As has become my tradition, at the beginning of each new year, I like to reflect on the books I’ve read in the year that’s just closed out (not necessarily books published in that year) and call out my favorite …
Favorite Children’s Christmas Books
Christmas brings out the child in each of us in ways no other holiday does. Most of us retain happy childhood memories of this special, celebratory season. Some of those memories are nestled inside favorite children’s Christmas books. You know, …
Books into Movies Redux
A year ago, I wrote a blog post about my ventures of turning books into movies. I stumbled across that post a few weeks ago and realized a lot has happened and an update might be offer more insight into …
Pre-Publishing: Developing the Five P’s
When a writer is in the pre-publishing phase of his or her writing career, that’s the perfect time to focus on developing five P’s:
- Perseverance
- Patience
- Personality
- Pupil for life
- Professional
Perseverance
Rachel’s blog post from earlier this week contained …
The Importance of Knowing Your Reader
Several years ago, I taught a workshop on the importance of knowing your reader. The attendees were multi-book published authors. So I posed this question to a few, random writers in the audience to answer aloud: Who is your reader?…
Why Book Pre-Orders Matter
Publishers will tell you that one of the best ways to build momentum for your upcoming book is to encourage pre-orders from readers. What’s the big deal about pre-orders?
Pre-orders are stockpiled and then counted officially as sales the first
…
Reading Groups and Why We Love Them
Writers, for the most part, are readers. And that means they have two reasons to feel fondness for reading groups: as a grand place to connect with fellow readers and discuss a book; as an author who knows connecting with …
Tidying Up Your Grammar
By Janet Kobobel Grant
I’ve been editing in one capacity or another all of my adult life. Why, I just finished editing my grandson’s résumé for his first job out of college. And I’ve edited all sorts of work-related documents, …
Labor day facts
Blogger: Janet Kobobel Grant
Labor Day means many things to us Americans. But this article provides a brief history of the naming of this day and the reason it was instituted.
In reading about the history of Labor Day, I …
Focus on Velocity Rather Than Sales Numbers
by Janet Kobobel Grant
We all care about how many copies our book sells, right? But who among us is thinking about sales velocity?
Velocity is created when you emphasize garnering significant sales for the day (or week) the book …