CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS

Trying to write a story? Worried that you will end up penning something derivative, full of clichés, tired or too obvious? Here are three quick tactics you can use to grab your readers’ attention from the start: 1. Use a Unique Angle You can confidently begin anywhere, with anything, but spice it up immediately by taking a unique approach to the content. Say something unconventional or insightful; open in an intriguing way. For example, the opening sentence of Leo Tol

I wanted to present to you a radical way of looking at what you might be trying to do as an author, by means of an image which will attempt to incorporate all of the key elements of what ‘being an author’ is all about, including what we call an ‘author platform’. But doing so may challenge some preconceptions that you might have about the whole activity of writing, both on an intimate level and in the way in which you ‘go to market’ and try to get readers to read your work.

I wanted to attempt to tackle head on something which is usually skirted around in our society and in particular in groups of writers and artists who are trying to sell their work. I’ve written elsewhere about how writers have grown up in a consumerist world in which their expectations are that as soon as they can get a book published, it will immediately sell and make them money. As I’ve said elsewhere, even if they are slightly more realistic about it, the general expecta

Earlier, we saw that, in order to build a comprehensive, attractive and effective ‘shell’ around the kernel of a work of fiction, an author needs to minimally have a website - and that website needs to be set up so that it has something to offer for the casual visitor (a 'lead magnet', a free gift which will be of value to that visitor), as well as something for the more interested visitor and especially a booksales point for the ‘hot prospect’, the visitor who is actively lo

Many writers get confused about websites and social media pages and so forth. What is the best way to build that thing called an ‘author platform’? How can they do it so that they sell more books? The truth is that there are many ways to build a platform for authors. And how you construct it, and where you place emphasis, has much to do with what exactly you are trying to achieve. There are loads of people out there willing to give you advice about all of this - so much so