Romance Dominates Kindle: 5 Stats Every Fiction Writer Should Know
55% of top-selling Kindle books in 2025 were romance — and 75% of those bestselling authors went indie. Five eye-opening stats about the hottest genre in publishing.
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Guest Post: Applying 3-Act Structure to a Picture Book
I would like to sincerely thank Steve and Dani for giving me the opportunity to share my experience writing Sade: We’re Moving to Canada! on this blog, and to provide a free copy of the book to the Writing Academy community. I have been writing on and off since I was a kid. I describe…
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Guest Post: My Indie Journey
I’m an indie. It’s not a decision I made lightly, but in the end, I chose the independent publishing route. It’s my path. I’ve called myself type A, or a control freak, or whatever the latest jargon is, but basically, I like to do things myself. I’m also impatient. That said, I know two things:…
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Guest Post: Challenges with Writing & Illustrating My Second Children’s Book, Breathe, Mustard, Breathe!
I would like to extend an appreciation to Dani and Steve Alcorn for allowing me to share a free copy of my second book, Breathe, Mustard, Breathe! with the excellent Writing Academy community, as well as a few key lessons I learned in writing and illustrating my second book. Breathe, Mustard, Breathe! simply teaches our…
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Lessons Learned: Writing & Illustrating an Amazon Best-Selling Children’s Picture Book
To begin, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dani Alcorn for inviting me to write a guest blog post for Writing Academy. My debut children’s picture book, Nobody Loves Mustard, unexpectedly became: An Amazon Best Selling New Release A Number 1 Best Seller (Top 100 Free) A Number 1 Best Seller (Top…
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Thinking Like an Entrepreneur
You need an email list of potential customers to market your book(s) to. Surprised? You probably assumed email lists were just for businesses. But you are a business now! (PS That’s true even if you’re planning to go the traditional publishing route – agents and publishers will be very interested in you if you already…
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Getting Book Blurbs
Getting your book blurbed by the right person can have a huge impact on the success of your book launch. The right blurb can increase your sales and go a long way toward legitimizing a self-published book. But, first, what is a book blurb? A book blurb is a short quote (usually just one or…
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What Genres Do Literary Agents Want?
Since agents work on commission, they are looking for books they can sell and make money from. Those don’t necessarily match what books are the best sellers. Some very popular categories don’t sell for high contract prices, meaning less commission to the agent. Agents are looking for the high dollar contracts. If you want to…
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Internet Business Insights
Many of my courses include lessons about self-publishing and how to market books once they’re published. A great marketing technique is to give your book away on Amazon periodically to drive it to the top of their bestseller list. Then you can charge for it while it is being promoted on Amazon’s lists. Since it…
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A New Publisher Who Promotes Your Book
When JK Rowling first wrote Harry Potter, she couldn’t land a publishing deal. That’s right, the greatest money making book of our time was passed over repeatedly. However, it was finally accepted…not because an editor actually read it, but because one of them gave the first chapter to his eight-year-old daughter and said, “Here, you…
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Children's Books | Marketing | Mysteries | Publishing | Romance | Traditional Publishing | Young Adult Books
Publishers Who Accept Unsolicited Manuscripts
I’ll try to keep this list updated. Please let me know of any good or bad experiences with these by dropping me a note at [email protected] Books for Adult Readers Baen Books Baen Books is a science fiction and fantasy publisher. It accepts unsolicited manuscripts for all books and prefers electronic submissions through its manuscript-submission…
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Creating Your Author Website – A Checklist
What authors should have a website? Every one of them. But a writer or illustrator should have a website that contains information of value. Simply having a book⏤whether publisher or in-progress⏤listed on an author’s website is of little use to the viewer. Having information to support that book adds value. One of my students compiled…
