What’s New at The Writing King: Week of September 6, 2026

Sep 9 · Book Marketing, Publishing

IngramSpark: How I Publish Now and Why

This week, why IngramSpark handles everything except Amazon, and the one setting that decides whether bookshops can stock you.

Sep 9 · Ghostwriting, Writing

Why Fiverr Sucks for Ghostwriting: The Buyer’s Side

This week, what a cheap ghostwritten book really costs, and why the five-star reviews cannot measure the thing you care about.

Sep 9 · Business, Leadership

Why eBay Sucks Now: A Seller’s Numbers and a Buyer’s Warning

This week, what twelve thousand dollars of eBay sales really pays out, and the shipping trick that hides what you are spending.

Sep 9 · Fiction, Writing Craft

The Ghost Story Tradition

This week, the five rules M.R. James wrote down for the ghost story, and why they still outperform almost everything written since.

Sep 9 · Fiction, Writing Craft

The Gothic Tradition

This week, the four components every gothic story runs on, and why the form keeps outliving the writers who dismissed it.

Sep 9 · Fiction, Writing Craft

The Christmas Ghost Story Tradition

This week, why midwinter belonged to the dead long before Dickens, and why only one side of the Atlantic kept the custom.

Sep 9 · Writing, Writing Craft

Books to Give a Writer

This week, what to give a writer who already owns the famous four, and the three writing gifts that reliably go wrong.

Sep 9 · Fiction, Writing Craft

Resurrection as a Narrative Structure

This week, why most resurrections fail, and the one test that tells you whether a death in your draft was earned.

Sep 9 · Writing, Writing Craft

The Beach Read Argument

This week, why frictionless prose is the hardest thing in the craft, and what the beach read label costs the writers who produce it.

Sep 9 · Writing, Writing Craft

Why It’s a Wonderful Life Failed on Release

This week, how a film that lost money and ruined a company became a Christmas institution through a paperwork error.

Sep 9 · Writing, Writing Craft

What to Read in Spring

This week, why spring is the season for the book you keep postponing, and the five habits that get a hard book finished.

Sep 9 · Writing, Writing Craft

What to Read in Summer

This week, why long books are defeated by interruption instead of difficulty, and how to finish one on a holiday.

7/10Sep 11

The Pyx (1973) Review

This week, The Pyx and what it teaches about the craft.

5/10Sep 11

Stripped to Kill (1987) Review

This week, Stripped to Kill and what it teaches about the craft.

3/10Sep 11

The New York Ripper (1982) Review

This week, The New York Ripper and what it teaches about the craft.

5/10Sep 11

Streetwalkin’ (1985) Review

This week, Streetwalkin' and what it teaches about the craft.

7/10Sep 11

Sharky’s Machine (1981) Review

This week, Sharky's Machine and what it teaches about the craft.

3/10Sep 11

Street Girls (1975) Review

This week, Street Girls and what it teaches about the craft.

7/10Sep 11

Ms. 45 (1981) Review

This week, Ms. 45 and what it teaches about the craft.

7/10Sep 11

Nighthawks (1981) Review

This week, Nighthawks and what it teaches about the craft.

7/10Sep 11

Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) Review

This week, Looking for Mr. Goodbar and what it teaches about the craft.

3/10Sep 11

Avenging Angel (1985) Review

This week, Avenging Angel and what it teaches about the craft.

8/10Sep 11

Dark Blue (2002) Review

This week, Dark Blue and what it teaches about the craft.

4/10Sep 11

Angel (1984) Review

This week, Angel and what it teaches about the craft.

Sep 7 · Critical Thinking

The Columbian Exchange

The 1972 book that reframed 1492 as a biological event and created a field nobody had a name for.

Sep 7 · Personal Growth

Treat Your Own Knee

A physiotherapist's self-treatment manual, narrow by design, and honest about when to stop and see somebody.

Sep 7 · Business

The Dilbert Principle

Adams on why the least competent get promoted, built from thousands of reader emails describing real workplaces.

Sep 7 · Writing Craft

FBI Myths and Misconceptions

A retired FBI agent debunks twenty clichés, chapter by chapter, and it is the reference crime writers need.

Sep 7 · Business

The Little Red Book of Selling

Gitomer's twelve and a half principles, loud and repetitive, with one line that reframes the whole job.

Sep 7 · Personal Growth

Outliers

Gladwell on success as circumstance, and the ten thousand hours rule the original researcher says he got wrong.

Sep 7 · Personal Growth

Blink

Gladwell on snap judgment, and the awkward fact that the same mechanism produces expertise and prejudice.

Sep 7 · Personal Growth

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Kahneman's career summarized, with the caution that some of the famous chapters have not replicated.

Sep 7 · Writing

Steering the Craft

Le Guin on sentences, sound, and point of view, in the shortest genuinely useful craft book there is.

Sep 7 · Business, Personal Growth

Think and Grow Rich

The founding text of success literature, with one genuinely useful principle and a provenance that does not hold up.

Sep 7 · Business

The Checklist Manifesto

A surgeon on why experts fail at simple things, and why the resistance to fixing it is the real subject.

Sep 7 · Personal Growth

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

A 1963 classic of New Thought with a defensible core about suggestion and a lot around it that is not.

Sep 11

The Greatest Documentaries

Twenty-seven documentaries ranked. Vertov's 1929 experiment and twelve Attenborough series share the top tier, The Act of Killing and The Thin Blue Line are the two that changed what the form could do, and Roger and Me is where the presenter became the subject.

Sep 11

Animated Films, Ranked

Thirty-eight animated films ranked, from Monsters Inc and Toy Story at the top down to Cars 2 at a 3. The Disney classical run, Aardman's stop motion, Bakshi's adult animation, and the Pixar sequels that should not exist.

Sep 11

The Greatest Vampire Films

Thirty-two vampire films ranked. Blade invented modern Marvel cinema, Martin dismantles the genre by removing the supernatural entirely, Sinners is the most ambitious entry in a generation, and Hammer occupies most of the middle.

Sep 11

The Greatest Samurai Films

Twelve samurai films ranked. Harakiri, Ran and Yojimbo take the 10s, Kurosawa has five entries, and the genre's best work is almost entirely about the code failing the men who follow it.

Sep 11

The Greatest Movie Musicals

Ten movie musicals ranked. Top Hat, West Side Story, Mary Poppins, Cabaret and All That Jazz take the 9s, and the two Fosse entries are both about work destroying the people who do it.

Sep 11

The Greatest World War I Films

Sixteen First World War films ranked. Wings won the first Best Picture and is the only silent film to do it, Gallipoli ends on a freeze frame that has never been bettered, and the 1919 Lost Battalion was acted by the survivors themselves.

Sep 11

The Greatest Courtroom Dramas

Fourteen courtroom dramas ranked. Wilder and Preminger take the 10s, My Cousin Vinny earns a 9 because the law in it is correct, and the genre works because a trial is the only structure that comes with its own deadline and its own rules.

Sep 11

The Greatest Vigilante Films

Eight vigilante films ranked. Nobody takes the top by understanding that the fantasy is competence, not revenge; the Bronson series is five films across two decades, and The Brave One is the rare one with a woman at the center.

Sep 11

More Great Christmas Films

Eighteen Christmas films ranked. Shane Black appears three times, Die Hard 2 and Lethal Weapon both qualify on the same grounds people use to argue about the original, and A Christmas Story became a fixture through a cable marathon instead of its release.

Sep 11

The Greatest Satires

Thirteen satires ranked. Young Frankenstein and Galaxy Quest take the 10s, RoboCop is the most accurate prediction on the list, and the best entries all love the thing they are attacking.

Sep 11

The Greatest Historical Epics

Sixteen historical epics ranked. Dreyer's Joan of Arc is an epic made almost entirely of faces, Bondarchuk's War and Peace was the most expensive Soviet production ever mounted, and Lester's Musketeers take a 10+++.

Sep 11

The Greatest Supernatural Horror Films

Seventeen supernatural horror films ranked. Cat People established that suggestion beats display, The Prophecy is Walken's most committed performance, and the two Japanese entries changed what Western horror looked like for a decade.

Sep 9 · Observances, Writing

A Christmas Carol Day: December 19

On the anniversary of A Christmas Carol, the self-publishing arithmetic that cost Dickens a fortune and the lawsuit he won and regretted.

Sep 9 · Observances, Writing

Walt Whitman Day: The Book He Kept Rewriting

On Walt Whitman's birthday, the self-published book he set the type for himself and then rewrote for thirty-seven years.

Sep 9 · Observances, Writing

Why Easter Moves

On the movable feast, the artificial moon that sets the date and the planning problem it creates every spring.

Sep 9 · Observances, Writing

Ursula K. Le Guin Day: The Anthropologist’s Method

On Ursula K. Le Guin's birthday, why starting from a question about people beats starting from a map.

Sep 9 · Observances, Writing

Oscar Wilde Day: The Machinery of a Line

On Oscar Wilde's birthday, the repeatable construction behind the most quoted sentences in English.

Sep 9 · Observances, Writing

Anne Rice Day: The Decision That Changed Horror

On Anne Rice's birthday, the one structural decision that reorganized an entire genre.

Sep 9 · Observances, Writing

Bram Stoker Day: The Novel Nobody Reads

On Bram Stoker's birthday, why the most famous vampire in fiction barely appears in his own book.

Sep 9 · Observances, Writing

Mark Twain Day: The Voice He Invented

On Mark Twain's birthday, the constructed voice behind the most imitated prose in American fiction.

Sep 9 · Observances, Writing

H.P. Lovecraft Day: The Fear He Invented

On H.P. Lovecraft's birthday, why indifference is more frightening than malice, and why he never described the monster.

Sep 9 · Observances, Writing

Isaac Asimov Day: The Rules Built to Break

On Isaac Asimov's birthday, why a rule that only prevents things is a wall and a rule that contradicts itself is an engine.

Sep 9 · Observances, Writing

Jane Austen Day: The Technique She Perfected

On Jane Austen's birthday, the technique that lets a reader see what the narrator cannot.

Sep 9 · Observances, Writing

Ernest Hemingway Day: The Iceberg Method

On Ernest Hemingway's birthday, why omission only works when the material was there first.

Sep 12 · People, Personal Growth

He Handed Them the Microphone: A Tribute to Charlie Kirk

Richard Lowe's tribute to Charlie Kirk, written one year after the assassination at Utah Valley University. He never met Kirk, never read his books, and never listened to the show. What he watched were the campus debate clips, the folding table under the Prove Me Wrong sign, and a young man who let the people who came to take him apart finish their sentences. The piece covers what Kirk built starting at eighteen, the six books Richard did not know existed, what happened on September 10, 2025, and where things stand a year later.

Sep 8 · People, SEO

Your Answer Has No Page Two: How AI Search Decides Who Gets Cited

This week Richard gave a live AEO presentation hosted by Robert Rounsavall on how AI answer engines decide who gets cited, and why there is no page two.

Sep 6 · Publishing

Audiobook FAQ

What audio production costs, who should narrate, and whether the edition earns its keep.

Sep 6 · Book Marketing

Podcast Guesting FAQ

What hosts want from a guest, whether appearances sell anything, and how to prepare properly.

Sep 6 · Book Marketing

Book Marketing FAQ

What really moves copies, what a launch is for, and which marketing advice to ignore.

Sep 6 · Business, Thought Leadership

Business and Executive Book FAQ

What a business book returns, how the time works, and who owns it when the company pays.

Sep 6 · Artificial Intelligence, SEO

AI Search and AEO FAQ

How answer engines choose what to cite, why traffic fell, and which visibility tactics are worth anything.

Sep 7 · Personal Growth

Krakatoa Is Erupting Again: What 1883 Did and What Anak Krakatau Is Doing Now

This week, Krakatoa started erupting again, so I went through what the 1883 event did, what the instruments are recording now, and why the tsunami question has a better answer than the headlines.

Sep 6 · Memoirs, Society

What I Wrote on September 11, 2001

This week, a document written the night of the attacks, published unedited, and what a record made before anyone knew the outcome can do that a memoir cannot.