Follow the Clues to Find Out What a Book Is About So You Won’t Waste Time and Money Did you ever buy a book and then discover it’s not what you thought? A memoir turned out to be a novel. Or an enticing cover misguided you into thinking the book was literary fiction and it was memoir? Bummer. We readers know what we like to read, and when…

Hacks for Writing Authentic Dialogue — What did Jennifer Lopez say to Ben at the Grammy's? The body language would tell you it wasn’t a love message. How about Mitt Romney’s remarks to George Santos during the State of the Union gathering? Something nasty, and Santos spit it right back. We couldn’t hear these exchanges or…

Confessions from a Book Award Judge — Yes, you can judge a book by its cover. I do. I am a book award judge. As a judge, I am sent a box of books, all entries in one category for a major book award. Sometimes two boxes of books. …

The Essential Publishing Question All First-Time Authors Ask — Ask not what your editor can do for you. Well, actually, that’s the question you do want to ask when you’re writing your book, feeling overwhelmed or stark naked actually about the whole writing and publishing process. But wait, you say, I need to find an editor. I’m a first-time…

Fine-Tune Your Writing with Advice Your Critique Group Won’t Give You — If you’ve been following my two previous posts on stuff writers write that makes editors cringe, and more annoying stuff writers write, you know I’ve tackled Simon Sinek’s tiresome why, Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (when we all just need caffeine), variations on the starfish story (throw them all back)…

Or worse, you’re already live on Amazon with mistakes? — Twice just this year, book designers I know have contacted me and said, “Sandy, I am doing this cover and interior, and I think this book really needs an edit. I know [the author] had an edit done, but I’m seeing issues. Can you help?” What issues are they seeing…

How to Tell a Book by Its Cover — or Why Cover Design Is Essential for Sales — Ever pick up a book and anticipate a juicy mystery thriller only to discover it’s a memoir of abuse? Or grabbed an enticing romance novel (or what looked like one because of the six-pack-ab boyfriend on the front cover), but it turned out to be poetry? Yah, extreme examples, but…

A Definitive Guide for Authors and Editors — Editors disagree about many of the finer points of their work such as whether to capitalize the word president (no, generally, but yes with President Lincoln), whether to spell out numbers (some styles say yes to every number lower than 10 or lower than 100), or whether to use the…

I’ve seen it all. A manuscript of 60,000 words and just one paragraph. A hodgepodge of dialogue smooshed together with no quotation marks. …