Guest post by Jessica Bell Are your books sales dwindling? It might be time for a book cover makeover. When an author comes to me for a cover makeover, I get excited. I get excited because it’s a sure sign of an author wanting to do things right and a sure sign of their trust […]
I’ve seen a lot of beta reading questions around the internet, and they’re mostly bad. You don’t want to give the same set of questions to every beta reader. It’s best if you hand-select questions for each reader based on what you know about them. For instance, the questions you want to ask a casual […]
It’s incredibly difficult to find beta readers. It’s almost easier to find an editor, because the relationship is transactional. Money = reading + advice. But with a beta reader, you’re asking someone to commit 5 – 10 hours of their life to your brain and story. For free. That’s a huge commitment, and you have […]
Although we mostly focus on writing craft here at Bookfox, sometimes I talk about other subjects, like marketing your book or technology. And recently, I did a podcast about how a new technology, NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), can help writers. Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn interviewed me for her podcast, asking all kinds of […]
What are NFTs? NFTs are digital collectibles. If you remember collecting baseball cards when you were a kid, an NFT is a digital version of that card. You can also have art NFTs, video NFTs, music NFTs, and, of course, book NFTs. It’s just a digital file with the ownership recorded in the blockchain. NFTs […]
The difference between a bestselling book and a book that sells a handful of copies can be summed up in one word: publicity. Listen, you definitely need a better strategy than standing on a street corner, yelling and waving your book. Thankfully, the 25 publicists on this list can provide you with a wealth of […]
I’ve seen a lot of fantastic books fail because of bad cover design. No matter how good your book is, people simply won’t buy it if the cover art doesn’t grab their eye. It’s unfair, but in a crowded marketplace you have to stand out, and the best way to do that is with a […]
I’m going to give you the information every writer should know when approaching bookstores to plan a book tour: the perspective of a bookstore owner and an author. In December of 2013, Brian Lampkin and I opened Scuppernong Books in Greensboro, North Carolina. We sell mostly new books, some used, and we have a café where […]
