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Book Review & Contest Insights from Real Reviews and Submissions

What separates great books from the rest? Below are articles with insights from real reviews and contest submissions—what works, what doesn’t, and how to improve your book. You’ll also find a wide range of articles covering writing, publishing, marketing, and more. Each article has a Comments section so you can read advice from other authors and leave your own.

Why Some Books Win Awards (And Most Don’t) — Insights From Real Contest Submissions New!

What separates award-winning books from the rest? After evaluating contest submissions across a wide range of genres, certain patterns become clear. Some books consistently rise to the top. Others, even with strong ideas and clear effort behind them, fall short. The difference is rarely dramatic—it...

What We’ve Learned From Reviewing Hundreds of Thousands of Books (And Why Most Don’t Stand Out) New!

After reviewing and evaluating books across thousands of submissions over the past two decades, certain patterns become impossible to ignore. Some books immediately stand out to reviewers. Others—even well-intentioned ones—fade into the middle or fall short. The difference is rarely luck. It comes down to...

Five Free Platforms That You Can Install On Your Website for Blogging

A blogging platform refers to the software used in order to create the blog. You will discover that there are many different options to be found in the market, all of which range according to what the blogger requires.

Blogger – is one of the most popular and free platforms for blogging. This one is owned by Google. The appeal of this one is that it's easy to use and can be set up practically instantly. Blogger supports drag-and-drop template editing, great updating, geo-tagging for location-based blogging, and easy publication with editing tools. Blogger supports up to 100 users so expansion is possible without any problems.

Tumblr – is all about short-form or micro blogging. The style of blogging found here focuses on short and frequent posts that are usually longer than Twitter updates, but aren't as involved and formal as regular blog posts. This is ideal for people who want to blog but don't want a blog that takes too much involvement or takes up too much of their time.

WordPress – this is a popular open source blogging platform. WordPress gives you the option to set up a WordPress blog on your own server completely free or create a WordPress hosted-blog at Wordpress.com. This platform provides you with themes, plug-ins, and all kinds of gadgets to make your blog stand out. Even though it isn't as easy to set up, once you get it going you're always rewarded with a practically limitless array of options, configurations and plug-ins. It also gives you the opportunity to maintain a single blog with a single user to an entire stable of blogs with multiple users that are all managed by a primary administrator.

Posterous – offers you a simple and no fuss way to blog. All you have to do is send an email in order to set up your own Posterous blog. You can write posts, either long or short, and attach photos and media files. The site offers you a rich text editor to create or edit posts. You'll discover that you have the opportunity to create multimedia posts and that you can tag your entries straight from your email subject line.

Jux – this is a strong blogging platform that offers full screen images and video. The benefit of blogging with this platform is that you can have a powerful display medium. Mostly Jux focuses on visual mediums such as photos and videos, but you can add text if you prefer.

As you see, the choices are varied and different. It's up to you to decide how you want to do your blogging. Take a look at what everyone is saying about these various platforms before you make your final decision. Remember, you don't want to just go with the crowd; you want to make sure that the platform you choose will give you a rich and rewarding blogging experience. Plug-ins are also another thing you need to consider, along with more options to draw more attention or revenue to your site or other social media.