Angela Booth's Writing Blog

Amazon Wants Your Books To Sell, So Help Amazon

This is NOW. With millions of books on Amazon, and hundreds of thousands published each year, if you don’t choose your genre and keywords correctly, your book is dead.

Cheer up… Things aren’t as grim as they may appear. Remember—Amazon wants your books to sell as much as you do.

Amazon wants your books to sell, so help Amazon

Want to help Amazon?

You can, if you remember: algorithms. They’re scripts. Genre and keywords matter hugely because Amazon hunts readers FOR YOU using its algorithms.

Nice, huh?

Let’s look at how this works, using Hilary Mantel’s new book, The Mirror and The Light as an example.

via www.angelabooth.com

Discovering The Benefits Of Herbal Teas

Stressed? Try herbal teas. They work.

A friend recommended a “relaxation” blend of tea when I worked 12-hour days for weeks and developed severe tummy pain. Initially I ignored her suggestion.

A visit to the doctor got me a subscription. Tests revealed nothing. I couldn’t take pills forever, so the next time I doubled over from pain, I took my friend’s advice and tried the relaxation blend.

A day later, my spasms had eased. Moreover, I felt less tense and concentrated more easily. Maybe there was something to herbal teas?

via peneloperedmont.com

Fiction Writing: Goals For You, And For Your Characters

Your fictional characters: they need goals too

Just as you need goals, so do your fictional characters.

Failing to motivate your characters means that you don’t have a plot.

From Debra Dixon’s excellent book, GMC: Goal, Motivation, and Conflict:

Commercial fiction readers expect your characters to have goals, to be motivated, and to face conflict. They expect you to answer four simple questions.

Who = character

What = goal

Why = motivation

Why not = conflict

Try applying What, Why, Why Not, to the characters in your current WIP (work in progress.)

via peneloperedmont.com

The Bestseller Strategy: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense (Final SALE)

How to write a bestseller: the bestselling novelist of all time

As her website points out, Agatha Christie is outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare:

(She) is the best-selling novelist of all time. She is best known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, as well as the world’s longest-running play – The Mousetrap.

It’s estimated that Agatha Christie has sold around two billion novels.

A century has passed since The Bodley Head published her novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring Hercule Poirot. (Several publishers rejected the novel, showing amazingly poor judgment.)

Ms Christie died in 1971, but she’s still a bestseller today.

via www.angelabooth.com

The Easy And Free Book Marketing Solution

Why do authors (whether self-publishing or not) hate marketing? My pet theory is that authors hate it because they’re exhausted: they start their marketing push too late.

Once I’ve finished a book and published it, I’m done. Every last inspiration and happy insight I had on the topic, or about the novel, has gone into the book.

The solution’s simple: why not market while you’re writing? Amazon gives you a powerful facility. New authors can use it to begin to build a relationship with potential readers. Established authors can grow their readership, while reminding current readers of their backlist.

via www.angelabooth.com