Anne R. Allen's Blog... with Ruth Harris
Writing about writing. Mostly.
by Vasalysa Zaturets You can write an award-worthy story, but nobody will find it out if your book cover design doesn’t appeal to the target audience. Book cover design matters, and here’s why: It creates the first impression and proves that the story deserves the readers’ time and money. No advertising campaign is possible […]
by Anne R. Allen One of the worst crimes publishing scammers perpetrate on new authors is bullying them into buying junk “book marketing packages.” Often these cost astronomical fees — $10,000 and more. The useless book marketing the scammers push involve Tweets (which haven’t sold books for over a decade), presence at book fairs (where […]
by Anne R. Allen Self-publishing has lost its stigma, and it’s the publishing path of choice for a lot of writers these days. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Or that everybody who self-publishes will succeed. Unfortunately, I’m seeing a lot of writers dive in head first without having a clue what they’re doing. Even long-time […]
by Anne R. Allen First, an awesome announcement: this blog will be named to Writer’s Digest’s Best 101 Sites for Writers in the May-June issue! (special thanks to Lila and Janet for the heads-up.) We are so jazzed! The magazine should be in stores soon. Subscribers have already got their copies. Many, many thanks to whoever nominated […]
by Anne R. Allen I can finally say it: I have three brand new novels coming out this fall! Within a couple of weeks, THE GATSBY GAME will debut as an e-book. It’s a stand-alone mystery set in the Mad Men era that proposes a fictional solution to one of Hollywood’s most scandalous mysteries. (It’s […]
by Anne R. Allen As I reported last month, the self-published e-book is fast becoming the query of choice for many New York literary agencies. Rather than slog through mountains of slush, agents are closing their offices to queries and shopping for new clients in the Kindle bestseller lists. Why not? That’s where they’ll find unrepresented […]
