Reviews & Tools
Because writing is hard.
What is Stuff Your Kindle Day and How Does it Work?
What is Stuff Your Kindle Day and How Does it Work? Essentially Stuff Your Kindle Day is an author organized romance book giveaway. Hundreds of romance authors, in basically all romance genres, make their books available for free on a specific day. Readers are...
How to Find Cheap and Free e-books online
Ereaders are a god send for those of us that love to read, but keeping one filled up with books to keep our reading obsession happy is difficult, time consuming, and expensive. For that reason, we’ve put together this article on how to find and download cheap and...
Every Successful Writer’s Secret Weapon – A Word Count Tracker
Writing is a lonely job. Everybody’s interested in what you’re doing, you may even have a great support system but, at the end of the day, writing is about sitting down (by yourself) and putting work in. This obviously has it pros and cons (no waiting on lazy...
Interview with Indie Exchange Founder Oliver Ryan
It was my pleasure this week to chat with indie author, and founder of Indie Exchange (www.indiepubexchange.com), Oliver Ryan, about the self-publishing industry and how his new platform can help authors save time, and avoid some of the major pitfalls involved with...
Podcasts for Writers and Self Published Authors
Rule 89 of the Internet. If it exists, there’s a podcast of it. If you think the indie author world is niche enough that finding podcast content would be difficult. Baby, you don’t know podcasting. There are all kinds of books that swear they can teach you how to...
Free Writing Diary and Daily Word Count Tracker
Ever wondered which day of the week you’re most productive on? Or which project you’ve spent the most time writing? Or even just what your average words per minute is? This free writing diary will do all of that and more!At a glance...This is a Google Doc that you can...
How to Choose (and buy) a Pre-Made Book Cover
Your book is in the editing phase and boy, is it a doozy Your long days of writing and editing and rewriting (and worrying the book will never end) are finally behind you. It’s time to get a cover. Unless you are rich in design skills yourself (or have a lot of money...
Review: “Romancing the Beat” by Gwen Hayes
You want to know how to structure your romance novel? Not sure how to meet-cute? Are your characters Fighting For Love, when they should be Retreating from Love? Feeling a little lost? Then you need to read this book.At a glance...This is the gold standard for romance...
Reddit for Writers: Best Subreddits for Authors
No matter if you’re sitting alone at home, or surrounded by people in a cafe, writing is always lonely work. It’s you and your brain, creating characters, worlds, and plot. It helps to be able to find places that will allow you to connect with other, like minded...
Review: “5k Words per Hour” by Chris Fox
Want to write faster? Of course you do. If you're struggling with getting your daily word count up, there's a good chance this book is for you...but be warned, there isn’t any magic formula: it’s going to take a lot of work to actually get up to 5k an hour. The main...
We made a thing!
The exceedingly awesome team here at bookspry finally put their drinks down long enough to finish their first collaborative book! This book of writing prompts is fun, silly, creative and thought provoking all at the same time. But more importantly, it's actually...
NaNoWriMo Day 30 – AAAAAAAHHHH!!!
You made it to Day 30! Give yourself a round of applause! You should be so proud of yourself. Just taking part in NaNoWriMo makes you a winner! If you made it to 50,000 words then that’s awesome! If you didn’t make it all the way, then don’t worry! You should still...
NaNoWriMo – Day 29 – Show, Don’t Tell!
On the penultimate day of NaNoWriMo you’ve probably already heard this phrase: Show, Don’t Tell. It’s one of those phrases that gets thrown around a lot. What exactly does it mean though? You should strive to give your readers all the information they need to infer a...
NaNoWriMo – Day 28 – Contraction Distractions (or how to cheat at NaNoWriMo)
Alright this is a NaNoWriMo tip that probably would have been useful earlier in the month, but we’ve only just learned that some NaNoWriMo competitors are doing this and we felt we had to say something. To win NaNoWriMo you have to write 50,000 words. No-one checks...
NaNoWriMo – Day 27 – The Final Countdown!
The finish line is in sight. We’re on the final stretch. After today, you only have two more days to get to your NaNoWriMo goal (eeek!!). How you feel about that probably depends on what your current wordcount is and how much you still have to write until you get to...
NaNoWriMo – Day 26 – Music?
Distractions come in all shapes and sizes. We’ve talked earlier in the month about how tempting it can be to check websites during your NaNoWriMo writing sessions. We didn’t touch on another form of distraction that seems harmless, but can be insidious. A lot of...
NaNoWriMo – Day 24 – On Rewards
Yesterday we showed you a site that rewards you once you’ve written a few hundred words. It’s a cute site and if you didn’t catch it then we really recommend that you go read yesterday’s post. It’ll be worth it. However it does introduce a wider topic: should you be...
NaNoWriMo – Day 23 – Treat yo self…with Kittens!
Today’s NaNoWriMo tips is a bit...different. We’ve all been working hard and this one is just a bit more fun than usual. After all, you’ve been working hard for weeks now and you deserve it! So, we all know by now that distractions are the enemy and should be avoided...
NaNoWriMo – Day 22 – Stay on Target!!!
Now that we’re in the final stretch of NaNoWriMo it’s more important than ever to stay focused. We live in a world where technology offers us an infinite number of distractions. Checking your phone, checking emails, updates, notifications; it’s a continuous...
NaNoWriMo – Day 21 – End of Week Three (Tools and Tips)
Three weeks! Can you believe it?? Congratulations on making it this far! You’ve been working hard. The end is in sight and this is the final sprint. In these tips, we’ve talked a lot about the various effects of mental drain on your writing; all the different...