Writer's Block

When Writer's Block strikes, conquering the world a word at a time can be halted. This simple exercise defeats the beast and gets you back to writing.

You can see great copywriting examples in this bold and specific advert for a local dentist. Succinctly, it sells benefits and tackles objections.

The copywriting in this long-copy editorial advert is excellent. I include an analysis of the copywriting techniques so you can use them.

In business, storytelling is all the rage. Without a compelling story, we are told, our product, idea, or personal brand, is dead on arrival. In his book, Tell to Win, Peter Guber joins writers like Annette Simmons and Stephen Denning in evangelizing for the power of story in human affairs generally, and business in particular. Guber argues that humans simply aren’t moved to action by “data dumps,” dense PowerPoint slides, or spreadsheets packed with figures. People are moved by emotion.

A copywriting analysis on a simple advert for holiday breakdown cover. Without added hype…

Some folks say that the success of a book is 10% quality and 90% marketing. As an independent author you're probably not working with a big promotional budget. You've already paid for pro editing, pro book design, book printing, and more, and the funds for anything AFTER the book has been made may have dwindled. I've got good news, though: while it wouldn't hurt to have some serious cash to throw behind your promotional efforts, nowadays savvy and motivated authors can spread the word about their books in really effective ways for cheap, or even free!  20 ways to promote your book without breaking the bank 1. Set up a professional author website- Domain name registration and hosting are quite affordable these days. A company like HostBaby (our sister company!) can help you create a great looking site in minutes, equip it with social media integration, a blog, and all the other goodies that'll help you sell more books.

Learn how to self publish a book by browsing a list of recommended self publishing books at SelfPublishing.LifeTips.com. This Guru demonstrates the necessary steps to self publish your own book, including book copyrights, marketing tips for book sales, manufacturing books and other reasons to self publish your own book.

Microsoft Word has lots of features that make creating ebooks easy. You can use styles to format an ebook or update its formatting to work on a different platform. You can use the References tool to create a table of contents automatically. And you can produce a design template that's ready for repeated use, so you can spend more time creating content and less time futzing with layouts. Once you've mastered these steps, you can create great ebooks effortlessly. I'll show you how.

In the words of John McEnroe, you cannot be serious. Haven’t we all just staggered over to the ebook reality, gotten down with our digital selves, and tried to ease away from those visions of dustcovers dancing at our launch parties?

Pinterest may be the hottest ticket in town these days — but what are the best ways to use it to promote your book? How can you create targeted, effective Pinterest campaigns, so pinning doesn’t turn into a time-wasting social media sinkhole? First things first — for a primer on what Pinterest is and how to begin leveraging it as an author, read this great post by BookBaby’s own Chris Robley. Now that you’ve got the basics down, I’m going to share a little secret about Pinterest marketing for authors. Here’s the trick: When you market yourself and your books on Pinterest, you must take every opportunity to drive users back to your Amazon, the iBookstore, or Barnes & Noble sales pages so people can quickly and easily buy your book. You can put links to your book’s sales pages in the description field for pins or pinboards, and in your Pinterest profile.

Website of author and historian, Steven Pressfield.