By Shelley Sturgeon

Some great articles for you again this week.

Also, please note that we’re shaking things up a bit here at The Book Designer and have reorganized our publication schedule. You will now find all of our contributing writers’ articles on Mondays along with our very popular e-Book Cover Design Awards posts. On Fridays, we will be featuring our This Week in the Blogs and Carnival of the Indies posts starting with Self-Publishing: Carnival of the Indies Issue #115 on Friday, April 24th.

We’re still accepting submissions to the Carnival of the Indies blog carnival until April 15th and submissions to April’s e-Book Cover Design Awards until April 30th.

Hope you’re able to enjoy the weekend. It’s hard to do if you’re cooped up and separated from all your favorite people. Have some chocolate. Maybe that will help? No one would blame you under the circumstances, right?

Anne R. Allen on Anne R. Allen’s Blog… with Ruth Harris
Why it’s so Tough to Write Now: Tips for Dealing with Our Collective Grief
“There are a lot of jokes out there right now like the cartoon in The New Yorker showing a young woman saying something like “I couldn’t decide whether to work on my novel or my screenplay, so instead I ate three bags of chips, then lay on the floor screaming.””

Cathy Yardley on Writer Unboxed
Productivity vs. Chaos: How to Hit a Balance
“There seems to be two prevailing attitudes when it comes to the pandemic.”

Dave Chesson on Indie Reader
7 Mistakes to Weed Out When Editing Your Writing
“Editing your own work can be a nightmare. Trust me, I know. I’ve been trying to figure out ways to improve my craft, and I figured what better way to learn than to do some research and write about it? So let’s learn about this together–after all, as authors we have to stick together.”

Brian Jud on BookBaby Blog
How To Expand Your Market To Sell Your Children’s Books
“The market for children’s books is potentially huge, and while most authors approach this enormous opportunity by trying to sell their books through bookstores (bricks and clicks), there are other options.”

John Doppler on ALLI’s Self-Publishing Advice Center
Friends Don’t Let Friends Use Vanity Presses
“Vanity presses are frequently substandard publishers and incompetent marketers — but they are masters of manipulation. They have honed the art of the sales pitch to a fine edge, and they know exactly what buttons to push to appeal to a novice author’s hopes and insecurities. The end goal is not to sell books to readers, but to sell overpriced services to authors.”

Photo: BigStockPhoto