This might come as a shock to you, but there is no such thing as a well-written best-seller. It’s what everyone wants to create, and where everyone fails. Every writer aims to do well at his or her craft, and every writer wants to sell loads of books. But it appears that the two are mutually exclusive. Think about any best-seller of the past few decades that was actually well written? Some people argue that books like the Lord of the Rings trilogy or the Harry Potter series w

I’ve been building quite a bit of recognition lately, and it’s a mixed bag. People have expectations, and I need to be careful to keep my writing quality at its best and to work to keep improving. That makes writing harder since I find myself pushing myself instead of writing for fun. I also have to watch the content that I write and make sure it fits with what others would expect. Just add cliches! About a month ago, I decided to try an experiment. I would go to the other en

I never bothered going out of my way for reviews until very recently. After all, I was using keywords for optimization, and if people liked the books, they would doubtlessly write reviews for them. Right? Who even reads reviews anyway, except for the authors? I was far off the mark. Over the past few months, I’ve learned that not only are reviews a good thing to have, but they’re crucial. They can make the difference between being a “real” writer and being vanity press. Revie

The past few months have been insane, but it is good to be back after a longer-than-expected hiatus! I thought setting Automaton up for publication would be the hardest part, formatting it and submitting it to different sites. Yes, it was exhausting, but I didn’t know what else would take the brunt of my time and energy for the following weeks–my book blog tour. Book blog tours are increasingly common in the world of modern writing, both traditionally and independently publis

After Automaton‘s release on May 22, I do plan to continue work here. In the meantime, you can keep up with me at the Finish That Novel facebook page or at http://automatonbook.wordpress.com, where I will be posting regular updates on my success (or lack thereof). My advice in the meantime? Use the time you would spend on this site finishing your novel. Get to work! #AmandaClemmer #Automaton #selfpublishing #finishthatnovel #writinganovel

As it turns out, my suspicion that it might be because I use a Mac was partly correct–more specifically, it was the web browser Safari. I recently tried BookTrack again on Google Chrome to see if it was any better. It was! I don’t know how many browsers BookTrack works with, but on Google Chrome I was able to successfully read short stories and add a soundtrack to my own Automaton. While I don’t expect any of my stories to be available on BookTrack any time soon, I can now sa

I recently put my novel Automaton up for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, Kobo, and more (find the entire list and links here), and have set the release date to be May 22, one month after the book made its first appearance online. Why does it matter? The Cult of The Future. These days, many people are not only excited about new releases and ideas, but about promised releases of things that haven’t been released yet. Think of movie trailers or Kickstarter campaig

In your dreams… 1. I Write Like…: All right, maybe this doesn’t help with writing or editing. But it’s fun. It’s a good distraction. And it might help you figure out what direction to take your writing in. Basically, with I Write Like, you paste a sample of your writing into a box and it tells you what famous author you sound like. It also recommends tips and ideas that can help enhance and develop your natural writing style. Even though I’d never heard of the writer I resemb