Say it Ain’t So by Dennis Doty

I see a lot of questionable or false information offered in various writing groups. So, the purpose of this post is to dispel some of the myths and offer advice which will advance your career as a writer. An extremely popular myth is that you MUST have an agent to get a contract with a…

Can A Writer Write Well Without Reading

This topic comes up in writing groups often enough that it puzzles me. I'm sure there are questions that spring to mind, but I want to focus on the pros of how reading helps you be a better writer. Exposes us to Different Writing Styles Creating an author's voice/writing style is something that natural evolves,…

Traditional Publishing & Hiring an Editor

This question gets asked a lot in writing groups— I plan on going traditional. Do I really need to hire an editor? This is a grey area. There is no "yes or no" response to it. So here are somethings to consider: Traditional publishing is a numbers game. An average agent/publisher (A/Ps) receive over a…

Why You Shouldn’t Use Free Sites for Cover Photos

It's tempting to use sites like Pixabay and others, but it isn't always the best for commercial products (ie your book covers/ads). Licenses "Creative Commons" doesn't necessarily mean "commercially." These conditions might mean you can't alter the images, you have to provide a link and attribute the "creator," or that the image isn't usable in…

Finding Agents and Publishers

While I'm mainly indie/self published oriented, I do have pieces that are traditionally published, and I work with dozens of publishers as their typesetter/interior formatter. Are you sure you're ready for querying agents and publishers? bit.ly/WwDOrders. Step 1—Materials Before you begin to query agents/publishers (A/Ps) you need to have somethings written and edited. Query Letter/Cover…

1st POV meets Detail

Novice writes think they need to word vomit every detail of a characters surroundings, and this becomes more obvious in 1st POV. If you try to have the MC walk in a room and give every little detail, the reader's eyes are going to glaze over and they are going to begin to skim read,…

Retrieving Your Cover Template

For indies, we want to make our team's jobs easier, and the best way to help out our cover designers is to have the cover template available for them. IngramSpark For IngramSpark, you'll go to this link—https://myaccount.ingramspark.com/Portal/Tools/CoverTemplateGenerator Fill in the information. IngramSpark Cover Template ISBN is the ISBN. Publisher Reference Number—If you have a lot…

Critique Groups Away From FB

Social media has a lot of perks, but it also comes with a downside. It's a rabbit hole of information and various interests, and it's easy to get caught up in various things. To help reduce that itch to explore when you're supposed to be working on your WIPs, here are some recommended critique groups.…

Typesetting aka Formatting aka Look Pretty

What is typesetting? Typesetting is also known as formatting. People and some programs take your completed story and handle the layout. This could be for submissions to magazines, agents, publishers, or as many do, for self-publications in e-Book and print. What formatters don’t do. They aren’t editors, though I know some editors who also do…

The Book Launch Planner

Launching your book into the world can be a nerve-wracking experience. From remembering who you wanted to hire, who you've contacted to share your release, and the timeline of when these little parts need to be done can make one feel as if they are going around in circles. This planner was designed by Mandi…