The Publishing & Marketing Hub: What Actually Sells Books
Writing the book is half the job. This is the other half, from somebody who has watched what actually moves copies.
Tag: Writing Craft (Page 42)
ResearchThe Memoir Hub: How to Write and Publish Your Life Story
Turning a life into a book that lasts, from somebody who has done it for people certain their story was not interesting enough.
ResearchThe AI & Writing Hub: Using AI to Write Books, Honestly
What AI is good at, what it breaks, how to use it on a book, and the honest answer to whether it replaces the writer.
AI vs Human GhostwritingEvery client now uses AI to work with me, not instead of me
The fear was that clients would use AI to replace ghostwriters. The opposite is happening: clients arrive already using AI to gather material, check facts, and pressure-test the draft, and they expect a writer fluent in the same tools. It…
Critical ThinkingStop Doing the Thinking for Your Reader
Most nonfiction hands the reader a conclusion and then explains it. The books people remember hand them the evidence and let them arrive.
Book ReviewsPaperback English Dictionary Essential: All the Words You Need, Every Day (Collins Essential)
A competent compact everyday dictionary, affordable, portable, and adequate for quick student and general lookups. It rates modestly because it lacks the depth and nuance a serious writer needs, and its everyday-lookup job is now handled as well or better…
Book ReviewsThe Dictionary of Imaginary Places
Over a thousand fictional lands, Middle-earth, Oz, Atlantis, described as if they were real geography, with genuine wit and scholarship. A pure pleasure for literature lovers and a real world-building study for writers at the same time. It does something…
Book ReviewsNew Oxford American Dictionary, Third Edition
Oxford's flagship dictionary of American English, pairing the publisher's lexicographical rigor with an American focus. Ideal for a US-market writer settling spelling, meaning, and usage. A first-rate reference, held back only by the free, continuously updated digital dictionaries that now…
Book ReviewsConcise Oxford English Dictionary
The best of the major dictionaries for a serious writer, because its depth and precision, near-synonym distinctions, fuller senses, etymology, serve the craft of choosing words where a basic dictionary does not. British-English oriented, and like any print dictionary outpaced…
Book ReviewsThe Road to Middle-earth
Shippey, a philologist who held Tolkien's own academic post, answers the question every Middle-earth lover eventually asks: how did he do it? He reverse-engineers the deepest world in fantasy into method, build names first, let the world grow to fit,…
Book ReviewsThe World of Shannara
A lovingly assembled companion to Terry Brooks's long-running Shannara world, gathering decades of geography, history, magic, and lineage into one illustrated reference. It shows what consistent world-building accumulates into over time, though its value is tied almost entirely to how…
Book ReviewsThe Languages of Tolkien’s Middle-earth
A handbook to Tolkien's fourteen invented languages, built on a golden principle: languages first, world grown around them. The trouble is it is decades out of date and in places simply wrong on Elvish grammar. A useful doorway to how…