Author Services

Author Articles

Hundreds of Helpful Articles

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...

Mythical Monsters and Creatures of China Part 2

Taotie Taotie is a monster that has only a head and a mouth as in its hunger it ate everything within sight until the only thing left for Taotie to feed upon was its own body. For its greed, Taotie died soon after consuming its own...

Editing Tips - Most Common Mistakes

As a writer, one of the key tasks in getting your book published is to have it professionally edited. Before sending the book to your editor, it is important that you edit it yourself and make sure that the book is as polished as it can...

Why You Should Never Use Clichés

More and more authors nowadays are producing books, thanks to the booming electronic publishing industry. With increasing competitors jostling for readers’ attention, the imperative of making your work stand out is a golden rule a writer must never ignore. One surefire way to make your...

9 Reasons Why You Should Write That Book – Part 3

And now we come to the last 3 reasons why you need to write that book. If you’re not convinced yet, you will be by the end of this. Reason 7: You get to be a published author There’s something in seeing a book published, a book...

9 Reasons Why You Should Write That Book – Part 2

Welcome back to this short series on why you should write that book. Reason 2: You’ll learn how to write and how to self-publish If learning about yourself wasn’t enough, you will also learn about the process of writing and readying a book for publication – the...

9 Reasons Why You Should Write That Book – Part 1

You’ve got the idea for the book, you think it’s a great idea and yes, you really should sit down and write it. But still, those doubts linger in your mind. What if I put in the time and effort to write it, not to mention...

Metaphor, Simile, Or Analogy? - Part 2

In the first part, we examined what a metaphor, an analogy, and a simile are; now we need to understand the difference between them. Metaphor vs Simile Actually, that title isn’t really correct; we can’t have a metaphor vs a simile because a simile is a type...

Metaphor, Simile, Or Analogy? – Part 1

Back in grade school, I have no doubt that you learned all about figurative language. You probably also remember the words, ‘simile’ and ‘metaphor’ but can you remember what they are? How they differ from one another? And then the word ‘analogy’ gets thrown into the mix...

Mythical Monsters and Creatures of China Part 1

In How to Write a Unique Spooky Story, I wrote about how to write a unique spooky story by either creating your own monster, creature, or horror yourself or by finding a monster that is not well known. I advised finding a monster by researching...

How Many Words Should Be In A Chapter Of A Book? – Part 2

So, have you determined a good chapter length for your book or do you need some more help? What is important is your readers, not how long it will take you to write the chapter. You need to consider an average reader and how long...