Cheryl Cowtan on Writing

When a bookstore can't sell copies of your novel, the books get sent back to the publisher, who marks them with a dash, slash or smash and then off they go to a remainder bookstore like BookCloseOuts.com . Gloria Ferris signing  Cheat the Hangman As the author, you'll never see a penny from the remainder sales. However, if you offer to sign all copies at a bookstore, they will think you're wonderful, and your books may never be sent to remainder heaven, because publishers usually don't take signed books. Dianne J. Ferris signing The Purple Doll

Figment is a personal space that allows you to promote and showcase your writing, in groups, on the site and on your blog. The layout is very user friendly and easy to understand. I signed up yesterday.  I create a profile, joined some groups containing potential readers of my favourite genre for writing and then I posted a flash fiction. For you writers out there who are dying to get some feedback on your writing, there are a few things you can do. Have a friend read it. Or, post a synopsis on your Web site and hopefully receive some responses to your upcoming work. I did that at my Web site and I did receive some nice feedback. See how it looks using WIX gallery.  Another way, is to create some writing that showcases your style and talent and post it on Figment.  The Figment writing tool allows you to create a cover, choose limited styles of text and layout and then make it available to the many readers on the site. See my example below. Notice how many respo...

Make Book Trailers with Smilebox Authors started using book trailers to persuade viewers to purchase their novels in 2003. Though there are many programs you can use to create your own book trailer, each one requires different levels of expertise. For example: using MovieMaker or another film editing program would require more skill in film editing, and access to copyright free images and music. However, the benefits of using film editing software is the flexibility you have as a designer. If you don't have a lot of film editing skill, Smilebox offers a number of template designs that you can manipulate into a trailer. They also have two to three music choices and a fairly good music library to choose from for each template. The many choices of templates allow you to set your mood in the trailer using imagery, animation, colour and symbols. You can also add your own images. I made this book trailer for my novel "The Precious Quest" in about 2 hours. The novel is a d...