Good Luck With That
I remember having a dialogue with a writer friend a few years ago. She was chastising me for stressing the importance of luck in publishing. Her argument was that, if you work hard enough, you're bound to succeed. At the time, I was wondering if she was right and hard...
6 Tips for Adding Life to Your Locations
One of my favorite writing resources, Mythic Scribes, recently shared some great tips on using your locations to bring your story to life. Here is my summary. As always, you are encouraged to check out the original post for more. The whole point they are making is...
Writing and Alcohol
There seems to be an unwritten rule that writers have to be heavy drinkers, too. Hemingway, Joyce, Truman Capote, Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, Bukowski... the list goes on. Some cheerily accepted their dependency, arguing that alcohol fueled their creativity....
Of Father’s Day and Summer Hampers
Summer's finally here and Father's Day is right around the corner. Which means... plenty of giveaways and free books! One Heart for You Marina Gioti's One Heart for You is written by a daughter and addressed to her father, the first love of her life. Sweet and moving,...
Discovered: A rare Revolutionary War-era newspaper
Fans of books and writing will be thrilled to learn of this rare find: a newspaper published on December 28, 1774, accidentally discovered in a New Jersey Goodwill facility! As The Washington Post reports, Mike Storms was walking among the crowded shelves of the New...
Is This SF/Fantasy’s Big Moment?
While Game of Thrones is finally over, another war is raging unabated: the one between premium television networks, seeking a new show to rule the world “Thrones” created. As The Washington Post reports, Netflix, Apple, Amazon, and Showtime have all been feverishly...
Video Editing Made Easy: Movavi Video Editor
With video playing an increasingly important role in book marketing, I recently shared the news about Flexiclip, a free online video editing resource. But Flexiclip is largely clip-based. It's great when you wish to use their stock videos, but editing your own video...
How Scared Should You Be Of Duplicate Content?
This is a slightly technical post but it's close to my heart as it answers a question I often hear. Longtime readers of this blog will know that, since 2016, I have been posting all of my content simultaneously on both my main website, nicholasrossis.me, and my...
A Free Amazon Keyword Organizer Tool
You may remember that Amazon has recently adopted a more flexible way of reading keywords. You see, Amazon provides you on their KDP bookshelf with a set of 7 separate keyword boxes, giving some authors the impression that they should enter just one keyword or keyword...
What Facebook’s Latest Changes Mean for you
Facebook has been under intense pressure lately. On one hand, both public and private bodies scrutinize its every move, worried about privacy issues and undemocratic material posted online. On the other, shareholders are troubled by dwindling membership. So, Facebook...
How to Analyze your Visitor Data
Google Analytics and your own WordPress Statistics (available through Jetpack, if you're self-hosted) can be among the most useful book marketing tools. Who visits you and which pages do they frequent the most? Do people find what they're looking for? How long do they...
Fear of Missing Out. Or is that Joy?
When I was in my first year at Uni, about a century ago or so, I took a summer job. For a few months, I was running a one-man quality control lab. I was responsible for taking daily samples of cement, processing it, and recording a number of data including...