Writer's Reach Series

You've published your first book. But you've only made one sale. (It was to your mom.) So you pop onto your favorite writing forum and ask, "How do ya'll market a book? I just published and can't seem to get anyone to buy it." Two days later, you have eight thousand suggestions, from "update your book covers" to "pay for ads" to "offer a sacrifice to the wolf god on the night of the blood moon." There are endless options available, and the one piece of advice that keeps rearing its ugly head is this: "You should try it! ...but what works for me might not work for you." So how do you choose where to spend your marketing time and money? With seemingly infinite options and zero guarantee that anything will work, how do you decide what to try and what to avoid, what to pay for and what to save for later? In How To Build A Marketing Strategy, you will learn exactly what the title says: how to build a book marketing strategy. It will go over the various components of a strategy, how to harness your own skills and resources to market your books, and how to grow your marketing strategy as your author business grows--all while allowing you to remain flexible, and do this marketing thing your own way. Don't flail around in the dark anymore--make a plan and follow through.

You're writing a book. But as it turns out, writing a book is difficult! In your head, the narrative is grand and beautiful--some might even say epic, majestic, a story for the ages! But as you're rereading what you've got so far, you find yourself... disappointed. It's not at all how you imagined it, with choppy language, weak characters, and thin description of the setting. It lacks depth and form, but you don't exactly know how to fix it.   Writing and revising fiction is challenging, and the strategies for doing it well are varied and highly subjective. And the truth is, there's no single "right way" to craft a narrative.   So how do you do it? How do you take what seems like a brilliant idea for a story and craft it into something wonderful, that truly represents what you know you're capable of? How do you add the depth and elegance that will have people reading your book for decades to come?   In the book The Intersection of Setting and Story, delve into the craft of creating compelling fiction with A.J. Sieling. This book will examine the many uses for setting, and how a writer can blend it with the other elements of story to build a narrative web which captures the reader's imagination.

Branding: a fun, business-y buzzword people use to mean any number of things. In the writing world, everyone says you need to have one, but what that actually looks like varies hugely from author to author.   The truth is, every brand is different, and that's good. But endless options and flexibility can make it difficult to decide how to represent your books publicly. So what is an author brand? And how do you build one? And most importantly, how do you build a brand that both suits your personality and aligns with your books?   In this book, you will learn the components that make up an author brand, which details matter (and which ones don't!), and how to go about making decisions about your author brand. In addition, you will learn how to put yourself first, while simultaneously considering your reader's needs as you develop your brand. This book includes self-assessing tools designed to ease the branding process, including an author branding template.

  f you've spent much time in the writing community, you've probably run across this question: "Are you a plotter or a pantser?" Plotters plan and organize their books ahead of time, while pantsers "write by the seat of their pants"—or, in other words, wing it. But how? How does that work? How is it possible to just sit down and write a book? The short answer is: it's not. There is a lot more that goes on in a writer's brain than just sitting down and writing a book. Even if that's what it looks like from the outside. How To Pants A Novel is an explication of my experience as a lifelong pantser. It explores what the process of pantsing a book might look like, delves into the intricacies of crafting a story on the fly, and answers a few common questions often posed to pantsers. Pantsing is a less frequently discussed method of writing a book, but for many writers, it's the only way that works. And if you're one of those writers—or if you're not sure what kind of writer you are—hopefully this book will help you better understand and refine your own process into something that works the best for you.

Cliffhangers get a bad rap from the reading community. They moan and complain and say that they hate them with a passion! But from a writer's perspective, cliffhangers are little more than a tool for suspense, right? So how do we craft endings to our fiction novels that are exciting and suspenseful (and yes, sometimes leave information out!), but that don't enrage our readers?    The answer to creating suspense is finding that balance between what to share and what to hide; it's about careful and strategic placement of details.    In Hook, Line, and Cliffhanger, delve into the intricacies of effective (and ineffective!) cliffhanger endings. It will identify different types of endings that are often considered cliffhangers by readers, and discuss when to use them, when not to use them, and how to do so most impactfully. In addition, this book will go over the different types of book series, to better understand how to keep your reader turning page after page late into the night—and then grabbing the next book in the series as soon as they finish the first.   Learn how to shove your readers over the edge of that suspenseful cliff, and have them enjoy the fall.