There's no reason you can't be the next wildly successful writer and my new e-book will show you how. I'm pretty excited about this new e-book and I hope you'll share my excitement by getting your copy now for the introductory price. Writing for Publication has been a long time coming in e-book form. I had published a shorter writing book, Write, then Publish. Today , but this new, revised version is the complete course, revised and updated just in time for the new year. This comprehensive course is an easy-to-read, to-the-point handbook for writers of all genres and all levels. As a private writing coach, I use these step-by-step methods in my coaching....and my students get published. From an 87-year-old great grandmother who wrote her first article in longhand on the back of a store ad, to a 14-year-old girl who wanted to enter a school writing contest, my students get published and win awards. I've coached pastors who wanted to be published in religious...

I love Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. There are so many great success stories about writers who didn't think they could be heard, get their foot in the door or ever have an audience for their work. Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing opened that door for them and that door is open for you, too. Poppy J. Anderson is just one example of an Indie Author who stepped out of her comfort zone and published with Amazon Kindle Publishing and saw great success. YOU COULD BE NEXT! Why not you? Get on it. ~Tricia

When I started my Writing for Publication classes a few years ago, I had no idea how far some of my students would be able to take what they'd learned and achieve such success. Amanda Hocking sat in my class and told me how she'd quit college to write full time because college took too much time away from her writing. Sitting with a large stack of rejection letters, Amanda learned about e-publishing in my class and that was all she needed to know. She's now a million-dollar-author with a movie deal in the works! The simple, straightforward information in this short e-book have been life-changing and confidence-building for many other authors as well. I got word just this week that another one of my students has sent his book off to Paramount Pictures. I also got word that another former student just signed a book deal with a publisher. You can be a successful writer, too. Start by learning what my other students learned; start by downloading your free copy of Write...

The title looks a little deceptive, but it really is true. If you want to sell your books, start giving them away! Today, I started offering one of my e-books, Tears in a Bottle , for free through Amazon Kindle Direct. Within an hour, 35 books had been downloaded! For me, a small-scale indie author, that number is huge for an hour's worth of sales! KDP Select is one of the best tools any writer can use. It doesn't matter if you're a seasoned author or just getting started. Offering your books as a free download through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing's Select program is genius for selling books! Kudos for Amazon for coming up with such a program. Writers, take note. If you want to sell more books, start giving them away! You still get a cut and your name as an author gets a wider audience. It's a win/win plan. By the way, the photography on the cover of this e-book is also mine! Go for it! ~Tricia

Did you know that even established authors are e-publishing? They blog. They publish e-books. They vlog. They are smart to do so. I wanted to share a few observations about e-publishing and how it can impact your writing. * E-Publishing puts the decision to read what you write into the hands of the public.  No longer do writers have to depend on a publisher to get their writing out there. The public gets to decide. Famed author Amanda Hocking is a good example of this. She sat in my writing class and showed us her countless rejection letters. No one would publish her writings. So, she took to e-publishing and more than 2 million people said yes to her writings by downloading her e-books! THEN the publishing houses started paying attention to Amanda Hocking and now she has both book and movie deals. The public decided. * E-Publishing lets an author earn credibility while giving their name more exposure. Ree Drummand, The Pioneer Woman , started her blog to share a dr...

Revision is a necessary tool for successful writing. We write, we edit, we revise. Then, we revise again. And again. And again. Sometimes, our content needs less revision than our title, however. This was the case with my new e-book, Writing for Publication .  I wrote, edited, revised, had an outside editor look at it, revised again, rewrote part of it and updated other parts. After all that was done, I created a title page, using my own photography as I always do on my e-books, and uploaded the project to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing . I waited a couple of days, then did a search for my e-book. Clicking through to page five in the list of books on writing, mine simply did not show up. I gave it another day. Nothing. My e-book still did not show up in any searches! So, I had to rethink my project and revise once again.  This time, revision involved my title and book cover. I spent a little time searching for writing e-books and made notes on what was showing up in sea...

My new book, Writing for Publication (Book 1) will be available via Kindle and Kindle apps by the end of this week! I'm excited to have made this much progress since we're in the process of moving. Here's an excerpt from the book, a teaser: There are specific keys to overcoming the inevitable failure of being a writer. These few ideas can have a huge impact on your writing, and on your success as a writer.           Appreciate your own talent. If you know you are a good writer and you have something valid to say, appreciate that in yourself. Self appreciation comes across to others as confidence. Appreciating and having confidence in your talent is not boastful or prideful, it’s honest and real.          Don’t let rejection slow you down. Realize and accept that rejection is part of the job of writing for publication. If you accept this, it will not surprise you when it happens. It’s a given, par for the course. It truly...

No doubt, indie writers like myself - and perhaps you - learn as we go. This morning I read this article which walks through the writing/publishing process of one indie writer and describes her struggles along the way. The article,  The Woes, Fears and Promises of an Expectant Writer is full of insights and the decisions the author has faces, and still does face, as she seeks to get her writing published. We can all learn from reading this article; she has a lot of good information in there. One thing I admire about this author, Nancy LaRonda Johnson, is that, after due consideration, she opted out of vanity publishing. As tempting as it is, she saw through it and went with self-publishing. Another thing I admire is the fact that she is writing and publishing continually, including articles. It's important to keep ourselves out there, visible, with more to share than a book or two. Even prominent authors whose works sell well have taken to blogging. They know to keep writing an...

I put this quote up on my  Total Writer Facebook Page  last night:  From my Writing for Publication class: Get Ready to Fail Every writer fails. While that might not be the first thing you expected to hear, I want to be very direct and honest with you on this: As a writer, you will fail. You will likely fail many times. Get used to it and plow through it. The best thing to do about your failure as a writer is to keep writing. Soon, with continued writing, you will spin failure into success. Even Dr. Seuss failed in the beginning! He kept writing. So should you. I thought here, on my blog, I'd expand just a bit. The information given above is taking directly out of my Writing for Publication class.  If you investigate just a little, you will discover that the vast majority of authors saw failure before they saw success. Check out this list below............all these authors failed with their writing at one time or another: J K Rowling Steven King Ama...

Sometimes the best laid plans get side-tracked. What's a writer to do when that happens? Keep writing, of course! My plans have been side-tracked this fall.  My original plan was to offer my regular Writing for Publication and E-Publishing classes through Community Education through the school districts in which I was already offering the classes, expand to an additional school district and also begin offering an online writing course. Also, my local Community Education Office had offered to give me a "Featured Instructor" page in their fall booklet, complete with a bio and an expansion on the success of my classes. This success, of course, started with Amanda Hocking and her launch into e-publishing. But, this year, my plans were side-tracked. Instead of teaching my regular classes, we are moving, relocating to another part of the country.  Because our move is pending, I could not commit to any of my classes and had to turn down my local district's offer to be ...

The other night in my Writer's Group meeting, one writer asked about a particular publishing house. I told him that it's a vanity press and they are best avoided.  A vanity press is a press which will print whatever you like, as long as you pay for it.  A vanity press does not market, edit or see to your best interest as a writer. I know a good number of people who have used a vanity press and it's been an uphill battle for them to have any success as a result.. The reasons are numerous, but the bottom line is, in the publishing world, using a vanity press is akin to getting your degree from a for-profit university.  Once you do that, no one in the education world will take you seriously, your "credentials" will not be listed and you might find it hard to get, or keep, a viable position. Likewise, once you use a vanity press, you will find that viable publishers don't take you seriously. Curiously, neither print on demand nor e-publishing fall into this...

I"ve been away.  Another of my wonderful sons - I have five altogether - has graduated college and we made the trip to Iowa to attend his graduation.  Kudos to him!  He got engaged the same day! Forbes Magazine online had published this article last December (2011), but if you have not seen or read this, do so now.  Much of the information I've been teaching in my Community Education Writing Classes is the same as what this article states, and I did not read it ahead of time!  Those of us who study this market, whether we are "small beans" like myself or something as large and influential as Forbes , know this information to be vitally important to our own success as writers and e-publishers. I suggest you read and study this article - all 4 pages of it - as though you will be tested on it! My upcoming class, E-Publishing 101, will cover these concepts in more detail. ~Tricia

I have a news flash for you writers out there.  The world is not automatically interested in your writing.  I know, I know, how can they not be?  But, it's true.  Any and all interest has to be generated - by YOU!  You are passionate about your writing.  Your family might be interested.  Your friends might show an interest for a while. But, you hold the passion, which becomes the key to getting published.  Generating interest in your writing is up to you.  Tips to generate interest: Keep your passion strong.  The best way to keep your passion strong is to keep writing. Talk it up.  Talk about what you've written to family, friends, colleagues, etc. Your passion will come through as you talk it up.  Most of us talk about what we are passionate about. Our writing is no exception to that truth. Write often.  Blog often. Keep your writings out there, as fresh and new as you possibly can. Link. Link. Link.  Every time...

The English language is funny.  Just when we think we have it mastered, new words are introduced and we have to expand our vocabulary.  This happened in the cooking world when Rachael Ray coined the term EVOO for Extra Virgin Olive Oil.  Suddenly, EVOO made the dictionary and people had to start adding that to their cookbooks in order to reach and relate to a new generation of cooks.  How cool is that?  I mean, seriously, being able to influence the dictionary writers through frequently-used changes in language is mind-blowing!  Kudos to Rachael Ray! Knowing the lingo of the writing world is equally as important as knowing the lingo when you're cooking. If you don't know the lingo, your recipes won't turn out like they should. If you don't know the writing lingo, your targeted market will not be hit.  Here are a few commonly-used terms to get you started. This is not a comprehensive list by any means; it is only a jump-start for you to search deeper:...