If your query letter isn’t standing out from the pack, consider leading with what makes you, not your story, compelling.

Goal-setting is much like the Alcoholic’s Prayer: accept what’s beyond our control, assess what we’re able to change, and know the difference.

Embracing the You in your story can feel frightening, but it’s the best way to craft a novel that is truly unforgettable.

When we let the reader fill in our intentionally left blanks, or “gray space”, we invite them inside our imaginary worlds.

While a newsletter might not sell your book, writing one can change your work for the better and help build valuable relationships.

Like clothing, writing advice should be tried on to see if it fits you and your writing life. Here are five tips for assessing what works.

When writing thriller, authors must understand our villain’s motivations, end goals, and progressive, logical actions toward that goal.

Owning and protecting your publishing source files is one of the most important things a writer can do to protect their writing asset.

Readers don’t want to start a memoir already knowing the ending, but it’s important that your pitch specifically defines your story’s scope.

The average visitor spends on average 54 seconds on a webpage. Here are some tips to help turn visitors into readers, buyers, or subscribers.

Used well, deep third can be one of the most intimate, engaging, revealing ways for readers to viscerally share your character’s world.

If you sit down to write and find that you can’t, the typical reason is that you don’t know what job the chapter is supposed to do.

Stories with a real sense of meaning don’t merely stand out in the slush pile—they’re the types of stories that make for a better world.

The process of finishing a book is a victory in itself. But it might be your “practice” book, and the world is waiting for what you write next.

Engaging with generative AI in a way that enriches human creativity, you can take your writing further than you might have on your own.

What do you do when a teen in your life is a diehard writer? When they won’t clean their room and just want to write stories or poems all day?

Working hard isn’t necessarily a virtue if it masks the ways that we might be sabotaging our own paths to success and fulfillment.

A little planning and reflection will help your website be a project you sustain, rather than discard like a half-baked draft.

No matter what language our characters are speaking, writers should strive to express dialogue and inner thoughts in a naturalistic way.

With these four elements you’ll be able to create a more compelling protagonist and, as a result, a more interesting story.

An amateur historian finds that her passion has led to enough expertise and authority for her book proposal to be taken seriously.

Here are some tips on what to do before approaching a published writer with questions about how to get your book published.

Serving as someone’s beta reader doesn’t mean agreeing to read whatever a writer throws at you. It’s okay to set some expectations.

If your publisher’s suggested cover design feels wrong, put your foot down when necessary but also listen—really listen—to the professionals.

Worried you’re not enough of an expert to write your book? That’s OK. You don’t need to be the annoying expert who knows it all. There’s another—far more effective—approach you can take when talking to readers.

In a new feature, our Ask the Editor column reviews the first pages of an unpublished work.

How one author leveraged a sizable social media platform to breathe new life into a self-published book.

Authors who’ve been using Mailchimp for their email newsletter might consider moving to Substack, as it offers several benefits—and it's free.

When an author’s article went viral, she didn’t have the tools in place—a website, a social presence—to capture and leverage that audience.

Authors should consider using AI for historical research—not as a replacement for primary sources, but as just another useful tool.

According to neuroscience, scenes make the reader feel as if they are actually in the world of the story. And that makes scene the most memorable way to share information with the reader.

If your writing project has hit a wall, consider whether it really wants to be a different form than the one you’re trying to shape it into.

When self-publishing be sure to determine a distribution strategy, avoid gotchas when using POD, and get pricing and metadata right from the start.

An editor advises that when writing a true crime story it’s best to lean in to the lurid details that will hook readers up front.

In this nexus of fact and fiction, writers can mine, select and transform their real life journeys, turning points and discoveries into story.

Building up courage to own your identity as a writer starts when you realize you need to ask someone for an objective opinion on your work.

Author Elisa Lorello’s exploratory dive into ChatGPT led her to discover its usefulness—rather than threat—to fiction and nonfiction writers.

Asking yourself the right questions about why, when, how, and how much your characters speak will help you craft more powerful dialogue.

A book pitch requires an author to distill character, plot and stakes into one or two juicy sentences that entice a reader to ask for more.

A genre author seeks advice on letting stories unspool more organically while also honoring the reliability of the three act structure.

One of the hard parts of working on a book is that day-to-day progress isn’t readily visible. Give yourself credit for all the small achievements.

These five steps will help you find your ideal comp titles for your query letter or book proposal, using ChatGPT. Includes sample prompts.

Submitting work shouldn’t be an act of desperation, and not every publishing deal aligns with your goals for your book—your “why”.

Marketing strategically for 30–60 minutes per day can ensure your time, money, and energy go toward activities that move the needle.

Finished a first draft and unsure where to go next? Here’s a 5-point checklist of what the second draft revision process should accomplish.

It’s still possible to write on social media to communicate our ideas, our topics, and our point of view to people who become our audience.

With a regular five-minute meditation you’ll become a master of focus, able to dismiss distractions before they even fully form as thoughts.

The recently published LISTEN, WORLD! is a page turning biography of Elsie Robinson, the most read woman journalist of the twentieth century.

Upmarket fiction is a blend of commercial and literary fiction, but how it gets blended is where writers and industry members can’t always agree.

When we lean into stigmatized topics, we invite readers to wrestle with the same complexities we’re examining in ourselves.