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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...

How to Get Your Article Read

White papers and content articles are among the most in-demand types of writing today. Yet some writers dread the idea of writing them out of fear that no one would bother to read them, especially since online information is vying for people’s attention. For the...

The Basics of Article Writing and Marketing

Using social media and posting at designated times within the day to generate traffic to your site can be time-consuming, especially if you are doing it alone. But many website owners can create traffic on a steady basis. How? What some writers do is create SEO-enhanced...

How to Track Your Traffic

Seeing traffic breezing through your website is a natural high. It gives you that intangible reward for your writing efforts. Unfortunately, not all of us know how to track our site traffic. Not knowing where your traffic is coming from is a sign that you are...

Your Nonfiction Book Proposal (Part 3 of 3)

Publicity and Promotion: This is where you present the promotional opportunities for your book and how it can help generate an audience. Assuming that you have established a market, the publicity and the promotion will serve as the cogwheels that will start the sales running....

Your Nonfiction Book Proposal (Part 2 of 3)

Your Short Bio: More popularly known as “About the Author” at the back of books, this is where you market yourself in your proposal. Unlike those brief bios in published paperbacks, your book proposal gives you the chance to talk about yourself at length. However,...

Your Nonfiction Book Proposal (part 1 of 3)

You labored for months, even years, on your great nonfiction book. Do not celebrate yet. An editor from a major publishing house is asking for your book proposal. Now here is where it is going to be a make or break. Your proposal plays a...

How to Get Your Poetry Recognized

When you are trying to gain exposure for your poetry, it can seem a lot harder than finding opportunities as a fiction writer. That being said, there are many places to find submission opportunities, if you are willing to put in the work to find...

How To Write An Engaging Bio

The importance of writing an engaging author bio is not just for readers to know a little about you, but also to build trust and to let them know what makes you stand out from other writers in your genre. Your writer's biography is like...

How Do You Market Your Nonfiction Book?

So, you have finally finished your nonfiction book, what now? Although you can give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back for achieving such a great goal, your work is far from over. Now comes the task of marketing your book. Hopefully, by the time...

How To Find Your Target Audience

Have you just completed your first novel and know that it could be a best-seller, if only you find the right readers? How can you find the type of reader that would be perfect for the subject matter or genre of your book? This article...