Define Your Ideal Reader
Every word you write is meant for someone. All writing has a target audience. And the more specific your idea of that someone, the more impact your writing can have. Identifying and defining your ideal reader, then, is an exercise in honing and improving your craft....
How to Build Your Author Platform
If you’ve been in self-publishing for more than a few minutes, it’s likely you’ve heard the term “author platform.” In simplest terms, an author platform is your ability to sell books because of who you are and who you are connected to. This week, we’re taking a look...
Use Pre-Orders to Build Buzz (and Test Marketing)
This week’s post about pre-orders includes heavy contributions from Steed Brown, Operations Manager! As authors, one of the trickiest things about marketing our work is determining whether it’s really having any impact. And sure, we can get buried in a sea of...
The Psychology of Book Titles
What’s in a name? It’s a more complicated question than you might think, because the name of your book can indicate everything from tone to genre to setting and more. Choosing the perfect book titles for your works is about more than finding something that sounds...
The Psychology of a Good Book Cover
Book covers are the first bit of customer-facing marketing that your reader will ever see. They’re a shortcut—telling the reader in shorthand that they’ll like this book, that it’s in the genre they love to read, and that the person who wrote it is someone they can...
Solve Reader Problems with Better Book Descriptions (for Non-Fiction)
A book can be a tangible indicator of your authority on a topic—but a book on the shelf doesn’t make much of an impact. Well-crafted book descriptions will prompt readers to pick up your work so it can start changing their life. Last week we took a deep dive look into...
