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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...

Horrific Inspirations: The Vampire of Sacramento

While the legends surrounding the Bloody Countess might be more than just a little over exaggerated, and the aspects of the real life Dracula rather mundane for the first vampire in Europe, there is one man that managed to properly claim the title of ‘vampire’....

Romantic Inspirations: Dante and Beatrice

More than once has Dante mentioned a woman named Beatrice through his beloved works, such as The Divine Comedy andVita Nuova. It’s abundantly clear that she made a rather huge impact on Dante, and could even be considered the love of his life. She served as...

How To Write Unique Dialogue

A vital part of the creative process is developing unique characters with recognisable and differing personalities. You can achieve this either by quirky behavioral traits and/or through their speech and dialogue. In other words, the reader would instantly recognise which character is speaking just by their...

Adding Personality to Your Writing

This article is predominantly for all writers of non-fiction who want to add some zest and personality to their content. There is a fallacy that non-fiction books must just be informative and full of fact and figures, but this isn’t going to create a book...

Confusing Punctuation

The most difficult and confusing aspect of writing has to be using the correct punctuation. There are always applications such as Grammarly but you cannot always rely on these to be 100% grammatically correct. Do you use an apostrophe after names ending in S? So...

Proofreading on a Budget

Proof reading has often been considered the bane of writers as it is near impossible to write a masterpiece without first going through several stages of proofreaders, editors, and copywriters. However, while professional writers often have the time and money to pay people to double...

Judging a Book by its Cover

The plot of every book starts with its cover. Before a reader picks your book, they are first enticed by the cover. It gives them a hint of what to expect between the pages. There are tons of books released daily and that means that...

Writing from Home? How to Make it Work - Part 2

Exercising is a great way to rejuvenate your body after spending hours in front of your computer. You get to smell the roses and catch some fresh air. This could entail taking walks, jogging or scheduling time at your local gym. Working out also ensures...

Writing From Home? How to Make it Work - Part 1

The first time I transitioned from a full-time job to working from home was truly liberating. But with freedom comes…you guessed it, tons of responsibilities! I began sleeping in and waking up around mid-morning and within a few hours it would be dark again and...

The Importance Of Morality In Your Writing

Every story that has been written, whether for stage, screen or as a novel, has had a fundamental morality underpinning the story. If you can master morality in your story, it can help you: Illustrate the main conflicts and subplots in your story, giving the whole...