Comparing and contrasting leads to great ideas and validation! Seems I’ve been doing a lot of confessing over these last few blog posts. Today’s is that I’ve never paid much attention to travel fiction – or books, in general. Other than the Lonely Planet books I consulted when first drafting Stan Finds Himself on the […]
Coloring books, cookbooks, and apps – oh, my! Readers want books – you know, with pages and words and stories and information. But bookstores want books and other things to accompany them. Products that will flush out a brand, not just a single title. Of course, perhaps the most famous is the Harry Potter series, […]
Brick-and-mortar vs online – which is the better non-bookstore venue? The other day, my husband and I were astonished to see that a longtime map store is still in business in Phoenix. Maps – otherwise known as an origami-styled paper-folding craft, with big pictures of streets and lakes and mountain ranges painted on the paper. […]
Travel Channel, here I come! I have a confession. I’ve never watched the Travel Channel and never felt particularly compelled to read the Sunday travel section of any newspaper (The New York Times, The Arizona Republic, and the Arizona Daily Star are the papers I’ve been most familiar with) unless it was an article about […]
Would you eat a peanut butter, bacon, and banana panini? Oh, sometimes a person can be too clever for her own good. When I heard that November 3rd was National Sandwich Day, I was so excited about creating this writing prompt for the Author Blog Challenge (I am the host). Now, however, that I’ve got […]
From My Platform, I Can See… …perhaps over the top of my laptop to the stuff on the desk behind it. That’s not a very tall platform, now is it? In publishing parlance, an author’s platform is who knows them, who follows them, who’s talking about them, and most importantly who is waiting for their […]
Part Travelogue, Part Social Commentary, Part Fiction As an aspiring fiction author, it is perhaps impolitic to admit that I don’t read a whole lot of fiction anymore. As a child, it was all I read when I wasn’t doing research for a school project. Hundreds and hundreds of novels, particularly during the long, hot […]
Covering the Bases A book cover has a daunting job. Done properly, it will: Grab people’s interest Let them know what the book is about AND give them reason to open it up and read a few pages That’s a tall order for a small space – extra small if you’re publishing is limited to […]
Outfitted for Marketing When one thinks of a costume, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the idea of Halloween and masquerade. However, I know a few very good (non-book) marketers who regularly don specific outfits when they go out and greet the world because it instantly alerts people to who they are and what […]
Are you a TED-Talk loving, Whole-Foods shopping, NPR-listening Gen X dog owner who loves to travel? So when you write a book, more than likely you have an idea of who your reader is. Any author who doesn’t is probably struggling with the message of their book, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction. Of course, an […]
