Publishing
Publishing

Publishing

Do I Really Need an ISBN Number?

Do you need an ISBN number to sell your book? This question comes up constantly. The answer is, unfortunately, it depends.  An ISBN number is a unique number, attached to a barcode, assigned to a book that identifies it for SKU systems for inventory tracking. If you want your book to be sold “wide” meaning that it’s available everywhere, you might need one. Maybe.  If you just want to sell your book on Amazon, they will provide a unique ISBN that only works on Amazon, and they won’t charge you anything for it.  If you want to sell your book...

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Anthologies: How to Create, Edit, and Publish an Anthology

What is an Anthology? Classically, there are two specific definitions you need to know about short fiction. A Collection is a group of stories, all by the same author. An Anthology, conversely, is a group of stories by a variety of different authors. We’re here to talk about the latter. Generally, an anthology has a central theme, around which all the authors involved have written. It might be sword and sorcery fantasy. Or hard-boiled private detectives. Or military science fiction. (I’ve owned and read all of those at one time or another.) Alternatively, it might be part of a “Year’s...

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Three Act Description Structure

If you’re looking for an easy way to write blurbs, why not use the structure most writers use — whether they know it or not. It’s based on the three act story structure, as featured in this portal fantasy blueprint. The structure is three acts split into three sections each like this: Act I — Set Up Exposition — The setup. Show your protagonist in their ordinary life. Inciting Incident — The thing that happens to start the protagonist on their journey through the plot. Plot Point One — The thing that solidifies the protagonist going on their journey (despite...

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The Key to Keywords

When you publish your book on Amazon, you are given seven spaces for keywords. Notice that I didn’t say seven keywords, I said spaces. You can put more than one keyword in those spaces.  There are some things we don’t know about these keyword boxes, and some things that are frequently changed. But let’s start with the things we do know, that have been fairly constant for the last five years.  If you only put one keyword in a box, it is given slightly more weight than if you pack in as many keywords as possible. You get fifty characters...

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From Idea to Book

(Originally appeared as “Taking a Book from Idea to Bestseller” on the WrittenWell front page) There are bits of advice scattered all over the internet on how to write a book, how to market it, how to outline, how to write a great ending. But seeing it as a linear process will help you to do everything in the right order without missing a step—and that is something I don’t see anywhere else.  What I can’t do in this article is explain how to do every step. That would take, well, an entire website. But seeing the steps will help...

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Speculative Fiction — The Big “If” Umbrella

More and more, books and publications that were once exclusively science fiction or fantasy or horror are calling themselves “speculative fiction.” But what is speculative fiction and why does it matter? Though the term “speculative fiction” has been around for a long time, it really came into vogue within the last few decades. And whereas at its inception, it was purely a replacement term for science fiction, it has come to mean most any genre that falls into the category that I call the “What If?” genres. These genres ask the “what if?” questions, where the supposition is definitely not...

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A Publisher Wants My Book!

So a publisher wants to publish your book? That is so exciting! But before you get carried away, let’s take a look at that contract. Unfortunately there are a lot of shady “publishers” out there who just want to take advantage of the fact that there are tens of thousands of writers desperately hoping to be published.  Because you’re a member here at Written Well, we’ll assume that you already know that the old dream of finding a traditional publisher and riding a road to riches was incredibly rare even twenty years ago, and now it’s almost unheard of. Self-published...

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