This section contains a growing catalog of articles of general interest to authors, writers, and speakers. Articles are being accepted and prepared daily and will be listed as they are completed. When we have compiled a long enough list we will categorize them and make shorter listings for you.

If you would like to contribute an article, please contact us by email, describing or attaching the article you would like to contribute to your fellow Author's Roost members and to all visitors to this site. Here now is the first batch of articles for you.

Authors as Speakers

Appearances of every sort -- making public speeches, conducting book signings, manning a booth at book fests -- these are all tremendously productive activities that can help ring up the cash register of any published author. In an easy-to-digest article that we featured in February, Beverly Flaxington, herself an author and speaker, gives us six simple rules for making professional, confident presentations of any sort.
Read more from Beverly Flaxington > >

I'm Charles Jacobs, an author and an AUTHOR'S ROOST Member, and I know how shy the majority of authors are. Most of us much prefer sitting in front of a computer than standing behind a microphone. I had goose bumps, too, when I gave my first public talk. Today I enjoy every opportunity I am given to speak; but you're not alone in feeling uneasy.       Read more from Charles Jacobs > >

Author/Speaker Branding

Richard Andrews, founder of the Motivational Speaker Academy, begins a series of articles on "branding" for authors and speakers. The first installment focuses on the concept of "branding" itself. Later articles will involve web sites, social media and other promotional vehicles.
Read more from Richard Andrews > >

In his second article,  MSA President Richard Andrews begins developing a more detailed explanation of the concept of personal "branding by looking at web site and blog elements that help distinguish you from all your competitors and earn you a permanent place in the memories of your readers, viewers or listeners. 
Read more from Richard Andrews > >

Often an author with authenticated academic credentials but writing apart from academia forgets the value of his or her professional status and how much that can contribute to the overall marketing effort for the current work. College president Matthew Kenney, D.B.A., writes about academic publishing as a contribution to the "branding" of an author in any genre.
Read more from Matthew Kenney > >

Author/Speaker Success Tips

I'm Penny Sansevieri, founder of Author Marketing Experts. Over the years I've written a lot of articles on how to be successful, but to be successful you must first learn how to fail up, meaning that you learn from what you did wrong, take full responsibility for it and move on. Lessons in publishing are often costly, both in time and dollars. I don't presume to tell you that you should avoid making any mistakes, but many of them are avoidable.
Read more from Penny Sansevieri > >

All authors want to promote their books, but their readers are not always the best at building buzz for them. An excellent way authors can find people to share their vision for marketing their books is to ally with other authors, become each other’s fans, and cross-promote. Irene Watson outlines ways in which authors can help authors -- a real "win-win" situation.     Read more from Irene Watson > >

 Communicators communicate. All authors and speakers are fundamentally communicators, and all available media are their vehicles.Blogging has become an important factor in self-promotion, information and education, and blogger Joanna Penn describes in this article five ways in which blogging gives authors, speakers and other communicators an edge. Read more from Joanna Penn > >

Book Marketing

Publishing/marketing guru Dan Poynter says: "Author-publishers should remember three guiding principles:

• Write what you love and sell to your colleagues; turn your passion center into your profit center.
• Bookstores are lousy place to sell books.
• Focus the marketing on your non-traditional markets."   Read more from Dan > >

Sam Henrie, president of Wheatmark Book Publishers, tells how to market your book on something considerably less than a "shoestring" budget; i.e., ZERO COST MARKETING IDEAS!   Read more from Sam Henrie  > >

Jerry D. Simmons spent more than 25 years in the New York book scene, and today he is helping authors not only to understand the book business, but to compete within it even if they are very new, very small, or very uninformed. Spend time with Jerry and these handicaps disappear. In this article he discusses the growth of the eBook and why it could be the ticket to success for many new or unknown authors.
Read more from Jerry Simmons > >

There's something new on the book horizon -- and it's not the i-Pad! It's the ISTC, and we'll bet you don't know what that is. Read on. Gordon Woolf will fill you in on this new way to identiify books across many platforms (print, eBook, AudioBook, etc. may all carry the same ISTC number).     Read more from Gordon Woolf > >

Book Development

From one of our favorite writers, Author Unknown, comes this checklist that will give you some ideas about what you should consider publishing.     This is one you should print out > >

So you’ve got your plot outlined, a title lined up, and the research is done. You’re ready to start writing your novel. But wait. Now comes the fun part: creating names for your characters. One of the best things about being a writer — besides the innate ability to create imaginary worlds — is giving birth to a character and then bestowing a name upon him or her. True, you didn’t carry the character in your womb for nine months (especially if you’re male). But he or she could’ve been in your head for nine months . . . or nine years.
Read more from novelist Celise Colston > >

The Book Review Issue . . .

Paid vs. free book reviews. There's an interesting history here, and a dangerous and possibly damaging (to authors) misconception about the value of paid book reviews. Irene Watson, CEO of ReaderViews.com and one of the best in the business, comments and suggests . . .
Read even more from Irene Watson > >

Grammar, Punctuation, and Similar Onerous Stuff

Whether you’re a beginning writer or an old pro, says AUTHOR'S ROOST Member Harvey Stanbrough, punctuation is one of the most important but overlooked tools in your inventory. Consisting of nothing more than a system of agreed‑upon symbols, it shows readers where to pause, indicates the length of the pause, and alerts them to the relationship between what they have just read and what they are about to read. The keyword here is pause, and the most important thing to remember is that the writer controls the pause, and by its use directs the reading of the work.       Read more from Harvey Stanbrough > >

Self Publishing / Publishing for Others

Are you one of the many authors who is thinking about self-publishing, or even publishing other writers’ works? This can be a rewarding step in many ways, but your progress will be smoother if you consider the steps involved and how your working life might change. Lest that sound too dramatic, let’s get specific about the times when your creative “author” side should defer to the practical “business” position. 
Read more from author/publisher Pamela Waterman > >

Book reviewer Irene Watson is also a savvy publishing consultant, and in this article she dispels all the confusion among the various terms used in the new digital era about various types of publishing (and more). Read more from Irene Watson > >

Book publishing has always favored the big companies, and only a select few of the mega-bestselling authors have real input on how their titles are handled in the marketplace. For everyone else, they are merely a name and title on a pub sheet, and the difficulty of separating themselves and their book from all other authors under contract is difficult. Adding insult to injury is the fact that authors under contract do not own the rights to their own content. Sound hopeless? Read on -- there's hope galore in this short article by book marketing guru Jerry D. Simmons.
Read more from Jerry Simmons > >

Using the Social Media

It's easy (and free) enough to create a Twitter account, but how can writers take advantage of this social networking tool? What can they logically expect to gain from using it? What is a hashtag anyway? Well, hopefully, this cheat sheet will help.
Read more from Robert Lee Brewer > >