In-Depth Articles About ... Marketing

Note: This post was first published in July 2012 and updated in November 2018. One reader asked me: “I’d like to know what it’s like to get rejected by a publisher or several (if that’s ever happened to you) and how you bounce back from it.” It has indeed happened to...

I’m taking a break from blogging on Aliventures over the summer – I’ll be back in late September with a spruced-up blog design and plenty of posts lined up for the rest of 2018. In the meantime, I wanted to share plenty of resources and reading that you might want to...

Congratulations! You’ve published your first novel (or maybe your second or your third) and now you’re ready to market it. This can be a daunting moment. I think all of us secretly hope that our novel will be miraculously discovered and recognised as the masterpiece...

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of authors, bloggers and freelancers launch their websites. They rarely start out with a massively, gorgeous site. They normally begin with something simple but workable: perhaps it’s a free blog on WordPress.com, for instance, or a...

Whatever you write, and whether or not you have a blog or even a website, it’s a great idea to have an email list. You might have heard this called an “email newsletter” or “mailing list” – it’s basically the same thing. The idea is that you let interested readers...

Most writers, at some point, will want a website. You might use your website: As a way to promote your writing services (e.g. copywriting, freelance writing, editing, or proofreading). As a resource for a creative writing group (e.g. letting members / new members know...

One of the more teeth-pulling tasks of self-publishing a novel is having to write your own blurb (or what Amazon calls a “product description”, and what some people call a “synopsis”). I spent ages agonising over this when I published Lycopolis, including getting my...

Long-time Aliventures readers might remember that the first half of 2012 was a little hectic for me. I’d just launched my first novel, Lycopolis, and started Writers’ Huddle ... and I had five months to turn in the manuscript of Publishing E-Books for Dummies. And on...

It’s Friday 20th June, and I'm going to the Winchester Writers' Conference. I'm due to head off for a train in less than an hour and I've not finished packing. I want something to read on my Kindle Fire. I don't have much time, so I don't browse book blogs or ask on...

(Image from Flickr by Jason A. Howie) Should writers be on social media, or should they stay away? By “social media”, I mean sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest. (Technically, social media also covers blogs, but I’m leaving those out for...