Discover the Untold Secrets Bestselling Authors Don't Want You to Know

Have you ever dreamed of writing a book that amplifies your brand, accelerates your business, or transforms your life-but felt held back by time, money, or self-doubt? If so, you're not alone.

In The Author's Success Code, Ashley Mansour, an international bestselling author and trusted book coach, reveals the 9 game-changing secrets that will empower you to shatter these barriers and finally bring your vision to life.

This isn't just another how-to book on writing. It's a transformative roadmap to help you:

• Overcome the biggest mental roadblocks that keep most aspiring authors back
• Fast-track your book-writing process with a proven, proprietary method
• Craft a book that drives results, building your audience, impact, and income
• Navigate publishing like a pro, choosing the best path for your goals
• Connect with a supportive community to stay motivated and inspired and every step

With years of experience guiding over 1,000 authors and counting, Ashley shares her insider knowledge to help you shift your focus from the overwhelming mechanics of writing to strategic, actionable steps that lead to publishing success. The Author's Success Code gives you everything you need to break through, finish strong, and create a book that works for you long after it's published.

Transform your book-writing journey into a powerful tool for growth, success, and lasting impact. It's time to discover the secrets that will turn your dream into a reality, and your book into a legacy.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - An essential volume for generations of writers young and old. The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this modern classic will continue to spark creative minds for years to come. Anne Lamott is a warm, generous, and hilarious guide through the writer's world and its treacherous swamps (Los Angeles Times).

Superb writing advice.... Hilarious, helpful, and provocative. --The New York Times Book Review

For a quarter century, more than a million readers--scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities--have been inspired by Anne Lamott's hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice. Advice that begins with the simple words of wisdom passed down from Anne's father--also a writer--in the iconic passage that gives the book its title:

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'

Discover the Untold Secrets Bestselling Authors Don't Want You to Know

Have you ever dreamed of writing a book that amplifies your brand, accelerates your business, or transforms your life-but felt held back by time, money, or self-doubt? If so, you're not alone.

In The Author's Success Code, Ashley Mansour, an international bestselling author and trusted book coach, reveals the 9 game-changing secrets that will empower you to shatter these barriers and finally bring your vision to life.

This isn't just another how-to book on writing. It's a transformative roadmap to help you:

• Overcome the biggest mental roadblocks that keep most aspiring authors back
• Fast-track your book-writing process with a proven, proprietary method
• Craft a book that drives results, building your audience, impact, and income
• Navigate publishing like a pro, choosing the best path for your goals
• Connect with a supportive community to stay motivated and inspired and every step

With years of experience guiding over 1,000 authors and counting, Ashley shares her insider knowledge to help you shift your focus from the overwhelming mechanics of writing to strategic, actionable steps that lead to publishing success. The Author's Success Code gives you everything you need to break through, finish strong, and create a book that works for you long after it's published.

Transform your book-writing journey into a powerful tool for growth, success, and lasting impact. It's time to discover the secrets that will turn your dream into a reality, and your book into a legacy

An assemblage of reflections on the nature of writing and the writer from one the greatest American writers of the twentieth century.Throughout Hemingway's career as a writer, he maintained that it was bad luck to talk about writing--that it takes off whatever butterflies have on their wings and the arrangement of hawk's feathers if you show it or talk about it. Despite this belief, by the end of his life he had done just what he intended not to do. In his novels and stories, in letters to editors, friends, fellow artists, and critics, in interviews and in commissioned articles on the subject, Hemingway wrote often about writing. And he wrote as well and as incisively about the subject as any writer who ever lived... This book contains Hemingway's reflections on the nature of the writer and on elements of the writer's life, including specific and helpful advice to writers on the craft of writing, work habits, and discipline. The Hemingway personality comes through in general wisdom, wit, humor, and insight, and in his insistence on the integrity of the writer and of the profession itself. --From the Preface by Larry W. Phillips

The compelling, groundbreaking guide to creative writing that reveals how the brain responds to storytelling, based on the wildly popular creative writing class.

Enlightening and empowering, The Science of Storytelling is destined to become an invaluable resource for writers of all stripes, whether novelist, screenwriter, playwright, children's writer, or writer of creative or traditional nonfiction.

Award-winning writer and acclaimed teacher of creative writing Will Storr applies dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to our myths and archetypes to show how we can write better stories, revealing, among other things, how storytellers--and also our brains--create worlds by being attuned to moments of unexpected change.

Stories shape who we are. They drive us to act out our dreams and ambitions and mold our beliefs. Storytelling is an essential part of what makes us human. So, how do master storytellers compel us?

Will Storr's superbly chosen examples range from Harry Potter to Jane Austen to Alice Walker, Greek drama to Russian novels to Native American folk tales, King Lear to Breaking Bad to children's stories.

With sections such as The Dramatic Question, Creating a World, and Plot, Endings, and Meaning, as well as a practical, step-by-step appendix dedicated to The Sacred Flaw Approach, The Science of Storytelling reveals just what makes stories work, placing it alongside such creative writing classics as John Yorke's Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey into Story and Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing.

If you want to write a novel or a script, read this book. It is clear, compelling, and tightly shaped. ―Sunday Times (London)

How to Write a Book and Tell Your Story was written for the newbie author to take the mystery out of writing your book. Simple steps are laid out from choosing the subject to the actual writing process. You will learn the most efficient method to write and publish your book. Writing your book is an amazing destination--your book in print This book will take the fear out of writing your own book. You will learn how easy it can be to tell your own stories, and capture the reader's attention as you draw them into your inner world of thoughts and characters, brought to life by your words. Books enrich our lives and the world needs your stories that only you can present in your own voice--words Be one of the 2% who actually write their book with easy to follow steps, even if you have never written anything. Learn how to choose your topic and flesh out stories that people want to read. Learn the value in knowing your subject and simple ways to research. Easy steps to publish your book through Amazon's Create Space and Kindle Direct Publishing. Give your book a show-stopping cover complete with the' Dynamic Trio, ' title, cover, and back cover copy. Learn how to use social media to let others know, like, and trust you. Get your author website and blog up and running for five bucks Give your book a showcase and let it shine. It needs a special home to do this and that is of course your website and blog. Learn the value of blogging, socializing, and how to create interest in your book. Pin it, Tweet it, Face it, Like it, Link it, and make it a Good Read, and in otherwise, help others know, like, and trust you.Learn how to release the news with a press release, actually 3 press releases. Get those reviews to help sell your book. Let Amazon promote you free, through your Author Page. Enlist your friends to help with reviews. Enlist the troupes--Fiverr, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pintererst, and Goodread's. Writing your book is an amazing destination, your book in print How to Write a Book and Tell Your Story, will help you do just that

What makes a romance novel a romance? How do you write a kissing book?Writing a well-structured romance isn't the same as writing any other genre-something the popular novel and screenwriting guides don't address. The romance arc is made up of its own story beats, and the external plot and theme need to be braided to the romance arc-not the other way around.Told in conversational (and often irreverent) prose, Romancing the Beat can be read like you are sitting down to coffee with romance editor and author Gwen Hayes while she explains story structure. The way she does with her clients. Some of whom are regular inhabitants of the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists.Romancing the Beat is a recipe, not a rigid system. The beats don't care if you plot or outline before you write, or if you pants your way through the drafts and do a beat check when you're revising. Pantsers and plotters are both welcome. So sit down, grab a cuppa, and let's talk about kissing books.

Discussions in the West around diversity in the arts often focus on the identities of characters and creators. Speculative fiction author and writing instructor Henry Lien makes the pathbreaking argument that diversity is about more than just plopping different faces into stories that are 100 percent Western in spirit; it can--and should--encompass diverse structures, themes, and values.

Using examples ranging from Parasite to The Thousand and One Nights to the Mario video game franchise, Lien shows how storytelling staples in the West, such as the three-act structure and themes of empowerment and change, are far from universal. He introduces the East Asian four-act structure (kishotenketsu), as well as circular and nested structures, and explains how Eastern value systems such as collectivism can dictate form. Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird is essential reading for any writer or reader who wants to broaden their understanding of how to tell a satisfying story.

Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism

Opacities is a book about writing, publishing, and friendship. Rooted in an epistolary relationship between Sofia Samatar and a friend and fellow writer, this collection of meditations traces Samatar's attempt to rediscover the intimacy of writing

In a series of compressed, dynamic prose pieces, Samatar blends letters from her friend with notes on literature, turning to Édouard Glissant to study the necessary opacity of identity, to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha for a model of literary kinship, and to a variety of others, including Clarice Lispector, Maurice Blanchot, and Rainer Maria Rilke, for insights on the experience and practice of writing.

In so doing, Samatar addresses a number of questions about the writing life: Why does publishing feel like the opposite of writing? How can a black woman navigate interviews and writing conferences without being reduced to a symbol? Are writers located in their biographies or in their texts? And above all, how can the next book be written?

Blurring the line between author and character and between correspondence and literary criticism, Opacities delivers a personal, contemplative exploration of writing where it lives, among impassioned conversations and the work of beloved writers.

How Black Stories Shaped My Own

Award-winning author Marita Golden explores her writing career and how the igniting power of storytelling is still inspiring generations of Black authors today.

A lifetime of stories to tell. Growing up, Marita would listen to bedtime stories of Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and many other champions of Black history. Now a champion herself in the literary world, she shares her story in a motivational autobiography you will never forget. How to Become a Black Writer details Marita Golden's life, career, and the most cherished memories she made along the way. From nurturing her passions during the civil rights movement to celebrating her 40th writing anniversary in D.C., Marita shows that every dreamer can inspire others with their story.

A love letter to Black authors and readers. How to Become a Black Writer is not only just Marita's story, but can also be the start of yours. Inside, you'll find lessons and instructions based on her experiences during the renaissance of Black literature to help you cultivate your voice. Featuring timeless knowledge that helped not only Marita, but bestselling storytellers like Nzotake Shange and Toni Morrison, you, too can make a big change in the book publishing world.

Discover meaningful events and the people behind them that helped Marita Golden to become the leading icon she is today, such as:

• How she was mentored under feminist poet Audre Lorde
• Life as a groundbreaking journalist at Essence Magazine
• Co-founding and leading the Hurston-Wright Foundation to help publish Black stories
  

So if you're looking for more motivational memoirs like Dear Black Girl, Legacy, or Badass Black Girl, you'll love How to Become a Black Writer.

This is a book about writing your dissertation or scholarly project. It is intentionally small because the last thing a doctoral student needs is another doorstop-sized book to buy, read, and lug around. This is a step-by-step guide to help you write your dissertation or scholarly project. It will not help you design or conduct research or quality improvement initiatives, but it will help you plan, document, organize, and write your dissertation or scholarly project.

This book takes you step by step through writing your dissertation or scholarly project, with chapters that correspond exactly with the chapters of a dissertation or scholarly project. There's no fluff here-no attempt to make the book look bigger to attract attention. All this book intends to do is to help you successfully write your dissertation or scholarly project, and does so in a succinct and logical way, with only the occasional interruption for important tips gleaned the hard way.

From New York Times bestselling author Jeff VanderMeer, Wonderbook is the definitive guide to writing science fiction and fantasy, offering an accessible, example-rich, illustrated approach for writers and would-be writers that emphasizes the importance of playfulness as well as pragmatism.

If worldbuilding gives you an S-class migraine, never fear. There's one book that every speculative fiction writer should read to learn about proper worldbuilding: Wonderbook. ―Bustle

Aspiring writers of 'imaginative fiction'--whether science fiction, fantasy or other kinds--are in for a treat. ―Space.com

Jeff VanderMeer's modern masterpiece of instruction exploits the visual nature of genre culture and employs bold, full-color drawings, maps, renderings, and visualizations to stimulate creative thinking.

A true objet d'art, this overstuffed, full-color illustrated book features glorious Lovecraftian artwork of all sorts of outrageous monsters, as well as a host of advice winding their ways around the edges of the pages like marginalia in an illuminated monk's script. Yes, it's practical advice, useful to writers, but it also deserves a place on your coffee table for visitors to flip through and for you to look at again and again.

This revised and expanded edition features an additional 50 pages of diagrams, illustrations, and writing exercises creating the ultimate volume of inspiring advice that is also a stunning and inspiring object.

On top of all that, the book features sidebars and essays from some of the biggest names working in the field today, including:

• George R. R. Martin
• Lev Grossman
• Neil Gaiman
• Michael Moorcock
• Kim Stanley Robinson
• Charles Yu
• Karen Joy Fowler
• And more!

Each of us has a story to share, a mixture of lived experiences-planned and unplanned-that come together and give our existence shape and identity. But in a world where we rely on screens and images for communication and self-expression, do we truly know how to tell our story?

Do you know how to tell yours?

In Story Like You Mean It, Dr. Dennis Rebelo helps you communicate with ease and connect with others by constructing a self-narrative with intention and purpose. At the intersection of academic theory and practical experience, Dr. Rebelo shares insights he has gained coaching clients on how to build and then share their life-work narratives. Students from the US Navy and CVS Health's Executive Learning Series for Diverse Suppliers, and even NFL alumni, have used Dr. Rebelo's Peak Storytelling model to navigate personal history, reflect on influential moments, and compellingly communicate their true value. What raw experiences made you who you are today? How do you express them meaningfully to showcase your worth? Dive into the intricacies of StoryPathing, become the master of your own narrative, and reap the benefits of sharing who you truly are.

A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler offers a blueprint for a creative life from the perspective of award-winning science-fiction writer and MacArthur Genius Octavia E. Butler. It is a collection of ideas about how to look, listen, breathe--how to be in the world. This book is about the creative process, but not on the page; its canvas is much larger. Author Lynell George not only engages the world that shaped Octavia E. Butler, she also explores the very specific processes through which Butler shaped herself--her unique process of self-making. It's about creating a life with what little you have--hand-me-down books, repurposed diaries, journals, stealing time to write in the middle of the night, making a small check stretch--bit by bit by bit. Highly visual and packed with photographs of Butler's ephemera, A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky draws the reader into Butler's world, creating a sense of unmatched intimacy with the deeply private writer.

There's a great resurgence of interest in Butler's work. Readers have been turning to her writing to make sense of contemporary chaos, to find a plot point that might bring clarity or calm. Her books have become the centerpiece of book-group discussions, while universities and entire cities have chosen her titles to anchor Big Read, Freshman Read, and One Book/One City programs. The interest has gone beyond the printed page; Ava DuVernay is adapting Butler's novel Dawn for television. A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky brings Octavia's prescient wisdom and careful thinking out of the novel and into the world.

A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky will be beloved by both scholars and fans of Butler, as well as aspiring writers and creatives who are looking for a model or a spark of inspiration. It offers a visual album of a creative life--a map that others can follow. Butler once wrote that science fiction was simply a handful of earth, a handful of sky, and everything in between. This book offers a slice of the in between.

Make writing an enjoyable daily habit with inspiring 5-minute prompts

Carving out a few minutes of writing time every day can help you become a better writer--but coming up with topics to write about is often easier said than done. That's where 5-Minute Daily Writing Prompts comes in. Filled with 501 prompts to get your creative juices flowing, this book encourages you to practice your writing every day.

What sets this writing book apart:

• A mix of prompts--Experiment with a variety of genres--from adventure and fantasy to memoir and mystery--as well as different story elements and formats.
• Ideas for expanding your writing--With each prompt, you'll find an expansion prompt that invites you to spend more time writing and dive deeper into the story.
• An easy-to-use index--Complete the prompts in order or search for a topic that excites you with a convenient index that organizes the prompts by genre and story element.

Spark fresh ideas and build up confidence in your writing with this 5-minute prompt journal.

With increased compression, every word, every sentence matters more. A writer must learn how to form narratives around caesuras and crevices instead of strings of connections, to move a story through the symbolic weight of images, to master the power of suggestion.

With elegant prose, deep readings of other writers, and scaffolded writing exercises, The Art of Brevity takes the reader on a lyrical exploration of compact storytelling, guiding readers to heighten their awareness of not only what appears on the page but also what doesn't.

Renowned, bestselling novelist Chuck Palahniuk takes us behind the scenes of the writing life, with postcards from decades on the road and incredible examination of the power of fiction and the art of storytelling.

In this spellbinding blend of memoir and insight, bestselling author Chuck Palahniuk shares stories and generous advice on what makes writing powerful and what makes for powerful writing.

With advice grounded in years of careful study and a keenly observed life, Palahniuk combines practical advice and concrete examples from beloved classics, his own books, and a kitchen-table MFA culled from an evolving circle of beloved authors and artists, with anecdotes, postcards from the road, and much more.

Clear-eyed, sensitive, illuminating, and knowledgeable, Consider This is Palahniuk's love letter to stories and storytellers, booksellers and books themselves. Consider it a classic in the making.

Creating a successful writing career in today's complex, competitive publishing environment can feel like forging through a jungle built on quicksand with only a fountain pen and a dream.

In an ever-changing industry where you're expected to master both craft and business-juggling your writing with marketing demands, budget constraints, social media, and more-how do you maintain your passion and build a thriving writing career?

This is a survival manual for authors.

Whether you're just beginning your writing journey or are an established author, this indispensable guide gives you the tools to navigate an often difficult, demanding field and overcome the toughest challenges writers face:

How to cope with rejection, criticism, and failureHow to deal with impostor syndrome, comparison, and other writer demonsHow to stay motivated and produce your best workHow to balance creativity and commerceHow to take charge of your career when so much can feel out of your control

With compassion, humor, and insight drawn from decades working with thousands of best-selling, successful working authors, career book editor Tiffany Yates Martin empowers you to navigate the challenges of walking the author's path, and shows you how to build a meaningful, rewarding, happier writing life.

No other poet seems better suited to represent the United States as its Laureate in this era than Ted Kooser, and The Poetry Home Repair Manual should enhance his grip on our slumbering Republic.--Larry Woiwode, Poet Laureate of North Dakota, in North Dakota Quarterly

Much more than a guidebook to writing and revising poems, this manual has all the comforts and merits of a long and enlightening conversation with a wise and patient old friend--a friend who is willing to share everything he's learned about the art he's spent a lifetime learning to execute so well.

Ted Kooser has been writing and publishing poetry for more than forty years. In the pages of The Poetry Home Repair Manual, Kooser brings those decades of experience to bear. Here are tools and insights, the instructions (and warnings against instructions) that poets--aspiring or practicing--can use to hone their craft, perhaps into art. Using examples from his own rich literary oeuvre and from the work of a number of successful contemporary poets, the author schools us in the critical relationship between poet and reader, which is fundamental to what Kooser believes is poetry's ultimate purpose: to reach other people and touch their hearts.

A new, mindful approach to the writing life

In a radical departure from standard advice about creative success, effort, critique, and competition, The Way of the Fearless Writer will show you that there is another way to thrive--a writing path of ease, trust, wonder, and joy.

You are invited to embark on a sacred writing journey. Along the way, author Beth Kempton will teach you how to free your mind so your body can create, transform your relationship to fear, write anytime, anywhere, and share your words with confidence. Being a fearless writer has little to do with validation and accolades. Rather it is about ritual, commitment, developing an acute awareness of beauty, dancing with inspiration, listening to the world outside yourself and going deep within. The Way of the Fearless Writer is your guide to this creative, transformational journey.

This is not just a book about how to write better. It's a book about how to live better, with your heart as your compass and writing as your guide. Offering rare insight into the writing life and a host of fresh and original writing exercises, The Way of the Fearless Writer will reveal your true potential, and open your eyes to writing as a direct connection to life itself.