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Born in 1800, William Holmes McGuffey had a remarkable ability to memorize, and could commit to mind entire books of the Bible. After becoming a teacher at the age of 14, classroom size was just one of several challenges faced by McGuffey. In many one-teacher schools, students’ ages varied from six to twenty-one, and few textbooks existed. In 1835, a publishing firm asked McGuffey to create a series of graded Readers for primary level students.

You’ve written the best book ever, and now, everyone will be racing to read it. That was the plan anyway. As a first-time author, you walk a fine line between planning for and marketing your book for success and the crushing reality of low sales. Book Marketing for the First-Time Author breaks down the most important elements that you need to market your book. Master the fundamentals covered here to set your book up for success.

Behind most major political stories in the modern era, there is an agenda - an effort by opposition researchers, spin doctors, and outside interests to destroy an idea or a person. The tactic they use is the Smear. Every day, Americans are influenced by the Smear without knowing it. Paid forces cleverly shape virtually every image you cross. Maybe you read that Donald Trump is a racist misogynist or saw someone on the news mocking the Bernie Sanders campaign. The trick of the Smear is that it is often based on some shred of truth.

For decades, women battered the walls of the male fortress of television journalism. After fierce struggles, three women - Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, and Christiane Amanpour - broke into the newsroom’s once impenetrable “boys’ club”. These women were not simply pathbreakers, but wildly gifted journalists whose unique talents enabled them to climb to the top of the corporate ladder and transform the way Americans received their news.

In Self-Publish & Succeed, trusted best-selling author and entrepreneur Julie Broad shows you that writing a successful nonfiction book starts long before you write your first chapter. To write a book that boosts your brand, generates a profit, and makes you an influencer in your industry, you need the #noboringbooks way.

Have you ever had an idea and thought to yourself "this would make a great movie?" Of course, storytelling is engrained in us all and movies have become our modern means to tell them. Recent innovations in film technology have made it easier than ever to get your ideas put onto the big screen. So what's stopping you from writing that award winning screenplay? Screenwriting for Anyone is a four book box set that is a comprehensive guide to writing your script starting from the ground up. Each book will detail different aspects of the writing process beginning with the first book. Book One outline how to develop your idea into a feature length screenplay. Book Two gives you a detailed schedule to complete the first draft within 30 days and Book Three is a comprehensive guide on the dos and don'ts when creating a modern masterpiece. Book Four dives into the business side of screenwriting with proven methods on how to pitch your script and negotiate a deal. Screenwriting for Anyone is a one of a kind four book box set that will help you finally get that idea on paper and up onto the silver screen.

Bad writing can't be blamed on the internet or on 'the kids today'. Good writing has always been hard: a performance requiring pretence, empathy and a drive for coherence. In The Sense of Style, cognitive scientist and linguist Steven Pinker uses the latest scientific insights to bring us a style and usage guide for the 21st century.

"Writing is structure,” William Goldman said, but too often aspiring writers plunge into their work without grasping this fundamental principle. Story structure is one of the most important concepts for a writer to understand - and ironically, one of the least frequently taught. In this book, New York Times best-selling author William Bernhardt explains the elements that make stories work, using examples spanning from Gilgamesh to The Hunger Games.

Writing Conversations is about the daily life of the writer. How do you keep motivated in your craft when it's just you? Spend a moment of each day listening to the voices of your favorite connoisseur of the writing craft. Learn what they know about how to become a successful author. Whether it's the first line, the last line, how to find an agent or how to publish, it's all here. Learn how to launch the bestseller that's been incubating inside of you for so long. Writing Conversations has just what you need!

Calvin Trillin has reported serious pieces across America for The New Yorker, covered the civil rights movement in the South for Time, and written comic verse for The Nation. But one of his favorite subjects over the years—a superb fit for his unique combination of reportage and humor—has been his own professional environment: the American press.

A unique and significant guide to selling more books through personal appearances and online interviews, brimming with information and resources as well as tips and ideas from nearly two dozen author-speaker professionals.The most powerful tool in your book promotion toolkit is your personality. The fact is that personality sells books.

Writing a novel will change your life. The process of getting to that point will light a spark in your creative soul and help you discover unexpected aspects of yourself. It will be one of the things you are most proud of in your life. This audiobook will help you get there. This book will help you write your first novel, or improve your creative process, so you can write more books and reach more readers. It covers mindset, ideas and research, aspects of craft, how to write a first draft, and work through an editing process to a finished book.

Despite what you may have heard, becoming a successful author isn’t about having 67,973 Instagram followers, reaching “best-selling” status for seven seconds, or having Beyoncé take your book on tour with her (as amazing as that would be!). It’s about impacting one person so deeply that they can’t help but recommend your book again and again. It’s also about uncovering more of yourself while you tell your story so that your unique light can’t help but shine more brightly upon the world.

Writing a book is fun and easy - yes, fun and easy - but it may not always feel that way. How do you find the time to write? How do you keep momentum? How do you deal with the horror of showing anyone a single sentence of your work-in-progress? The answers remain fun and easy, and author Elizabeth Sims will take your hand, dispel your worries, and show you how it's done in this stress-free guide to accomplishing your dream of writing your book.

What makes a fantasy fantastic? Magic, of course! Whether it’s unearthly beasts, scheming sorcerers, legendary swords, or locales that defy logic and physics, a compelling fantasy story needs magical elements. The tricky part is that in order for the story to work, you have to get your reader or player to believe the unbelievable. The Kobold Guide to Magic takes you behind the scenes to learn the secrets of designing and writing about magic from 20 top fantasy authors and game designers.

Filled with practical tips and helpful advice, Dear Ally is a treasure for aspiring writers at any stage of their careers. It offers a behind-the-scenes look at how books get made, from idea to publication, and gives you insight into the writing processes of some of the biggest and most talented YA authors writing today.

Publish. Promote. Profit. explains the current self-publishing environment and covers the ins and outs of what it means to be an author, expert and thought leader in your field. Far beyond "how to self publish" or “book marketing” Publish. Promote. Profit. explains how to create compelling content quickly and become a true best-selling author even if you have no list, no following and no platform. It contains many real life examples and case studies of the successful systems his authors are using to attract an endless flow of leads, clients.

This first audio edition of Poetry in Person: 25 Years of Conversation with America’s Poets (Knopf, 2010), invites listeners into an intimate classroom with eight acclaimed poets. Full of compelling, in-depth conversation about manuscripts and drafts by the poets themselves, plus readings of the finished poems, these historic recordings offer one of the most detailed portraits ever produced of how poems are actually made.

In 2012, Ali Smith delivered the Weidenfeld lectures on European comparative literature at St. Anne’s College, Oxford. Those lectures, presented here, took the shape of discursive stories that refused to be tied down to either fiction or the essay form. Thus, Artful is narrated by a character who is haunted - literally - by a former lover, the writer of a series of lectures about art and literature. A hypnotic dialogue unfolds between storytelling and a meditation on art that encompasses love, grief, memory, and revitalization.

50 Things to Know About Writing Children’s Books by author Jamie C. McHugh offers an approach to writing a best-selling book for children. Most books on writing children’s books give you some helpful hints. Although there's nothing wrong with that, you need to know the ins and outs of book writing. Based on knowledge from the world's leading experts, reading storybooks to children is the most important activity for developing success in reading.