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I’m sure that most people reading that blog title will think it’s click bait. It’s not, it is a genuine question. I’m asking this based on an article by Mark Williams I read this morning titled, Amazon’s Dismantling of its Book Operations Continues. Mark is not someone to yell “the sky is falling.” He’s been following and reporting on book operations around the world for more than a decade. I highly recommend every author read this article and ask yourself: “Are all my eggs in the Amazon basket? Is that where they need to be?” Those who follow me, or

An Audio recording of this post is available below. If you wish to download it to your computer, tablet, or phone, RIGHT CLICK on the audio and select SAVE to your device. It is an MP3 file. So, it will open in whatever APP you use to listen to audio music or speech. https://povauthorservices.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/whats-new-publishing-2023-blog.mp3   Every December I do a blog post for Romancing the Genres. This is a blog that has been around for more than a decade and is run by Judith Ashley and Sarah Raplee. This year, I decided to do two posts. The first is my

This is an update and expansion of an article I wrote for the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) three years ago. No one wants to think about death, but the reality is it happens to all of us. Many writers have likely written a will–either by using a template on one of many legal sites or perhaps involved an attorney to make sure that their children, siblings, or perhaps some great friends inherit whatever they have. I drew up my first will when I was in my 20s and newly married. I’d been through a cancer scare and knew that

What genre am I? This is a question I hear all the time from new writers and even seasoned writers who aren’t seeing sales in the genre they selected. With what appears to be thousands of selection on Amazon, and admittedly close to 5,000 on BISAC it is quite confusing. So, I created a handout for the Foundations class, I teach and I share it with you here with a few explanatory words. Placing your book into its correct genre is a major component of successfully marketing your book and, if you are a single genre writer, can also help

I know that a lot of my posts and emphasis is on helping independent authors who are primarily self-publishing or working with small publishers. However, there are many authors who are hybrid–they self publish and they work with traditional publishers. And there are authors who really don’t want to ever self-publish, either because their genre isn’t as conducive to self-publishing–academic books, children’s books, some literary novels–or they don’t want to learn the ins and outs of publishing a book or pay someone to do it for them. I was traditionally published in the beginning of my career. I did 5

This is an updated post from one I wrote on a guest blog six years ago when someone made a comment that anyone not currently raising children couldn’t write children’s books or YA books because they wouldn’t have the right “voice” for it. Of course, I completely disagreed. As I begin writing a Middle Grade book series, I sometimes have people ask me: “Don’t you think you’re too old for that? How do you know what they think or feel?” My answer is I know because I was a child once. The same goes for YA books. I was a