Blog
4 reasons you need a professional book review…and how to know if your book is ready for one
By BlueInk Review Staff Last year, more than a million books were published. Imagine a reader standing in front of a bookshelf with that many titles. Now imagine the impossible: how will they choose one title over another? That’s where reviews come in. Without a...
Two Reasons to Avoid the Info Dump Trap at All Costs
By Paul Goat Allen Let’s get right to it. Info dumps are called “dumps” for good reason—using them is a sure way to turn the commercial viability of your novel into garbage. It’s one of the most frequent criticisms of our BlueInk reviewers—and has been for years—but...
Truth Bomb: Talent Has Very Little To Do with Writing Success
By Paul Goat Allen I watched a presentation recently given by Mike Tomlin, the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, where he said that talent has very little to do with success in football. “It's not what you're capable of, it's what you're willing to do. I know...
Too Much Information! Two Big Reasons Not to Over-explain Your Novel
By Paul Goat Allen Over-explanation in storytelling is always a big red flag—in large part because it reveals to the reader one of two (very bad) things: either the author doesn’t have confidence in their own writing ability, or they don’t think that their poor...
Book Marketing Pep Talk
By Amanda Miller Book Marketing is usually the toughest part of your publishing journey. That’s the reality. Writers, unlike businesspeople, seem to be extremely uncomfortable marketing themselves, yet they often don’t have the funds to delegate the tasks to someone...
5 Examples of Excellent Amazon Book Descriptions, and What You Can Learn From Them
By Victoria Jacobi When it comes to Amazon book descriptions, you need to be creative to stand out. You've seen generic formulas for writing a book description as well as lists of things to include. You've also seen a lot of book descriptions that read the same and...
The One Mistake that is Guaranteed to Tank Your Novel
By Paul Goat Allen As a reviewer—and a graduate writing instructor—my biggest red flag, the one thing that warns me of a truly terrible reading experience ahead, is the inundation of grammatical errors. It makes my blood boil just thinking about it. Ever read a novel...
The One Big Evolutionary Step in Writing that You Need to Know!
By Paul Goat Allen In the almost three decades that I’ve been a book critic, and the 50 years that I’ve been a hard-core reader, I’ve seen genre fiction—and fiction in general—evolve in radical and remarkable ways. Watching the rise of genre fiction hybridization...
Three Ways to (NOT) Write Steamy Sex Scenes!
By Paul Goat Allen I’ve had the opportunity to interview some legendary authors in my 25 years as a book critic and editor—Michael Moorcock, Dean Koontz, Laurell K. Hamilton, China Miéville, Kim Harrison, Joe Hill, Patrick Rothfuss, Justin Cronin, and Harlan Coben, to...
4 ways indie authors go wrong designing book covers
By BlueInk Review A book’s cover serves as its advertisement. It tells readers what to expect inside, and hopefully sells that content with visual sizzle. Think of it as a mini billboard: It’s purpose is to catch the reader’s eye and convey a message in the time it...