#Writing Tips

Society

The Reader I Thought Would Buy the Book Wasn’t the One Who Actually Did

Jul 9, 2026

One of the most surprising lessons I’ve learned in publishing had nothing to do with editing, printing, or marketing. It had to do with readers. More specifically, it had to do with how often authors are wrong about who their readers actually are. When I first started working with books, I assumed authors understood their audience better than anyone else. After all, they wrote the manuscript. They knew why they wrote it. They knew who they hoped would read it. That seemed logical. Then I started watching what happened after books were published. Again and again, I noticed something unexpected. The people buying the books were often not the people the authors imagined. At first, I thought these were isolated

Society

The Biggest Mistakes First-Time Authors Make: What I’ve Learned from Working with New Writers

Jul 7, 2026

One of the most common things I hear from first-time authors is this: “My manuscript is finished. How soon can we publish it?” I understand the excitement. Writing a book is difficult. Finishing a manuscript often takes months or even years. By the time a writer reaches the final page, they are usually eager to hold a printed copy in their hands as soon as possible. The problem is that finishing a manuscript and publishing a good book are not the same thing. As someone who has worked with authors through the publishing process, I’ve noticed that first-time writers tend to make many of the same mistakes. The interesting part is that these mistakes rarely come from laziness or lack