Anne R. Allen's Blog... with Ruth Harris
Writing about writing. Mostly.
Burnout can hit the most motivated writers and Type A high-achievers by Ruth Harris We’re writers and we don’t need no lousy bosses to crack the whip. We can do it to ourselves–create the frazzle, the frustration, the deadlines, the endless to-do lists, negative feedback, and the conviction that we’re not doing enough fast enough. […]
An author blog can be fun if you ignore the rules intended for business blogs. by Anne R. Allen The most common question I get from authors who are thinking about starting a blog is: “What should an author blog about?” My answer isn’t the same as what you’ll hear from the major blogging gurus. […]
Make a Living Writing Fiction: Follow these Ten Steps By Elizabeth S. Craig I’ve been asked by everyone from writers with day jobs to high school students if it’s possible to make a living as a writer. The answer is easy—it’s definitely possible. The next question is trickier to answer—how does one go about making […]
Email marketing: the Holy Grail of book sales or Spamalot? by Anne R. Allen Email marketing is the only way to sell stuff online these days, we’re told. Get yourself an email address list and customers will beat a path to your buy page door, desperate to buy your deathless prose. Authors are abandoning blogging […]
by Anne R. Allen When I teach blogging to new writers, the most common question I get is: “What should I blog about?” My answer isn’t the same as you’ll hear from the major blogging gurus, because most of them are teaching people how to blog for its own sake. They will all tell […]
by Anne R. Allen A lot of marketing gurus are advising authors to cut back on blogging and social media and go back to the email marketing of the last decade. “The author with the biggest mailing list wins,” has become a mantra with self-publishing gurus. Go to most blogs and websites these days […]
by Anne R. Allen It’s been an exciting week for the blog. Marketing expert Penny Sansevieri named us to the Top 30 Websites for Indies and blog guru Molly Greene named us to her list of must-read “leaders” in self-publishing. (I’m only recently self-published—and most of my work is still with a small press—but […]
by Anne R. Allen Do all authors have to blog? Nope. Blogging doesn’t sell books. Not directly. And it’s not a particularly good way to attract an agent (agents will glance at your blog if they’re considering your query, but mostly to make sure you’re not wearing a tinfoil hat and advocating the invasion […]
by Anne R. Allen Writers know we need a “platform” these days. That means we need to be on Twitter and FaceBook and Google+ and LinkedIn and Pinterest and Tumblr and have a blog with a ton of followers and get 100s of reviews on Amazon and Goodreads and drive ourselves batty keeping up […]
by Anne R. Allen Two weeks ago I wrote a post listing some of the bad writing advice that can stand in the way of launching a successful publishing career. But I had too much to run in one post, plus I got some great suggestions from readers in the comments. So this week we have […]
by Anne R. Allen Are you “building platform” or just annoying people? This week, author Mary W. Walters blogged that promoting your books on Facebook and Twitter is a total waste of time for book sales. That’s because Social Media is not for selling books. It’s for making friends—friends we hope will help us in our […]
by Anne R. Allen No matter how much time and energy we put into querying agents and editors–or learning the ins and outs of self-publishing–it’s all wasted if we don’t have a polished piece of work. One way to make sure your book is the best it can be is to brush up on […]
by Anne R. Allen “What? Glad?” sez you. “There is nothing that makes a writer sadder than a bad review!” That’s true. They can feel like a sudden, nasty downpour on the biggest parade of your life. Whether you self-pubbed or worked with a traditional publisher, the publication of your first book is a […]
