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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 …

We now have complete guides for fantasy, science fiction, nonfiction, romance, erotica, and thriller. That’s six full guides, including all the subgenres, and I’d say 90% of the associated stuff that goes with them: study materials, story builders, and the like. We currently working on/halfway through YA, horror, and mystery guides, as well as working on an in depth Writing to Market course. After that, we have to put in guides for childrens books and general fiction and we should have all the major genres done. That will free us up to start diving into the more advanced stuff like …

Testing continues on apace. Glad to report that no bugs have been found; site is functioning great. Some typos and broken links have been discovered and fixed. Added chat for extra communication during testing. Got a great email from one tester who is loving the site. That was really great to hear, as we’ve put a lot of work into this site and we’re thrilled they are finding it useful. I wrote a 2k word article on breaking down bestselling book covers to find the commonalities and discover what elements are subtly signaling genre to potential buyers. This is an …

Full disclosure: if this post sounds like it’s from a crotchety old man, it’s probably because I am a crotchety old man and you need to get off my lawn. All right, with that out of the way, I want to talk about how books about history are always better than movies. Yes, always. I said it. But it’s not for the reasons they say: movies are a compressed form, and changes have to be made to fit the narrative into it. Bullshit. If you want to change things for the narrative, write fiction. You can have any narrative in …

You can do everything right: write a good book, get a good cover, write a great blurb and description, create good ads, run promotions with trustworthy promotion sites — and if your writing doesn’t connect with readers, your book won’t sell. And you have to be okay with that. Because that’s the business. Readers make the business go. Without readers, there are no writers. They are so important, I call writing a collaborative act between the writer and each individual reader. And you can’t force them to like your book. You can help them find it. You can encourage them …

I have gotten all our testers memberships and two are already online and checking out the site. I am both excited and anxious. In some ways, this is the culmination of a year’s worth of work, in others it is just the beginning. A real inflection point on the road map of this project. The first typo was found at 1:20pm CST, where I (and it was definitely me, as it was in the Epic Fantasy Blueprint) typed Spuernatural instead of Supernatural. I tried to claim it was the German spelling, but no one believed me. It is fixed now. …

There are only two pieces of advice any would-be writer needs. The first is Give up. Those who heed that don’t need to hear the second, which is Don’t give up. Mick Herron

The fantasy genre guide is all done, so we’ve begun recruiting fantasy authors to help us alpha test at the end of this month. If you’re interested, simply fill out the form on the front page and let us know. With the genre guides, essentials, and all the articles, we’re up over 130 articles on the craft and business of writing. I’ve been tracking trends in subgenres all week and adding data and charts to the guides, like this one showing steampunk books on the rise: But that doesn’t tell the whole story, as the outlook in steampunk ebooks is …

It’s true, self published authors make more money. We’ve known this for a few years now, with self-published authors earning more total money than their traditionally published counterparts since at least 2020. But a new study shows that self-published authors earn much more on average than their counterparts.  The study, from the Alliance of Independent Authors, surveyed authors on both sides and compiled the results to reveal that the average self-published author earns $86,000 a year. While nearly a quarter of the self-published authors surveyed earned very little, the majority made real money. The median income for self-published authors was …

Been pounding away on the site for a while now, and we’re finally ready to show it to a select few people. No public showing yet, just a few trusted industry friends to get their opinion. We’ve got three full genre guides done, which is north of 35,000 words on just those few genres. With the essentials guides on novel writing, advertising, and digital tools; and 20+ other articles on a variety of subjects, we’ve already got more than a novel’s worth of material online—and not a short novel. And we’re just getting started. I couldn’t be more excited about …