Welcome to the March 18, 2013 edition of tips and tricks for writers and authors. This week you’ll find insights into self-publishing, writing, book marketing, social media and sales. Thank you to all of our contributors for making this a great edition!

Book Sales

Sarah Bolme presents Innovative Ways to Sell Digital Content posted at Marketing Christian Books.

Self-Publishing

Sue Collier presents Self-publishing timetable, part one of three posted at Self-Publishing Resources.

Writing

David Leonhardt presents What makes a good book? posted at A Ghost Writers Blog, saying, “One of the questions we get frequently goes something like this: “Do you think I have a good enough story? Do you think it’s a best seller?” This gives us a moment to consider what makes a successful book, so I would like to share my thoughts on this with you.”

Chrys Fey presents What To Do If You Struggle With Writing posted at Write With Fey.

Vanessa Morgan presents How to write a character study? posted at Vanessa Morgan.

Kathy Sloan presents Discovering the Clasp posted at Kathy Sloan-Writer, saying, “This blog post is about learning to take a step back in your writing to see the bigger picture. I use a metaphor of untangling a necklace to help understand that sometimes when we go through the editing process we focus too much on the things that don’t really matter and end up actually making our pieces worse. It’s important to find the “clasp” (what holds the piece together) before we can fix anything within the piece.”

Nick Daws presents Sign Up Now for ScriptFever! posted at Nick Daws’ Writing Blog, saying, “Sadly the annual ScriptFrenzy challenge to write 100 pages of scripted material in April closed this year, so on my forum at myWritersCircle.com we decided to run our own alternative version called ScriptFever. Find out more in this post, and sign up!”

Phyllis Zimber Miller presents Boomer Lit vs. YA Lit posted at Phyllis Zimbler Miller, saying, “As an official Baby Boomer, I found the new category of Boomer Lit very interesting — especially what defines that category.”

Cheryl Carpinello presents The Joys of Writing for Middle Grade/Teen Readers posted at Utah Children’s Writers, saying, “I outline the 5 reasons why I enjoy writing for this age group.”

Book Marketing

Jan Bear presents Why Write Book Reviews: Five Payoffs for Writers posted at Market Your Book, saying, “Every author knows how valuable reviews are in selling books, but here are five reasons to be on the other side of the equation.”

Social Media

Joel Friedlander presents Author Blogging 101: What’s Stopping You? posted at The Book Designer, saying, “Start your blog today and discover other opportunities that open up to you when your blog becomes the center of an active, engaged community of like-minded people.”

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of tips and tricks for writers and authors using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.