Episodios

  • In Case of an Emergency, Break Glass

    In Case of an Emergency, Break Glass
    Aug 23 2025
    I discovered a great AI app that you can start using for free and then pay $5.00 per month for an upgrade. This app, Gamma (https://www.aippt.com), allows you to quickly create slide show presentations. And then use the presentation to create a video like the one above.I started with three lines of information, as shown below. I entered these lines into the Gamma app and within a few minutes, Gamma generated a ten-slide presentations that became the basis for the above video.Writer’s Block: In Case of an Emergency, Break the GlassThere really is no such thing as writer’s block or any other block to getting things done. Blocks only exist if you let them. If you move on, they melt away.As the blue collar comedians, say, “Get ‘er done!” Move on!The text for the video is showcased below. Note how Gamma took three lines and made ten slides with the following extensive content.In case of an emergency, break glass. The truth about writer's block.Writer's block isn't about what you think it is. It's not an immovable barrier, but rather a temporary obstacle that only exists if you allow it to.This presentation explores the reality behind the myth and provides practical solutions to get your creativity flowing again.The Myth of Writer's BlockJerry Jenkins puts it bluntly, writer's block is a myth. No other profession accepts a block as a legitimate reason to stop working. If you wait for motivation or inspiration to strike before writing, you'll be waiting forever.Creativity doesn't appear on demand. What we call writer's block is actually a combination of fear, procrastination, and perfectionism, masquerading as creative stoppage.Rather than accepting blocks, successful writers develop strategies to push through the resistance.Famous writers who struggled and won.Samuel Taylor Coleridge experienced what he called an indefinite, indescribable terror that prevented him from writing for an entire year in 1804.Paul Sylvia, a psychology professor and author on motivation, went nine months without making progress on his own book about motivation.Despite these profound struggles, both men eventually overcame their creative paralysis by fundamentally changing their mindset and establishing new writing habits.What really causes writer's block?This pie chart showcases from Research Insights, a 2024 University of North Florida study.Psychological factors including stress and anxiety. That's the big dark purple pie slice on the right.Next, fear of criticism, the lower, more lavender pie slice.And then perfectionism, which is the next as we rotate around.Procrastination.And then other factors.Two main types of blocks.There are two main types of blocks, plot block and life block.Plot block occurs when story logic stalls. Character or plot feel stuck.This is a craft problem fixable with patience, restructuring, and narrative technique.Life block results from personal issues that can drain creative energy. It can require addressing deeper needs, self-care, mental health support, or lifestyle adjustments.Recognizing your specific block type is a crucial first step to implementing the right solution.Practical hacks to break the block.You can schedule writing. Treat writing like a job. Paul Sylvia committed to two hours daily. No excuses. Consistency builds momentum and trains your brain for creativity.Step two, you can do free writing. Set a timer for 10 to 15 minutes of unfiltered, unedited writing. This bypasses perfectionism and often produces unexpected insights.And you can change the environment. So if one place isn't working, work at a cafe or park or library. Environmental novelty stimulates new neural connections and fresh perspectives.These practical approaches work because they shift focus from outcomes to process, making writing a habitual action rather than a high stakes performance.Embrace fear and imperfection. The best writing is born of humility. That's from mystery writer and thriller writer Dean Kuntz.Fear is natural and justified. Embrace it as a motivation.Perfectionism kills progress. Done is better than perfect.Writing imperfectly today creates a foundation for better writing.The most prolific writers aren't fearless. They've simply learned to write despite their fears.The power of mindset.Move on and melt the block. Blocks only exist if you let them. Writer's block is a construct we create and maintain.Recognize it as a temporary state, not a permanent condition. As the blue-collar comedians say, get 'er done. Simple forward motion is often the best solution. Action creates its own momentum.An act of faith: Writing requires belief in your ability to figure it out as you go. Trust the process and keep moving forward.Your mindset determines whether obstacles become barriers or stepping stones. Choose to see blocks as temporary challenges rather than immovable obstacles.Motivation is not a gift, it's a choice. Waiting for motivation is like waiting for a bus that may never come. You have to start ...
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    7 m
  • Stories Should Never End. They Should Go On and On!

    Stories Should Never End. They Should Go On and On!
    Aug 3 2025

    In a column for PJ Media, publicist and novelist Scott Pinsker wrote that there are no happy endings. As readers and listeners, we never want a good story to end.

    Here is what Scott wrote:

    One more time: There are no happy endings!

    After all, when a story is truly great, we don’t want it to end. We need the story to go on and on forever — and for the adventures to continue. When it’s finally time to say goodbye, we mourn the loss.

    And mourning isn’t happy.

    But it’s par for the course in storytelling; the immoveable yin to the irresistible yang. Can’t have one without the other. As American genius, billionaire, playboy, and philanthropist Tony Stark noted before his death:

    “Part of the journey is the end.”

    I remember when the hand-picked substitute author massacred the ending of The World of Time series by Robert Jordan. There were and are so many stories still to tell of that world, but the replacement author simply let the story peter away. So disappointing.

    But, of course, he didn’t have the inspiration or vision that the original author had. He couldn’t tell the stories. BUT the publisher should have found some fans that would have loved to continue those stories, to continue celebrating an incredible world populated by very interesting people. I hope there are some fans that will tell those stories. They have my permission — and encouragement — to do so.

    As authors, we should all have fans that are inspired to continue telling our stories — whether fiction or nonfiction.

    Stories are always worth continuing. They shouldn’t have an end. Why not tell more of your story today? You have the time!

    And when your time ends, I encourage other courageous writers to continue your stories. Stories without end. Stories that live on and on. Stories that change lives. Stories that move us to greater things.

    Move on!



    This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bookmarketing.substack.com/subscribe
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    3 m
  • 6 Ways to Spark Your Creativity

    6 Ways to Spark Your Creativity
    Jul 7 2025

    The following tips are adapted from an article in Woman’s World magazine.

    Trust your vision. A sense of independence sparks unique visions.

    Balance wonder and rigor. Daydream a little. Relax to spark your wonder. Then focus on the details.

    Tap into positivity. Reveal your passion. Study: People who write for the joy of it produce more creative work.

    Unleash your inner child. Having fun spurs active listening, curiosity, improvisation, and collaboration.

    Take a chance on yourself. Don’t be afraid to try new things. Explore your own voice.

    Bounce ideas off a friend. A good friend can allow you to test ideas. Note: Just don’t let them become too critical. You want their help, not their negativity.

    Book Marketing Success is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

    Web: https://bookauthorauthority.com



    This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bookmarketing.substack.com/subscribe
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    1 m
  • Give Away Your Books

    Give Away Your Books
    Jun 30 2025

    Why give away your books when you can sell them instead? Here are ten reasons why you might want to give away your books as a strategy for making more sales of everything you have to offer.

    1. Entice People to Action.

    If you want a potential customer to act, you can give them a free book as an enticement. Many websites offer free reports or books to encourage people to sign up for their newsletters or podcasts. A key reason: Books are still valued by consumers.

    2. Make an Upsell.

    If you are using your book to sell a higher-priced course, webinar, or summit, then giving away the book is a good strategy for convincing people to buy your upsell.

    3. Offer a Sample.

    Give away a shorter book to give readers a taste of your larger, more expensive book.

    Note: A similar strategy is to sell a shorter book on Amazon for a very low price to give people a taste for your more expensive books, your longer books, or any additional books in a series.

    4. Give as a Prize.

    Give your book away to charities as a prize. Books as prizes are a great way to promote your business or service or higher priced products.

    5. Offer Speaking Take-Aways.

    If you are speaking at a conference, a summit, or another group event, giving away a book is an easy way to have attendees take you (or your ideas) home with them.

    A free book builds credibility and provides audience members with your contact details so they can follow-up on any of your services or products they want to buy.

    6. Create a Moon Book Club.

    Offer your books as monthly mailings to key contacts for coaching, consulting, speaking, and other high-paying engagements. In this situation, you mail out copies of print books to your key contact list as a tool for establishing your credibility with these key people.

    7. Offer 99 Cent Specials.

    Books under a dollar are considered just like free books for most readers. So, offering low-cost books for sale are a way of setting a value for the book but essentially keeping the book as “free.”

    Bestselling author Robert Allen recently offered his #1 Bestseller: How You Can Become a Bestselling Author in Only 30 Minutes a Day as an ebook for only 99¢ via Amazon. He used it to introduce his high-priced service to help writers become bestselling authors.

    8. Introduce Readers to a Series.

    One of the best ways to introduce readers to your series of novels is to give away the first book in the series. If they like that book, they will buy into the entire series.

    9. Publish a manifesto.

    Write and share a manifesto that proclaims your new vision for society, the environment, the world, the universe, or your key topic. Manifestos are generally given away to build the widest possible readership for your new vision.

    10. Share Your Book.

    You can give away your book to anyone and everyone simply because you want people to benefit from what you’ve written.

    If you give away books, never give away junk. Never give away AI creations as your own work. Whatever you give away must represent your work, your writing, your ideas, your creativity, your thought processes, and the higher priced services and products you offer.

    If your giveaways truly represent what you offer, you’ll be able to upsell recipients to anything else that you want to create. And at a higher and higher price. Great content inspires great fans.

    Order Book Marketing 263 here: https://amzn.to/3TM6CDs on Amazon.

    Book Marketing Success is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



    This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bookmarketing.substack.com/subscribe
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    4 m
  • 10 Key Strategies for Marketing Your Books

    10 Key Strategies for Marketing Your Books
    May 24 2025

    Judith Briles, The Book Shepherd, and book marketing expert John Kremer deliver a fast hour of 10 plus strategies to deliver book marketing success in 2025 on the AuthorU-Your Guide to Book Publishing podcast. Your takeaways include:

    Overall strategies to leap forward.

    Why every author should have a newsletter.

    Tips for creating your own Summit and why you should.

    How to start your marketing offline.

    Why magazines are still hot and how to target/pitch to them.

    Why you should reach for a national TV show.

    Why being a podcast guest is a must do and two sources to use.

    And, of course, much more.

    Tune in for lots of ideas and how-to tactics via the AuthorU-Your Guide to Book Publishing podcast.

    Book Marketing Success is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



    This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bookmarketing.substack.com/subscribe
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    57 m
  • Connie Bennett: On Getting a TedX Talk

    Connie Bennett: On Getting a TedX Talk
    May 21 2025
    JohnToday I'm interviewing Connie Bennett, author of I Blew My Diet, Now What? She's going to tell us a little bit about how to get to speak at a TEDx event.TEDx is a local event produced in different cities around the country. TEDx talks are a really great opportunity to expose you and your book to a book buying audience.ConnieI'm an author and I've been a long-time fan of yours since my first book, Sugar Shock, came out. Later, I came out with a book called Beyond Sugar Shock. And now I just came out with I Blew My Diet, Now What?I am a former sugar addict and also a former carb addict. For years I did really, really well. I ate very, very cleanly. But more than a decade ago after my mom passed away. It was a difficult year watching her lose a battle to cancer. I blew my diet.Hence, the new book. I come clean at last to the world about what I was doing, which was hanging out in movie theaters and in my home and secretly stuffing my face with crunchy, greasy, salty movie popcorn and other carb garbage, what I now call carbage.JohnI know that you recently spoke at the TEDx conference in San Diego, If you’d like to watch her TEDx talk, check it out here: I wanted to find out from you. Connie, how did you get in to do a TEDx talk? Because I know that it's not always easy to get to do a TEDx talk.ConnieWell, the very first thing I did was I decided that I was going to do a TEDx talk, come hell or high water, I was going to do it. So, my first step literally was deciding that I was going to do it.So then I began to research. I even took a course or two about how to get a TEDx talk.Then one day it hit me. I had moved to San Diego. I had been living there for a number of years. Then I thought: Why don't you just volunteer at my local TEDx? I don't even know how I got the idea, but I did. So I volunteered at the local TEDx.I watched the speakers and became friendly with them. I think, yeah, I want to be up there just like them. So that was my first step, volunteering.Then the next year, I actually applied to my local TEDx San Diego and I got turned down. But I did make it through round one. So, round one you submit something in writing and then round two you had to submit a video. I made it that far but was rejected that first attempt.A few months later, TEDx had auditions yet again, so I applied again and got turned down again. Then I got an email saying, hey, would you be interested in doing this special thing that we're doing with TEDx San Diego? And that is what let to my talk.Going local was the way to go because after the first time they turned me down, they knew me.I've met several people who'd been through a similar situation. They had applied, and they had been turned down. They tried again. They applied, and they got turned down again, and finally they were accepted.You can apply for TEDx talks in other cities, but it's good to start first with the TEDx event closest to where you live.JohnActually, I think that that's two incredible pieces of advice that you really talked about.One was simply being persistent. You have to knock on the door more than once. You can't take it as a rejection. It's just they have to know you better.ConnieThe other part of it is you have to be very gracious. They turn you down. You do not want to write to them and say, why was I turned down? You've got to be really careful about the way that you're persistent.You want to be politely persistent. But you don't want to get turned down and then all of a sudden send an email and say, hey, why didn't you accept me? So you need to be very, very careful and walk this fine line.JohnBut I am convinced that that going local is the way to go.I also thought it was really wise of you to volunteer. It's an incredible way to get to know the people behind the local TEDx. It's a really great opportunity, as you said, to meet the speakers and get to talk to them.ConnieIt was it was totally fun. And it also it stoked me. It got me like really excited about doing like I want to be one of those people,But I volunteered to get to know more about the talks and the people behind the local TEDx talks. I was like, I want to know more about this.I know I want to do a TEDx talk at some time. I hadn't set my sight on doing it in San Diego. But the actual act of volunteering, it was just so exciting to see these speakers do their thing. You just learn so much just watching what they went through.Now my talk was less than seven minutes. A lot of TEDx talks, they're a little bit longer. And I went even a little long. I'm telling you, every single word counted.I've heard of a lot of situations where people give a TEDx talk and then it goes so viral that it could lead to a book.JohnThat's one reason that speakers want a TEDx talk, because they're more likely to get an offer from some publisher saying, wow, I saw you and I liked what you did. A TEDx can open doors. Such talks give you great credibility and it gets a lot of attention.Book Marketing Success...
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    28 m
  • The Three Rules of a Professional Writer

    The Three Rules of a Professional Writer
    May 12 2025

    How can you tell if you’re a professional writer?

    Professional writers do three things:

    1. They don’t write anything until they’ve sold it.

    2. They sell their work more than once.

    3. They write every day without fail.

    That’s it. That’s how you become a professional author.

    Are you professional? Or are you an amateur?

    Now you know how to tell which you are.

    Be honest.

    Book Marketing Success is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.



    This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bookmarketing.substack.com/subscribe
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    1 m
  • The World Needs More Humans

    The World Needs More Humans
    Apr 30 2025

    I'm sharing a note from somebody that I'm newly following on Substack, Yana G.Y.

    I've been doing episodes about stories lately. And the key thing about stories is you've got to be real. You've got to be human.

    The title of this episode is The World Needs More Humans.

    The subtitle is Are You Ready to Write Relatable, Raw, Vulnerable?

    And here's the note that Yana G.Y. shared, I believe, earlier today.

    The world doesn’t need more noise.

    It needs more humans.

    Raw. Relatable. Vulnerable.

    Keep writing. — Yana G.Y.

    That's from Yana G.Y.. I encourage you to subscribe her Substack newsletter.

    And that’s how your stories should be written—with passion, with vulnerability, with a human touch. Raw. Relatable. Vulnerable.

    Are you ready to write like this?

    Book Marketing Success is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. And get the next 10 books in the Write a Book in 10 Days or Less series free!



    This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bookmarketing.substack.com/subscribe
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    1 m