with 14 other books. Why did she […]
An ARC review team helps launch a book effectively by Dave Chesson As authors, we need reviews. There’s no way of getting around it. While it doesn’t appear that reviews directly affect things like the Amazon algorithm, reviews are still a crucial tool to sell books. For example, if you’re trying to choose between a […]
Self-publishing isn’t about the author. It’s about pleasing the reader. by Anne R. Allen Easy self-publishing and the introduction of the e-reader brought seismic changes to the publishing world a decade ago. The “Kindle Revolution” propelled a bunch of smart authors from the slush pile to the top of Amazon’s bestseller lists. Suddenly writers had […]
Make a memorable introduction while building your author brand by Mike Bohdan A bookstore employee outed Richard Bachman as Stephen King in 1985 despite all his efforts to hide the fact. The clever person recognized King’s style following its breadcrumbs scattered in Bachman books. One of the breadcrumbs was the word “mangler.” The characters in […]
Are you ready to publish? by Anne R. Allen If you’ve used the pandemic lockdown as a time to write that novel you always knew you had in you, congratulations! You’ve taken the depressing, horrific lemon that was 2020 and turned it into literary lemonade. You deserve a great big “Congrats!” and several pats on […]
An amateur self-published book gives professional indies a bad name by Anne R. Allen When you’re confined to a hospital bed for several months the way I was last summer, you read a lot of books. During my 2+ months of medical incarceration, I read pretty much everything loaded onto my trusty old Kindle (over […]
Now authors can make DIY book covers with easy-to-use, drag-and-drop design apps by Ruth Harris In the early days of self-publishing, authors who didn’t know know coding had to hire formatters to make their books cyber-ready. Since then, formatting has become part of many writing programs. Word processors like MSWord, Scrivener and Pages will output […]
by Anne R. Allen A lot of the problems new novelists and memoirists encounter stem from one thing. I see their plaintive posts and emails all the time. “I self-published my novel last year and promoted it free with a Bookbub ad, but after the freebie run, I’ve only sold a handful of books.” “I’ve […]
2020 Publishing Predictions by Laurie McLean, Co-founder of Fuse Literary Agency Hello again, everyone. I love creating this look-ahead in publishing each year. It makes me pick my head up and take a longer view of the industry than my normal routine of concentrating on the picayune changes in publishing contracts, the art of selling […]
The self-publishing revolution started on clunky computers like this one by Anne R. Allen In a few days we’ll be leaving the twenty-teens to enter the 2020s. We’ll be saying goodbye to a decade of wild upheaval in the publishing industry. It’s been quite a ride. On January 5th, we’ll host agent Laurie McLean from […]
Competing book titles can help sell your book! By Penny Sansevieri As an author you’ve probably been told to look at competing titles through multiple stages of your journey from writing, to publishing, to book promotion. Competing book titles can be lucrative references for cover design, book length, and choosing your categories and keywords. They’re […]
Your backlist: remodel without a visit to a plastic surgeon or Home Depot. by Ruth Harris No, I’m certainly not sending you to the plastic surgeon. Even though maybe, just possibly your bio/book page could use — shall we say? — a nip and tuck. (Nothing personal. Just sayin.) And I’m not recommending a visit […]
by Nate Hoffelder Self-publishing a book can get quite expensive. A good cover designer can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, and the editorial costs can set you back even more. While there are many important expenses, there are also many ways to spend money and get nothing useful in return. For example, take the […]
