April is National Poetry Month—no, don’t look away! You may be here for nonfiction advice and wonder what poetry has to do with it. Everything. Here are three specific things… Poetry techniques can enhance your nonfiction Poetry predates written text and likely was used as a way of making it easier to remember oral history. […]
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Book Endorsements: Who to Ask & How to Do It
Good reviews are a form of social proof—they demonstrate that people like, appreciate, or respect your book and would encourage others to read it. In other words, they increase potential buyers’ comfort level with purchasing the book. Book endorsements are similar to reviews in that they offer social proof, but while reviews can come from […]
Pre-orders on KDP and IngramSpark
Original article February 24, 2022; last updated May 13, 2022. When planning your book launch, one consideration is whether to make your book available for pre-order, which simply means that readers can order your book prior to its publication date. In this article, we’ll discuss why you might want to do pre-orders (or not), and […]
Does your book need a foreword, preface, or introduction? Here’s how to decide.
In the beginning was . . . the Foreword? the Preface? the Introduction? I was reviewing a manuscript the other day and couldn’t quite tell what the author’s intent was for the beginning elements of his book. The foreword, preface, and introduction play distinct roles. Having read, you know, books, you might intuitively know what the roles are, […]
How to Avoid Being Too Concise
A while back, as I reviewed a client’s writing, I found myself a bit puzzled about what advice to give. The language was clean and technically correct, but it was difficult to read. I had to actively concentrate to get through it, and I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to take away. It […]