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You are here: Home / Archives for Belinda Pollard

Why you shouldn’t ask Beta Readers to do copy editing

By Belinda Pollard 9 Comments

A Beta Reader critiques your manuscript, and provides feedback to help you improve it. Lots of people will suggest asking a beta reader to copy edit your work. I don’t recommend that, and here’s why.

Filed Under: Beta Readers, Self-Publishing, Writing & Editing

3 reasons I’m a Scrivener fan

By Belinda Pollard 39 Comments

Scrivener is a small-but-mighty piece of writing software that revolutionises the writing process for long manuscripts – book, script or academic thesis. Microsoft Word was created for business writing, and it’s very good at it. But long-form writing is different. For long-form writing, Scrivener is now my hero. See my top 3 features that could make your writing life easier, too!

Filed Under: Writing & Editing Tagged With: editing a book, Scrivener, writing a book

Should you use photos on your author blog?

By Belinda Pollard 13 Comments

The right images can help draw readers to your blog, or get them to click on that link to read the rest of a post.

But how do we choose photos and illustrations, and how do we use them?

These are some things that I’ve learned about how to use images, and where to find them.

Filed Under: Book Marketing, Self-Publishing

Why grammar doesn’t matter

By Belinda Pollard 13 Comments

When it comes to writing books, grammar is not the only thing. It’s not even the most important thing. Let me show you what I mean…

Filed Under: Writing & Editing

How to choose a pen name

By Belinda Pollard 45 Comments

If you’ve decided to use a pen name, how do you choose it? There are so many options!

Filed Under: Book Marketing

3 reasons for using a pen name

By Belinda Pollard 108 Comments

Should you write under your own name, or a pen name? Here are the three main reasons for choosing a pen name.

Filed Under: Book Marketing

Twitter for Writers: Two golden rules

By Belinda Pollard 42 Comments

You’ll get lots of conflicting advice, but for a writer to make the most of Twitter boils down to two golden rules.

Filed Under: Book Marketing Tagged With: book promotion, social media, Twitter for writers

Book Promotion: Should you appear in your book trailer?

By Belinda Pollard 11 Comments

Usually, you won’t see an author appearing in their own book trailer. But sometimes it’s exactly the right thing to do.

Filed Under: Book Marketing, Self-Publishing Tagged With: book marketing, ernest f. crocker, fiction, max barry, non-fiction, web video

How to find a beta reader

By Belinda Pollard 50 Comments

How do you find a good beta reader or “test pilot” to critique your manuscript, preferably for free? Finding the ideal beta reader can be a challenge. But here are some tips for where to start.

Filed Under: Beta Readers, Writing & Editing

Making videos for your author blog

By Belinda Pollard 13 Comments

Everyone says we have to include video on our blogs these days, but how do we do it? Not only do we have to be author, publisher, marketing manager and general dogsbody, but apparently Martin Scorsese and Gwyneth Paltrow too! In this post, I’ll talk you through a short video I just made for my […]

Filed Under: Book Marketing, Self-Publishing

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Lawnton, Queensland, 4501
Australia

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