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Writing’s so easy, right? There’s a quote by Hemingway: There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. And who wants to go through the pain and [...]

I have spent the last week or so trying to understand how email marketing campaigns – also known as newsletters – work. Sales and marketing experts say that the humble newsletter is [...]

I’m reading a great book right now called Publishing 101, by Jane Friedman. She is a columnist with Publishers Weekly and writes a very useful blog at JaneFriedman.com. She’s been in [...]

I reviewed New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe’s book Say Nothing, A True Story of Murder and Memory In Northern Ireland, for NPR. Say Nothing is the story of the abduction and murder of [...]

I’m going to be speaking to Sisters in Crime in April about book marketing, and my journey through the dizzying world of how to place and sell your book. So let’s start with the basic question: [...]

I got the great news this week that The Devil’s Half Mile has been nominated for an Audie Award, for best male narrator. The book was narrated by Euan Morton, who, if you don’t know, [...]

Rising rent is one of the biggest reasons that bookstores lose their leases. I feel very conflicted about this. On the one hand, I love books and bookstores, and I hate the idea that as business [...]

The Bookseller’s Indie Bookshop Christmas Trading Survey reports independent bookshops in the U.K. and Ireland “enjoyed a bumper end to 2018, with ‘excellent’ Christmas [...]

One of the most absorbing parts of writing historical fiction is the deep dive you make into the small stuff. What did people eat? What kinds of houses did they live in? What did they wear? The [...]

I’m writing historical novels, so I use old maps a lot in my research. Over the last few years, more and more map owners have put their maps on the web, so it’s become increasingly [...]