Financial Freedom on the 8.15: How to Make the Most of the Writing Time You’ve Got
By Mark Dawson You might be reading this on a train or a bus. If you are, have a look around. What do you see? People…
The Hit List: Mark 1
By Joshua Essoe Now that November (National Novel Writing Month) is over, a writer’s “first draft done” mind often turns to editing. The Hit List is…
Wattpad: A Powerful Tool for Book Marketing
By Linda Poitevin If you’re a writer and you haven’t yet heard of Wattpad (or you’ve heard of it but dismissed it), you’re not alone…and you…
7 Tips for Making the Most of Your Book Series (Part 2 – Troubleshooting)
By Julianne MacLean Continued from 7 Tips for Making the Most of Your Book Series (Part 1) In the previous post, I listed the 7 Tips…
Kevin J. Anderson visits Kobo HQ!
Award-winning and #1 international bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson was in Toronto last week and stopped by to visit the Kobo head office. Kevin is the…
Joanna Penn visits Kobo HQ!
Last night, the Kobo Writing Life team was thrilled to welcome Joanna Penn to our Toronto office. Joanna is a bestselling author-entrepreneur and professional speaker, and…
Write Away
By Kerrie L. Flanagan and Jenny Sundstedt WRITE AWAY: A Year of Musings and Motivations for Writers combines monthly insightful and humorous stories with tips, tools and…
Don’t Tell Me What I Can’t Do
By Merry Farmer I, Merry Farmer, am an indie author. And I’m proud of it, too. I was never really interested in taking a path to publication…
Oh, the Mistakes We’ve Seen!
By BlueInk Review In our mission at BlueInk Review to review self-published books, we’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. While it’s difficult to…
A Story to Kill for: Writing Crime & Detective Fiction
By Victoria Salvas Are your Twitter and Facebook feeds filling up with True Detective and Sherlock predictions? These hit series are just the latest detective stories…
Here’s The Secret To Self-Publishing Success: Do The Work
When Kobo Writing Life Director Mark Lefebvre has been speaking to authors lately, he has regularly recommended they all check out a great new book. “Write.…
How to mix genres and make heroes
By Johnny B. Truant When people review my Fat Vampire books, they say two things. They say them so often and so consistently that I’m almost…
How to break through your creative block
One of the most frequent questions successful authors face in interviews and meeting fans is “where do you get your ideas?” followed closely by pleas for…
A Dead Price Point
By Mark Lefebvre, Director of Self-Publishing & Author Relations, Kobo “I see dead prices!” Yes, I know, I’m riffing on a line from M. Night Shymalan’s…
Top 50 sites for indie and self-published authors
If you’re not following the blog of author August Wainwright (first: why not?, and second: you should!), you may have missed his Indie 50 list, the…
Story structure secrets you can borrow from screenwriters
By H. R. D’Costa If the success of mega-author James Patterson is any indication, readers enjoy novels whose plotting, pacing, and twists mirror those found in…
How do you promote on Kobo?
By Patty Jansen When other writers hear that I sell quite well on Kobo, the reaction is invariably: how do you do that? I don’t even…
So you want to write time travel?
By Monique Martin Writing time travel takes someone who loves history, but can embrace fantasy. It’s reality-adjacent. It also helps if you were dropped on your…
Is writer’s block trying to tell you something?
By Catherine Ryan Hyde There’s no denying that at some point in most of our projects, forward momentum halts. The newer writer (believe me, I remember…
Want readers? Hire a copy editor!
By Steph VanderMeulen When writers self-publish, they usually choose services based on their budget. Often, these budgets are limited, and thus some services, like copy editing,…
Three Simple Writing Tricks for Increased Productivity
by Steve Vernon I used to run. That was back before my belt started to shrink. I specialized in long distance running. I could go for…
Emotions That Escalate: How to Build Tension Successfully
When emotions escalate in a story, it means tension. A range of emotions allows the reader to experience more, and keep things interesting
Promoting your Kobo books
By Maia Sepp What are some free – or nearly free – ways for the penny-pinching indie writer to promote their Kobo books and build their…
IndieReCon Post: 7 Worst Mistakes Indie Authors Make
This past February was IndieReCon, an online convention for self-publishers. Every hour, eight hours a day, for three days, industry professionals of all stripes posted articles,…
What to look for in a book cover designer
By Scarlett Ruger Finding the right book cover designer for you is not as painful as you think, I promise. Let’s imagine finding your designer is…
Top 5 self-publishing tips you don’t normally hear
by Emily Craven It’s been announced with fog-horns this year that 2012 was the year of the self-published author. There’s no doubt that indies have made…
Critique groups and writing buddies: a quick guide
Unless you’re collaborating with others, the act of writing is, by its nature, a rather solitary activity. But the actual process of writing a story is…
6 expert tips on designing a great book cover
By Scarlett Rugers Yes people do judge books by their covers, and when your cover is the size of a postage stamp, as is the case…
Racy Writing – Dos and Don’ts with Kelly Favor
So you’ve decided to try your hand at writing erotica—why not? It’s a very popular genre right now, and selling like hotcakes. Bestselling novelist Kelly Favor,…
Writing memoir
Everyone has a life, and maybe everyone has a compelling life story. Here’s how to turn memories into memoir: Writing Life Stories, Bill Roorbach. From…
How to survive a bad book review
Reading bad reviews of your work can be tough – we might feel that they’re unsubstantiated, that the reviewer simply “didn’t get it,” or that they…
Avoid the meat-grinder! Creating a self-published book can be as easy as writing a blog
by Emily Craven I always had it in my head that something like Smashwords would be my first e-book platform: the easiest, the largest distributor, the…
How to make Facebook work for you
We want to make 2013 the year YOU break through! So we’ll be supplying some helpful tidbits on how to accomplish this. If you don’t already…
Embracing international sales channels
by Rebecca Hamilton Being inclusive toward an international audience is something that has been important to me since I first published. If someone wants to read…
Milestone or millstone, your choice – part 3: tips for actually completing your first novel from pros
Recently several of our authors shared what they did to complete that all–important first book and what advice they have for the rest of us, their…
The truth told slant: 5 tips for building a fantasy world your readers will love
by Paula Berinstein Great fantasy is like a chimera, the mythological beast that’s part lion, part goat, and part snake: it’s based on familiar components, but…
Getting it done — how to write your first novel
by Patricia McLinn Hands down, the top issue beginning novelists encounter is they don’t begin. This problem comes in two flavors: Not starting your writing session…
Milestone or millstone? How the first book gets written, part 2
Few would-be authors ever manage to complete that first book. Odd, though, once they have, few stop at just one. Clearly finishing your first book is…
Power Pricing: How should I price my eBooks?
Nathan Maharaj, Kobo’s own Director of Merchandising (otherwise known as Head Bookseller) put together some thoughts to answer the question he most often gets from publishers…
The Creative Penn, Mark Lefebvre, and Kobo Writing Life
Another great self-publishing blog is The Creative Penn, by Joanna Penn: a writing, publishing and marketing blog. This week, Joanna interviews our own Mark Lefebvre about…
Milestone or millstone, your choice — part 1
(Or: actually completing your first book) “I know I have this book in me. If I could only…” Find the time, get down to it, organize…
Tips from a Pro: Kevin J. Anderson Shares Writing Advice
Kevin J. Anderson is an American science-fiction author who’s had over forty books on the New York Times Bestseller list. Needless to say, he loves writing,…
Tip – Treat Publishing as a Business
David H. Burton, author of Broken: A Paranormal Romance, said in a recent interview with Kobo, that the best piece of advice he ever received as…
Muse vs Market – The Best Path to Indie Success
Indie superstar turned publishing house darling Amanda Hocking was highly tactical when she set out to be successful at writing books. She did field research –…
Elements of Dialogue from The Writing Show Host Paula Berinstein
We learn to talk as toddlers, we do it every day, you’d think it would be a snap to write, right? Not so fast little author,…
The Case for Beta Readers
A great book is most often a collaborative effort despite what we know about the loneliness of the craft of writing. Editors smooth out the narrative…
Self-Promotion – A Guide
So, you’ve decided to self-publish your books digitally using Kobo Writing Life. Terrific! Your titles are loaded, they’re live on the site, and now you’re thinking:…
Linking to Kobo
[Dec 2013 – EDITORIAL NOTE/UPDATE: With recent updates made to the Kobo website in most English language territories around the world, the method to link directly…
5 Tips for Self-Published Authors
Embarking on a writing career can have you feeling like you’re staring up at a steep mountain with an almost unnavigable path. We’ve all heard the…