Welcome back readers! We’re coming up on a long weekend here in Canada, and I am hoping to gets lots of reading in. If you’re in the same boat, here are a few things we found around the web this week to get you started. Fictional Bookshops It’s independent bookshop week in the UK and Ireland. To celebrate, The Guardian shared a quiz on fictional bookstores. Try your hand at answering the questions, and share your results with us in the comments. Speaking of bookstores… Ham

In the previous post, we discussed whether an active social media presence was for you. If it is, there are things to keep in mind to improve your results. Here are a few tips: When deciding which social media channel to focus on, think about what drives you—if you’re an avid Facebook user, your posts will be more authentic and engaging than if you’re trying to be a Facebook user. If you’re going to invest time into growing a following on any social channel, you want to be fu

We're very excited to announce that A.T. Balsara's The Great & the Small is a Purple Dragonfly Book Award winner! The Great & the Small came in second place in both the Fantasy & Science Fiction category and in the Young Adult category, once more proving the quality of Balsara's writing. The Purple Dragonfly Awards are sponsored by Story Monsters LLC. View the full list of winners.

There are two key ideas to consider before we get into the nuts and bolts of the "how" of social media. First and foremost, the key word here is "social" and Rule #1 (and the only hard and fast rule if you want to be successful) is that the purpose of all of the different social media platforms is for you to build a community of like-minded people. People who, after they get to know you a bit and you show and interest in them, might be interested in the book you’ve written. S

Hello everyone! Hope you’ve been enjoying the week. I sure have, and that’s because I’m getting ready for the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair! It’s tomorrow, and if you’re around you should definitely come say hi to me. Anyway, between packing books and getting things printed, here’s what caught my attention around the web this week. Gender Equality in Literary Criticism VIDA has released its 2017 VIDA Count, a report on literary publications in print that looks at the statistic

Book bloggers are becoming increasingly more influential and they have now become a key component of the book launch, the book marketing process, and blog tours. Pitching to book bloggers takes time and dedication. However, they can generate significant buzz for your book. There are a lot of book bloggers out there with followings of various sizes and book blogs start up and close on a regular basis. When you’re building your list of bloggers to approach, it is wise to do the

Hi. I wrote Threshold. Now I’m writing about writing it and a question often asked in this regard is, “Where did you get the idea for this book?” Unfortunately, my answer to that question pretty much boils down to ... I really don’t know. And since you can’t say that out loud because it makes you look like an idiot, I usually say, I was working on a nonfiction essay about the environment, got bummed out by the horror of what we’re doing to the natural world, and decided to wr

An author recent asked me if Amazon book reviews were really that important—wasn’t it word of mouth that sold books? The answer is that book reviews are important for customers, book sellers, and libraries. On book marketing sites, like Amazon, book reviews feed into algorithms and they, along with sales numbers, are responsible for the book’s ranking on the site. They are also a form of digital "word of mouth" and can influence the customer’s purchase decision. But Amazon re

Hello again dear readers and happy Friday. This week we have another quiz and some more interesting articles for you to check out. Enjoy! Which Anne of Green Gables Character Are You? Last week, we shared a quiz to find out what Little Women character you were. This week, we’ve got another character quiz for you. This one based on the famous Canadian classic, Anne of Green Gables. Speaking of Anne… New Anne of Green Gables Musical Yup, Anne may have already found her way to m

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life” - Muhammed Ali It’s a common occurrence. We decide to take The Champ’s advice and tackle some book marketing because we know that our personal involvement boosts both profile and sales. We get all gung ho thinking about all the wonderful things we’re going to accomplish. Maybe we even take a few tentative steps into this strange new world. And then, the excitement fades and we go turtle…retreating