New Release: Copywriting with Rayne Hall

Nicholas C. Rossis

You may recall my mentioning early this year a new release by Rayne Hall and yours truly titledCopywriting: Get Paid to Write Promotional Texts. This is Rayne’s Writer’s Craft Book number 34 (!) and, obviously, one of her best 😉

Seriously, though, working with Rayne was one of my best writing experiences. She’s a seasoned pro and a wonderfully supportive writer who’s often helped me with her tips and advice. I believe that the book will be an extremely helpful tool for anyone interested in freelance writing, distilling everything I’ve learned so far about SEO copywriting.

You can use this guide as a self-study course in copywriting. Each chapter contains information, professional tips, cautions about novice mistakes to avoid, and even assignments. If you do read it and enjoy it, please consider leaving a review.

Copywriting: Get Paid to Write Promotional Texts

Do you want to earn…

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Surviving Writing Slumps – Everything You Need to Know

A Writer's Path

by Elethwyn

Salutations, fellow elves and writers! Elethwyn is here today to share her thoughts, ideas, and tips for overcoming writing slumps.

Writing slumps – also known as writer’s block, also known as writing depression, also known as the-reason-future-Newberry-winners-gave-up-writing – is something all writers face. It’s when we lose that spark to write and find ourselves in a deep pit (or slump) of un-inspiration. Writing slumps can be a hard, somewhat depressing time when writers feel absolutely hopeless.

How on earth do we overcome it?

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Can AI Content Generation Replace Human Writing?

Nicholas C. Rossis

Back in 2015, I wrote a hilarious post about artificially created romance novels, whence the gem below. So, how are things 6 years on?

Photo: Gizmodo

Artificial intelligence (AI) has made automation the norm in more fields than ever. In marketing, AI has transformed the way we communicate. The use of machine learning in profiling audience segments and running programmatic advertising campaigns is an example of how AI transforms the way we can engage the audience at different times.

AI and machine learning are also trying to tackle another big hurdle in marketing: content creation. As content—and content marketing more specifically—becomes a key instrument in digital marketing, a golden era for content creation is dawning. However, might AI content generation replace human writing, thus depriving writers of much-anticipated jobs?

An Advancing Technology

Let’s start by acknowledging how advanced AI has gotten this past decade alone. Machine…

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ToolRocket: a Free PDF Converter

Nicholas C. Rossis

I can’t remember how many times I’ve had to look for an online free converter to turn a PDF file into a word.doc. Or an image file into a PDF file. Or any other combination of converting one type of file to another.

The thing is, finding a “free online converter” is not as easy as it sounds. Some are not free, despite their claim. Some don’t have a good conversion quality. Some save your file on the cloud, somewhere somehow, and you need to download it from there—which is hardly ideal if your documents are confidential in any way. And with others, you must download any number of miscellaneous apps before you find the right “download” button to get your converted file, on a screen full of “download” buttons.

That’s why I really appreciated ToolRocket, a free file format converter I discovered a few days ago:

• It allows you…

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10 Proven and Effective Ways to Overcome Writer’s Block

Nicholas C. Rossis

This is a guest post by Jayce, the managing director of Seller Interactive, an Amazon marketing agency that offers Amazon SEO services to brands built on Amazon. With content marketing skills that have taken him to top brands such as GoDaddy and Toyota, he has cemented his knowledge and expertise in helping brands reach new heights.

If you’ve ever experienced writer’s block, you know that it’s no laughing matter. It affects your work as a professional writer and impedes your writing for days — or worse, weeks. Instead of getting the work done, you sit and stare at your laptop all day.

You worry about how you’re going to transform the thoughts in your head into words, or you don’t know what to write about. As much as you want to ignore the problem and hope it goes away, you know…

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Which Writing Style Should You Choose in 2021?

Nicholas C. Rossis

I recently discussed the Oxford comma and Singular they. Both these are typical examples of style in writing. That is, there is no right or wrong answer concerning their use; it all depends on personal preference. So does the question of the writing style you choose: Associated Press, Chicago Manual, MLA, etc. This handy guest post by EllenRoyce describes the various styles and their differences. Ellen is an experienced marketer, copywriter, and entrepreneur. Having started several small businesses online, she knows the importance of effective content marketing in building companies.

If you’ve got a digital product that keeps growing, you need to start increasing your number of content creators. And to make sure they all maintain the same voice and tone in their writings, you need to provide a content style guide. But which writing style formats should you prefer in…

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2 Exercises To Work On “Show, Don’t Tell”

by Kelly D. Smith

I have to admit, I’m a descriptive writer, and in turn, I love reading books that are very descriptive!  I like to feel like I’m immersed in the book. And for both Rock Stars Are Fun and Summoning the Demon, I’ve been told that I “drew the reader into the book.”

I have to admit, that is something I took a lot of pride in! It was something I struggled with a lot, and always had editors tell me I needed to work on, so, today I want to share a couple tips with you on how to “show” not “tell.”

5 senses

When you feel things are getting telly, and yes we’re going to say that is the true word, just drop in the senses. Take a second to stop and grab a blank piece of paper. Think about where your character is. What would they likely be able to smell? What do they see looking around? What are they looking at? Would they be able to taste anything? What can they hear? What are they touching? Are they thinking anything? Write down the answer to each question on the blank sheet of paper so you can work it into the paragraph more than one time, if it fits.

Read more:

Source:

The Oxford Comma

Nicholas C. Rossis

I mentioned the Oxford comma recently in a conversation with Stefan. In case you haven’t heard of it, here is the definition, courtesy of Grammarly:

The Oxford (or serial) comma is the final comma in a list of things. For example:

Please bring me a pencil, eraser, and notebook.

The Oxford comma comes right after eraser.

Use of the Oxford comma is stylistic, meaning that some style guides demand its use while others don’t. AP Style—the style guide that newspaper reporters adhere to—does not require the use of the Oxford comma. The sentence above written in AP style would look like this:

Please bring me a pencil, eraser and notebook.

Unless you’re writing for a particular publication or drafting an essay for school, whether or not you use the Oxford comma is generally up to you. However, omitting it can sometimes cause some strange misunderstandings.

I love my parents…

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Recent Improvements to Amazon KDP

Recent Improvements to Amazon KDP

RECENT CHANGES AT KDP

There have been several changes to Amazon KDP recently. Have you noticed?

SERIES. One interesting change is the introduction of the series page and the series manager. It seems like this new tool isn’t 100% complete yet, but it’s a giant step in the right direction. From the publishing end, it makes it easier to manage series. Now you get a series landing page and you can even write a series description (by default it uses the description from the first book).

Source: Chris Mullen – Click below to read more
https://chrismcmullen.com/2021/03/20/recent-improvements-to-amazon-kdp/#like-6664

How to Apply the Principles of Fast Learning to Become a Better Writer

A Writer's Path

by Rafal Reyzer

You’ve heard that to become proficient at any specialized skill, you need at least 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. This view has been popularized by Malcolm Gladwell through his book The Outliers. The 10k rule has since been debunked, and we intuitively know that improvement doesn’t take so long. However, the meme still lingers in the popular consciousness. 

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