Writing and publishing articles by author Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD
I remember it well. Alone, I sit in my home office. I should be working. I’m not. I’m distracted. In my windowless basement room, I swing the door shut and dim the lights. I know what I must do, but I don’t want to. I’ve been writing and publishing for years, but I’ve never owned […]
After several years of unsuccessfully hiring book marketing experts, I realized I had two choices. The first was to not do any book promotion. The other was to do it myself. With great reticence, I decided to do it myself. I did this knowing it would detract from my writing and reduce my output. I […]
Hiring someone to market our books seems like a logical decision. After all, we hire professionals to edit our books and design our covers, so why not book marketing too? This is exactly what I thought and precisely what I did. Over the years I’ve hired a book launch expert, a publicist, a book marketing […]
Some publishers strongly suggested that authors use their advance for marketing their book. Though this sounds reasonable, my advice is not to do it unless you have a long-term reason for it. First, let’s talk about advances. An advance for a book was originally intended as money for the author to live on as they […]
When most people think about using artificial intelligence to write, their mind goes to people who may abuse the technology. Yes, some people will use AI to churn out sub-par books. But don’t worry about them. Instead, look to how you use AI. View AI as a tool to help you write better, just like […]
Rejection hurts. We’ve all heard stories of popular books that had scores of editors or publishers reject them before someone realized the potential and published them. The rest is publishing history. Since writers deal with a lot of rejection, Writer’s Digest had the idea to provide a creative outlet for them to vent their frustration. […]
Last week we celebrated the short story, a work of fiction between 1,000 and 7,000 words. But what about shorter and longer works? Let’s start by looking at the types of fiction. Types of Fiction At the shorter end of the spectrum is flash fiction. With less than 1,000 words, flash fiction is gaining traction, […]
Though e-books receive all of the hype, printed books are still important, for both readers and authors People like to talk about what is new, what is exciting, and what is fresh. That’s why the book publishing industry has so much buzz about reading digital books and listening to audiobooks. I’m not going to dismiss […]
Just as you would outline a book, you can also outline a series. Consider your series outline as listing the main objective you want to accomplish for each book. Just as each book will have an arc, your series will also have one. Your series outline should reflect the series arc. Your series outline can […]
There’s lots of advice floating around about writing, being a writer, and finding success. Though well-intentioned, some of this advice is bad information or oversimplified counsel. Here are some tips I’ve heard, many of which I’ve also said. Check out these common pieces of advice and discover the truth about them. Though we’ve already touched […]