Book Writing and Publishing Blog

How to Write a Book Outline: The Secret to Writing a Good Book Faster

If you want to write the next Glee, why don’t you do what their writers did? Do you think they created the story on the fly? Do you think they came to work on Monday morning and said, “I wonder what predicament we can throw in this week?” Did you think they had winged...

How to Write the First Chapter of a Book: A Checklist for Novelists

Your story starts at the beginning, and beginnings are so important. I often hear from writers that the book really gets going a few chapters in. So why don’t you start the story there? In this era of micro attention spans, most readers are not going to wait around...

Why Novels Get Rejected: Acquisitions Editors Share What They Look for in Manuscript Submissions

Why Novels Get Rejected Many writers have asked us this simple question: "Why did my book get rejected?" There are two ways you can answer this question: either you, the author, made some mistakes with your manuscript or the editors, publishers, and literary agents of...

11 Things Good Writers Do: The Writing Habits of Successful Authors

Recently, TCK Publishing posted a job opening for a new Blog Manager. Within a few weeks, we had hundreds of writers apply for the position. Most just didn’t make the cut. So, what separates a great writer from an average one? Employers, publishers, and editors are...

The Best Free Stock Photo Sites: How to Get Royalty-Free Images for All Your Creative Projects

We’ve all been there before. You’re working on a crackerjack creative project, but something’s missing. Maybe you’re designing the cover of your next self-published bestselling novel. Maybe you’re laying out a website for a client’s business. Maybe you want to add a...

5 Tips to Create an Attractive Book Cover

They say, “Never judge a book by its cover,” yet we all do. People judge other people by first appearances, and customers judge the books they buy by their covers. You can’t have an unattractive, plain-looking design on your book’s cover and expect to sell millions of...

Easy Blog Structure for Fun and Profit: 5 Great Blog Post Templates

I talk in this other blog post about how not knowing what to write is a kind of writer’s block that can grind your blogging to a halt. In this post, we’ll take a look at how not knowing how to write it can be another kind of writer’s block to plague your blogging...

15 Page-Turning Podcasts for Readers

If there’s one thing we know here at TCK Publishing, it’s the value of a good book. Reading’s one of the all-time great hobbies: it’s fun, it’s relaxing, and it’s good for your mind and body. Not only can books teach us about ourselves and about the world, but they...

How to Write a Compelling Antagonist: 6 Steps to Building a Better Baddie

We’ve said it before—the soul of any story is conflict. Your hero has a dream, but something’s standing in her way. Maybe it’s a mountain. Maybe it’s a debt. Maybe it’s self-doubt or self-loathing or just plain old fear of the unknown. But no matter the source, the...

How to Make a Content Calendar for Blogging Success

For many, many, MANY writers, the process of blogging begins like this: Step One: Realize you promised yourself you’d write a blog post today. Step Two: Sit down to write the blog post. Step Three: Stare at an empty screen and struggle to come up with an idea to write...