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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...
Persist No Matter How Many Times You Are Rejected
You’ve heard it many times before that getting a book traditionally published isn’t easy. Manuscript rejection has deprived the world of many great potential writers. Rejection is soul-crushing to any writer because they value the opinions of publishers and literary agents. They look up to...
Habits and Mannerisms Make Your Characters Human
Our daily lives are filled with tiny actions and gestures that we never pay attention to and forget at the end of the day. From sniffing a bottle of perfume, petting a dog, or clicking our tongue in disgust at an auto-correct message, these trivial...
Your Sacrificial Characters Must Do More than Just Sacrifice
Sacrificial characters are nothing new in different genres, especially in action thrillers. Sacrificial characters are the typical people in your neighborhood (unless it’s fantasy or sci-fi). We read them in a passive manner, second-guessing how their appearance in the story will advance the plot or...
Believing the Unbelievable in Fiction
Sometimes when you read a story, you shake your head and say, “This is impossible!" But somewhere out there, somebody is reading the same story. He suspends his element of disbelief and buys the story as plausible. Regardless of its genre, the reader is convinced...
Six tips to combat writers’ block – Part 2
In part 1 of this article, we covered three tips – specific writing output, mental editing, and sleeping on it. We examine the remaining three here in part 2. Tip 4 – Park it temporarily This is a continuation to the ‘sleep on it’ rule. When you...
Six tips to combat writers’ block – Part 1
Writing is an individual activity. Inspiration can strike anywhere. However, the craft of writing is solitary and cognitively intensive. As a result, writers encounter writers’ block. It is a natural part of the writing process. My experience is that writers’ block can lead to positive...
Nonfiction Sells Better Than Fiction
I have numerous memories of rhubarb. As a very young child, I would help my great-grandfather harvest his very prolific rhubarb patch. This rhubarb is the foundation of my rhubarb patch today, 50 years later. Just as prolific and overgrown as my great-grandfather’s, my rhubarb...
Notebooks and the Writer
I believe Ernest Hemingway said it best in A Moveable Feast: “I belong to this notebook and this pencil.” Okay, so we don’t all use the real paper kind of notebook anymore and many of us probably don’t even own a pencil, but the value...
Your Character Must Change in the Process
Part of character development is your character changing as your story progresses. If your character doesn’t change, readers will have no reason to understand his sentiments and motives. However, changing a character just because he should without the proper circumstance to trigger this might throw...
Cinematic Battle Scenes
Lawrence of Arabia, The Lord of the Rings, Gladiator. What do they have in common? They have epic battle scenes that will knock you off your seat. In any sub-genre of action films and novels, battle scenes involve many characters, both major and minor, coming...