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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...

What Are Your Fears About Writing?

Are you afraid to write? Or just afraid to share what you do write? Afraid someone will laugh at you? Or, worse, sue you? We all have these fears. And more. When I write my creative nonfiction stories, mostly family stories, I worry that someone in...

How to Work With Compound Subjects and Their Verbs

You know that subjects and verbs must agree in number. Thus, this is correct:      The president is heading to Camp David for the weekend. The singular subject, president, agrees in number with the singular verb is. That’s simple enough, but confusion may arise if too...

How to Handle the Problem of “He and She”

A perennial problem for writers is how to handle the third person singular pronoun when gender is unknown. An example is:      When emailing an editor, you can usually address him by his first name. The trouble with that sentence is that it excludes female editors....

How to Develop a Non-fiction Topic

One of the most difficult questions for beginning writers is “What am I going to write about?” Seasoned writers, however, possess tons of ideas. (Their problem is finding the time to write about all the ideas they have.) So how can you take this giant step...

Citing Your Sources in Non-fiction Writing

If you are a postgraduate student at a university or college, you will most definitely be required, at some stage or other, to provide at least one, if not more, lengthy piece(s) of work reporting on your research that you have had to undertake in...

Tips for Titling Your Book or Story

By definition, your book’s title is what potential readers usually see first. (A possible exception is your cover, but even there, the title is an essential part of the cover.) So how do you create a title that will grab a potential buyer’s attention? Here are...

How to Use Transitional Words and Paragraph Hooks

Transitions words and phrases allow you—and your reader— to move smoothly from one thought to another. Without them, writing sounds stilted and unnatural, such as this:      "Jones, a junior psychology major, made the All-American team last year. He carries a 3.5 grade point average." Clearly,...

Interviewing Tips Part 2

Start with easier questions, then move to most difficult ones Don’t start by asking the WW II vet how he felt about his friends dying. Start with less-emotionally laden ones and move on to more difficult ones. Then end with easier questions so your source...

Interviewing Tips Part 1

All writers, whether nonfiction or fiction, need to research their subject. Although online research is valuable, the best research is done by interviewing people. Yet the thought of conducting an interview makes many writers shake like a leaf in a hurricane. As a word of encouragement,...

Avoiding the Passive Voice

One of my editors recently wrote to me suggesting I refrain from using the passive voice. “You use passive too often,” she claimed. I hadn’t realized I was such a ‘passive’ writer, but, taking another look at the novel she had finished editing for me, I...