Lately I’ve had quite a few editing jobs, working them in between my own writing and promotion of my latest book. I enjoy editing. I’ve always had a critical eye and an analytic brain, so very often anomalies in the writing will jump off the page at me. The caveat, of course, is that this art we practice is a highly subjective one, so while there are guidelines and style manuals to set general rules, those rules can and are broken regularly if the story requires it.
But I’ve noticed an interesting side benefit from my editing work. It points up for me, in spades, the crimes I may or may not have committed. Continue reading “How Editing for Others Helps My Writing”
Love it or hate it, Amazon is always looking to try new things to benefit their customers, which of course usually benefits the sellers as well. Recently I got an email from them about a new opportunity for books sold via their Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program. Most of you are familiar with their “Look Inside” feature that allows potential readers to see the first few pages of a book, but this is only while on the Amazon site itself. The new feature, the Kindle Instant Preview, lets people read a sample of your book directly from your own webpage. 
So what’s the deal on the Kindle Countdown Deal? You may have heard of it, but let’s break it down to the nuts and bolts and see how it works. The Countdown Deal (CD) is an additional promotional tool Amazon offers to those authors who have their books in KDP Select (KDPS). It allows authors to create a gradually diminishing discount of their books over a four day period with the idea being to inject a bit of urgency and excitement into sales.