Evoking Emotion in Fiction: 7 Pragmatic Ways to Make Readers Give a Damn

In Writer’s Digest, author Dustin Grimmel gives these 7 ways to engage readers. Do you agree? Evoking Emotion #1: Positive moral judgments about the protagonist Evoking Emotion #2: A protagonist who wants something really badly Evoking Emotion #3: A protagonist who pursues their desires Evoking Emotion #4: A protagonist who never gives up Evoking Emotion #5: Characters who do the […]

Hollywood comes calling for self-published authors

Film and TV production companies are increasingly turning to self-published authors to pick up potential screen blockbusters. The latest indie writer to get a call from Hollywood is best-selling thriller author Mark Dawson. Advanced negotiations are taking place with a leading TV production company that wants to snap up his Beatrix Rose series, according to a report in The Guardian. […]

Little House on the Prairie – Banned

The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association, voted on Saturday to strip the name of Laura Ingalls Wilder from a popular children’s book award, months after a task force set out to consider the long-running scholarly discussion around “anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments” in the author’s work. The Laura Ingalls Wilder Award honors […]

The Science of the Plot Twist

“A major part of the pleasure of plot twists, too, comes not from the shock of surprise, but from looking back at the early bits of the narrative in light of the twist. The most satisfying surprises get their power from giving us a fresh, better way of making sense of the material that came before. This is another opportunity […]

When Action Isn’t a Good Thing

“For example, we need to write a scene with two characters talking, but something should be happening besides dialogue, right? Enter props. We put them at a kitchen table and give them tea to pour into cups. We put them in a car where they can fiddle with the radio dial and glance in the rear-view mirror. We get them to […]

Author Earnings Sliding Fast in U.K.

Can authors make a living as a writer? Is this another case for self-publishing and self-promotion? From Publishers Weekly: Median annual income of professional writers in the U.K. is now under £10,500, down by 15% since 2013, according to ALCS (Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society) research. That figure puts authors’ hourly rate well below minimum wage The earnings figure of […]

The Time Arthur Conan Doyle Helped Solve a Real Murder Case

From Publishers Weekly… It was one of the most sensational crimes—and most scandalous wrongful convictions—of the 20th century, a case that would be known as the Scottish Dreyfus affair. It involved a savage murder, stolen jewels, an international manhunt and a wily maidservant who went to her grave knowing far more about the killing than she would ever disclose. Even […]

AudioBooks up 23%

Audiobooks continued their meteoric rise in 2017, a new report issued by the Audio Publishers Association found, with another year of double-digit growth for both audiobook sales and title output. Total sales rose 22.7% in 2017, to an estimated $2.5 billion, over an estimated $2.1 billion in sales in 2016. Unit sales rose an estimated 21.5%, the APA reported. Sales […]

B&N Losing in 2018Q2

Total sales at Barnes & Noble fell 6.0% in the fiscal year ended April 28, 2018, compared to fiscal 2017, and the retailer posted a net loss of $125.5 million last year, compared to net income of $22.0 million in fiscal 2017. Revenue last year was $3.66 billion, down from $3.89 billion in fiscal 2017. The net loss includes a […]