How do you promote your book, especially when you are a newbie author? I can tell you, it is not easy. As I’ve mentioned in my previous post (https://www.francinebeaton.com/post/i-am-a-wip), I’m no expert and I’ve made numerous mistakes, spent a lot of (unnecessary) money, without any success. There are so many ways you can promote your book, and some of them are free, but does it work? Not always. What works for one person, may not work for another. That is why you need to d

If you, as an author, you may have been asked the same question many times: How do I become a writer? The answer is not simple, but it should be. You become a writer by writing. But—and there is always a but—, it is not as easy, is it? Some people might have been writing for years with no one knowing about it. I call them the closet writers. Others might jump feet first into it (like me), and first had to learn how to write crap, before they can become a good (or better) writ

Can you believe it that we've reached the end of our #AtoZBlogChallenge for April 2020? This brings us to Z and with it Zillions. A zillion is still a number I can't get my head around. Okay, I must confess. Most numbers confuse me. Maths had never been my strongest point. I do know, however, that zillion must be a really big number. My husband usually ends all his letters (yes, I still got those!), faxes, emails and messages with "...millions and billions and zillions and q

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” William Shakespeare Have you ever thought about this well-known passage from Shakespeare? To be honest, I'm not a big Shakespeare fan (guess I remember it too well from struggling through high school literature exams). Well, I never understood the meaning of it until today. Apparently it means that it doesn't matter what your name is, you will still be the same person. Or something like that

I know many authors who have a specific playlist when writing. I don't. In fact, I like to write in silence, but it is not always possible. I don’t mind the howling wind outside or the patter of rain on the roof next door. Those are soothing sounds and natural. It’s the manmade ones I’m not so keen on. Of course, it depends on where I write, because in a public place you don’t have much choice. There you may have to compete with background music, people talking, announcements

Am I the only one who feels despondent these days, wondering whether you should carry on with this crazy life of publishing your books? Maybe it is just that today was supposed to be our last day of the 21-lockdown, and now it has been extended to the 30th of April with rumours of another two-week-lockdown. All because of people's stupidity by not staying at home and isolate. Or I may only feel like that because when I woke up this morning, I had to deal with Facebook posts o

You know when you had something, and you didn't realise how good you had it until it's gone? Yes, almost like freedom of movement and shopping when you want and all those over things we all crave for now. What I miss most now is my own writing space. I had this amazing study a couple of years ago but then we downscaled for a year before we became nomads. How I miss that space! That's where I've written most of my books and it had been my happy place. In another blog, I will t

That’s the big question, isn’t it? But, before I answer that, let’s find out what KU is. Kindle Unlimited, or KU, is Amazon’s subscription service specifically for books, audiobooks, and magazines. There are more than 150 million subscribers who have access to over 1 million titles (or probably more by the rate books are getting published). KU works like a virtual library but, before you say, “awesome!”, let me remind you there are several other virtual libraries like Bibliot