Posts by George Beckman

Members of the Cast is under the Kindle Select program with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). This means that KDP has exclusive rights to the eBook version for 90 days.…

Yarlophone? Yarlophone? What’s Yarlophone? Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) has a hardback book printing service in beta trials. For some unknown reason, it appears as Yarlophone in the KDP “formats”…

This is the second article about using Amazon ads. The first article will help understand how the ads work. After running the Members of the Cast ad for a week,…

Publishing a book, Self-Publishing, in my case, means that work begins now. Writing is not an easy task, but getting the news out is not a one-time task. In my…

Please don't go to Amazon search, look for my book, and click it just to see what the ad looks like. (Unless you intend to buy.) Every click costs me…

Kindle Direct Printing (KDP) offers Expanded Distribution for print book sales. Expanded Distribution allows Libraries and Universities to order your book, but the formula for royalties is much less. Below…

Today's discussion may be for beginning writers, but we all need to check our writing from time to time. This article discusses writing in the past tense. If you are…

Literary elements in writing are interesting and sometimes even useful. I am not a literary writer, although I flatter myself, claiming that Members of the Cast has a literary feel.…

This article deals with style, and every writer's style is different. Halfway through this piece, you may say, "I've had about as much of this as I can take!" So…

I like to watch a character having two conversations at the same time, one in her/his head, and the other out loud. In Members of the Cast, Margo's inner voice…

I have no stake in Kindle Vella. This article is to inform other writers, not to advertise an Amazon product. One of the problems with self-publishing is getting noticed. Even…

One of the first things we learn about writing is the old saying, “Less is More.” In keeping with this simple truth, the opposite is true: “More is Less.” More…

If you are hoping to find an agent and have a trade house publish your book, tomes don’t sell. I know that several Harry Potter books are massive, but publishers…

One of my current works in progress (WIP) is The Ship from Wolfskill, a steampunk-ish tale of a levitating riverboat. As I discussed in my earlier blog about backstory, sometimes…

The em dash ( — ) is a handy way to show a character has paused. In the blog “Better Dialog,” I mentioned that “Mother” has a tell in her…