Writing and publishing articles by author Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD
At one time, publishers would be impressed with your sheer number of Twitter followers (or Facebook likes), but now their focus is more on engagement. What is your Twitter strategy to build your author platform? Are you interacting with your Twitter followers? Do you try to connect with them, and do they appreciate the value […]
Self-editing is hard for most writers, I suspect all writers. We know what we meant to write, so that’s what we tend to see when we try to edit our work. To combat this, try these self-editing options. To find errors, such as typos, missing words, extra words, and confusing phrases, I use text-to-speech software […]
There is some writing that we almost never see in printed form, due to its length, content, format, market size, or other factors. When it comes to e-books these are no longer issues. Here are five things we can do with e-books that we seldom see in print. Novellas A novella is a work of […]
We discussed ways to connect our blog with our book, which works well for memoir and nonfiction but not so much for fiction. While the vision is clear to blogging a memoir or nonfiction work, it’s murky when it comes to fiction. With fiction, we can’t simply blog excerpts from our book because we will […]
A hybrid author is someone who uses both traditional publishing and indie publishing. Though the reasons for pursuing this dual approach are many, there are two base motivations: more sales or more income. Generally, traditionally published books are better vetted, have higher quality, enjoy wider distribution, and produce more sales. The benefits of indie-publishing tend […]
The Publishing Industry Is Changing In round numbers, five hundred years ago the world witnessed the invention of the printing press, changing the way people communicated. This innovation (along with advances in shipbuilding) ushered in the modern era. There’s a definite connection between the printing press and modernity. Though the technology of printing has advanced […]
In the world of book publishing, if we blink, something’s apt to change. Every day there seems to be a new option, a different twist, or better pricing. The best solution for a particular situation soon yields to an even better answer—often within months or even weeks. Publishing books becomes an art of aiming at […]
Self-published Book Problems Self-published books carry a stigma of poor quality: weak writing, shoddy editing, second-rate production, and a product that often screams “amateur.” Unfortunately, this perception stems from the growing evidence provided by many self-published works. Though not all self-published books are substandard, too many are. Here are thee examples self-published book problems from […]
I’m not sure who said it first, but I’m not the first to say that “traditional publishing is the new vanity publishing.” As writers struggle with the quandary over self-publishing or traditional publishing, many cling to traditional publishing as the preferred solution merely because they see it as validating their work. In their minds, finding […]
Just like their self-published counterparts, a traditionally published author has much to do besides writing In the last post, I pointed out that self-published authors need to be entrepreneurs and listed what that entailed. The reality is that a traditionally published author needs to adopt this same mindset, being entrepreneurial as well. A given requirement […]