Angela Booth's Writing Blog

Ghostwriting Services: Clever White-Label Options To Explore Today

The above services pay extremely well, especially concepts. One of my writing students recently completed a concept for a fashion/beauty blog for a client. The client accepted her five-figure fee for the 30-page report with alacrity.

While services such as business plans and book proposals need you to have some experience in creating these documents, you can handle many AV, EDM and concept development services easily enough, using your creativity and research.

Let’s look at some tips to help you to develop highly-paid white-label ghostwriting services.

1. Be alert to client needs: how can you help?

Clients are the life-blood of your business. Just as you and I do, your clients put things off because they lack the time or the budget.

It’s now September, so the holiday sales season is ramping up. Many of your clients are prospects for your ghostwriting services. They must know you offer these services however; they won’t know if you don’t tell them.

via www.angelabooth.com

Professional Ghostwriter Offers New Service For Publishers

Serials are popular on the video streaming services; viewers enjoying binge-watching entire seasons of a production.

They’re now popular with self-publishing authors too. Recently Amazon introduced Kindle Vella, which it calls “a new storytelling option… U.S. based authors can publish serialized stories, one short episode at a time.”

Author Angela Booth, who ghostwrites fiction for clients, says that she’s now offering a serial-fiction option. “My ghostwriting services always included fiction, but with Kindle Vella now available, clients are very interested in serials.”

via www.angelabooth.com

Fiction Writing: 3 Savvy Tips To Boost Your Dialogue Skills

Fiction writing: create drama with dialogue

In your first draft, just write. You’re exploring your story and characters. If you like, you can look on your first draft as an extended outline.

In your next draft, focus on building conflict and suspense. Make your evil antagonist even more evil. As I suggested in Writing Fiction Tip: Make Everything Worse For Your Hero:

… with a truly evil bad guy, your book will (almost) write itself. And you’ll have more fun. Where would the 1001 Dalmatians be without Cruella de Vil, after all?

Let’s look at some tips to help.

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Marketing Strategies For Freelance Writers: 2 Ways To Get Clients

1. Get hired on the freelance marketplaces (outbound marketing)

As freelancers, we were part of the gig economy long before it became fashionable. In 2021, the “gig economy”—project-based, short-term work—is huge, worldwide. It’s growing too, at around 17% per year.

Depending on how it’s measured, the gig economy was estimated to be at 40% of US workers in 2020, with similar numbers in other western countries. According to Statista:

In 2023, the projected gross volume of the gig economy is expected to reach 455.2 billion U.S. dollars.

As the gig economy has grown, so have the freelance marketplaces.

via www.angelabooth.com

Book Editing Services No Longer Available: Apologies - Copywriter Angela Booth

Just a quick note… Please be advised that I no longer offer book editing services.

If you’ve booked editing, or are on my book-editing waiting list, I’ve sent out notifications. I sincerely apologize, and I wish you much success with your book. (If you can’t find the notification, please check your Junk folder…)

Why have book editing services been removed?

In a word: pressure of work.

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Goal Setting Trap: Avoid The Trap And Achieve Your Goals

One writer said: “Goal setting isn’t for me. Life’s too stressful now. What’s the point of goals when so much is changing?” Many agreed.

I agreed too. It’s easy to feel burned out by goals; you can set a goal, then your life derails. Within a week, your goal seems like a fantasy.

A veteran author had a different point of view. She said that whenever we set a goal, life throws up obstacles. “Change is always hard,” she said. “For many people, the global pandemic has brought too many changes—but I believe in goal setting anyway. You need to avoid the big trap”.

What trap?

via peneloperedmont.com

Writing Fiction Tip: Make Everything Worse For Your Hero

My theory is that a truly nasty antagonist is essential for successful fiction. Indeed, he’s your most important fictional character.

Before I began focusing on the antagonist as the primary fictional character in any novel, novella, or short story, I dropped headlong into a huge pitfall. In several of my early novels, my antagonist wasn’t any major threat to the hero. Not only were those novels a challenge to write (because it was a struggle to create real conflict), sales were woeful.

Avoid that pitfall. When you’re creating a fictional character, focus on your bad guy. He needs to be truly mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Then make your protagonist someone who has no chance against this overwhelming enemy.

via www.angelabooth.com

Writing Fiction: Use The Magic Of Suspense To Sell More - Copywriter Angela Booth

When writing fiction, write books packed with suspense

Here’s a short excerpt from the Introduction to Sell More Books Today: The Simple Secret To Successful Fiction.

What’s “suspense”?

According to Google, suspense can be defined as: “a state or feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty about what may happen.”

Synonyms for suspense include: tension, uncertainty, excitement—and my favorite: anticipation.

Suspense is essential if you want to write successful fiction. If readers stop caring about what happens next, they’ll put your novel down. They may never go back to it.

via www.angelabooth.com

Freelance Services: A Simple Fix To Improve Website Sales Today

If you sell services, chances are good that today you rely on your website to win clients. Unfortunately, for many service businesses, responses are slow. Advertising isn’t helping.

Freelance services: make more sales with this fix

Want a simple fix to help you to make sales?

Here you go. Call up your home page and read it, as a prospective client would. I know this is challenging, but do your best.

Next, answer this question: Is your current home page focused on your clients, or on your business?

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Email Marketing - Copywriter Angela Booth

It’s time to do more with email marketing

While I’m all for email marketing because of the benefits, it’s a commitment too.

One of my clients ran several mailing lists for her customers over the course of 15 years. In 2020, she closed her lists and the account on her marketing platform provider.

I asked her why. Her response: “It’s time to man the lifeboats. I used to enjoy email marking; it improved my business. That’s no longer the case. I’m not sure why–and I don’t care. I want to save my business. Anything which can’t help with that right now, today, has to go.”

Only you know whether you need to do more email marketing. If you need help, get in touch.

via www.angelabooth.com

Time Management: Avoid The Trap (And Finally Achieve Your Goals)

Do you ever feel that time management is a trap? I’ve been feeling this over the past few months. With 2020 such a disaster, I had hoped that I’d catch up and make progress this year.

We discussed time management in a recent writers’ group meeting. It turned out that many members felt the same way: as if they’d never catch up with themselves, while their To Do lists grew longer and longer.

One writer mentioned the PARA method of organization and common misunderstandings of time management.

After I looked into the PARA method, I decided that from now on, my sole method of time management would be Projects. (With a capital “P”, because each Project is a discrete item, with a deadline.)

via peneloperedmont.com

Short Fiction Challenges: 4 Savvy Tips To Master Them - Copywriter Angela Booth

If you’ve tried writing short fiction and found it wasn’t your jam, that’s OK—it’s challenging to write short stories and novellas. You haven’t got the space you have in a novel. It can seem claustrophobic.

Most challenges are easy to overcome, if you remember that you’re not writing a saga: you’re giving readers an experience.

Short fiction: the experience is everything

My favorite mantra for short fiction is: one problem, one solution. The vital question I ask my students is: what do you want readers to feel?

The genre indicates the experience readers want. In romance, readers want to experience the passion your main characters have for each other. In a horror tale, readers want to experience… horror. (My favorite horror tale remains Casting The Runes, by M.R. James.)

If you keep the thought of “experience” in mind, writing short stories becomes fun.

via www.angelabooth.com

Kindle Vella (New): Amazon Publishes Your Serial Fiction

Kindle Vella: does this new service offer benefits for authors?

(Important… Please be aware that that my opinion is based solely what I’ve read about the new service and my experiences with short and serial fiction; I haven’t used Kindle Vella.)

Will this new service succeed?

Amazon launches services (such as Kindle Worlds for fan fiction) then shutters them if they don’t make enough money. So this new venture means that Amazon knows that serials sell; it’s attempting to profit from them.

Amazon shuttered Kindle Worlds after five years, so everything depends on whether readers use Kindle Vella in sufficient numbers for Amazon to see good profits.

Readers to one side. Does Kindle Vella offer benefits for authors?

via www.angelabooth.com

Create Content For Fiction And Nonfiction: 3 Weird Ways To Get Ideas

Ideas are everywhere. But if you’re a new writer, you worry about freshness, and originality. You need NEW ideas, don’t you?

Well… Completely “new” ideas may not be possible, nor even desirable. No one knows everything, so an idea may be new to you, but stale or derivative.

In commercial fiction, new ideas which flout genre conventions aren’t desirable at all. You need to be aware of genre conventions; every genre has them. When you step outside those conventions readers not only won’t buy your novel, you’ll also get nasty comments in reviews.

For example, recently an author asked me why her romance novel isn’t selling. She was outraged: “my beta readers love it!” Unfortunately, no beta reader told her that romance readers hate cheating heroines; they want escapism—that’s what they’re paying for.

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Serial Fiction: 3 Quick Tips To Start Writing Today

Today, many TV programs are serials. Sometimes they’re delivered in weekly episodes. Alternatively, the complete program is made available for viewers who like to binge.

Serial fiction questions: there are no rules

You make the decisions when you’re writing serial fiction.

Although I commonly write serials in ten episodes of 5,000 to 8,000 words, there’s no rule which says that you need to write ten. You may choose to write yours in three parts—go ahead!

Alternatively, if you want to write a dozen episodes or thirty, it’s up to you—and readers.

Recently a student asked: “is it OK to keep writing? I’m not ready to let go of the characters yet. I’ve got some great ideas. Will readers be annoyed? I promised them 12 parts… What if I write 20?”

via www.angelabooth.com