An Awesome Award—Plus The Story that Took 50 Years to Write: an Interview with Michael Harris

Ruth and I are totally jazzed to announce that this blog has been named one of the Top 50 Blogs for Writers by Tribal Messenger Daily. To be up there with Konrath, Kristen Lamb, and Jane Friedman is an amazing honor. Here's what they said: One stimulating blog, two of the most prolific digital and print authors of today– that’s the Anne R. Allen Blog with Ruth Harris. Together, they make time to impart their successful writing and publishing techniques...

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Top 10 Self-Sabotaging Mistakes of Author-Bloggers

Aspiring writers are told we should all be blogging. If you're willing to make the commitment, I do think it's the best way to start building platform and getting your name out there.If you have no Web presence, agents, reviewers and readers are a lot less likely to take you seriously.  The quickest, cheapest, and most reliable way to get that presence is to blog.Before I started blogging, if you Googled my name, you'd find no mention of me until maybe page five. (I strongly suggest all authors Google themselves regularly to see what's happening...

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Writers Conferences: Are they Relevant in the E-age?

 Oh, the lure of a Writers' Conference! A luxurious place where writers can polish craft, learn the latest publishing trends and hang with successful authors, agents and publishers--undistracted by mundane life.It's a mini-university course that just might get you published.With parties.The modern writers conference began in the U.S. in the 1920s with Vermont's famous Breadloaf Conference, but you can now find them all over the world. They...

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How to Write an Author Bio When You Don't Feel Like an Author…Yet

Maybe you've got a novel finished and you’ve been sending out queries. Lots. And you’re getting rejections. Lots. Or worse, that slow disappointment of no response at all. Or maybe you write short fiction and poetry and you've got a bunch of pieces you've been sending out to contests and literary journals. You've won a few local contests, but so far you haven't had much luck getting into print. You may still be afraid to tell more than a handful...

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How to Query a Book Review Blogger—and Combat Paid-Review Mills

The literary community was shaken this week by an article in the New York Times revealing how many "reader book reviews" are written for hire by book review mills. The most shocking revelation involved John Locke, one of the self-publishing movement's greatest stars.Locke admitted to buying hundreds of reviews from a review mill because "it’s a lot easier to buy them than cultivating an audience."But other people weren't all that surprised. The NYT article quoted University of Illinois data-mining expert Bing Liu, who said, "about one-third of...

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