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Believe it or not

Adult Coloring Books dominated sales in 2015 and will continue…

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Nine of the 20 books on Amazon’s current bestseller list contain few words and belong to a genre that didn’t exist two years ago. Welcome to the biggest publishing craze of the year: coloring books for adults, writes Susannah Cahalan in the New York Post.

More than 2,000 have hit stands since 2013 and the genre’s two biggest bestsellers, “Secret Garden” and “Enchanted Forest,” have sold a combined 13.5 million copies in 50 countries, she wrote.

“Adult coloring books are key factors in three of the top four adult nonfiction categories,” according to Kristen McLean, director of new business development for Nielsen Book.

“They make up 14 out of the top 20 for games/hobby/activity, including the top three slots. They are 40 out of the top 50 in art/design. There are even three in the top 20 in self-help,” she was quoted an article in the ABA Winter Institute’s look at 2016 bookselling trends from Publishers Weekly.

So what is the attraction to coloring books? People consider it therapeutic, stress-relieving and calming. Adrienne Raphel in her piece in The New Yorker called the trend, the “Peter Pan Market” as adults turn to coloring to relive the joys of their childhood.

Starre Vartan wrote in Mother Nature Network (MNN) that MNN’s own Robin Shreeves is a fan, “I enjoy them because when I’m doing them, I don’t think about anything but colors. They take me away from life’s problems without a lot of effort. So do many other creative endeavors, but with the coloring book, I can do it for 10 minutes instead of the time it would take me to do some other things. I don’t do it often, but I pick it up from time to time and get lost for a bit,” Shreeves wrote.

“Coloring fulfills a creative urge and is also soothing and calming,” wrote Jan Hornbeck Chapman, an Ohio-based youth librarian in her 60s, according to Vartan.

Vartan also quoted Sophie Hessekiel, a college student at Vassar in Poughkeepsie, New York, echoes Chapman, even though she’s at a completely different stage of life. “Coloring lets you think about nothing for a little while, and the feel of a marker on paper is very soothing,” she wrote.

 

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Be Happy

Enjoy this Holiday Season

with one of our favorite songs by Pentatonix

May your holiday be blessed with joy and happiness from our family to yours.
Anthony & Family

Happy Holidays

If in London…Poet Owain Glyn is a Guest Panelist at the London Convention at Foyles Bookstore Dec. 12

Poet Owain Glyn

Poet Owain Glyn at home writing

Owain will chair a panel discussing how to get the best from literary sites such as Wattpad, and how this can lead to ever wider followings, and even publication.

The convention will be attended by more than 150 Wattpad authors, poets and writers who will participate in the discussion.

Foyles was once listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s largest bookshop in terms of shelf area (30 miles/50 kilometres) and number of titles on display. It is one of the largest bookstores in the UK.

Owain is a Welsh exile, currently living on the wild coast of Cornwall, UK, a land of legend, from King Arthur, and Merlin, to mermaids, pirates, and smugglers.

Windswept - Poems of Love

Get Windswept into love

Inspired by his surroundings and his love of words he writes on a wide range of subjects, from romance, to humour, politics, dark spiritual matters, and children’s poetry. He writes in a style which he hopes is accessible to all.

Bring some love into your life – order your copy here for $10.99.

And if you want to know more about Owain, see the interview by Phoenix Rainex on her site.

And be sure to read JT Twissle’s excellent article on how Owain creates his poetry, The Passionate and Whimsical Poet of Penzance on her site.

_______________________

Windswept – Poems of Love
List Price: $10.99
5.5″ x 8.5″ (13.97 x 21.59 cm)
Black & White Bleed on Cream paper
140 pages
Publication Date – September 30, 2015
Outer Banks Publishing Group

W & G Foyle Ltd. (usually called simply Foyles) is a chain of book shops with seven locations but is best known for its flagship store in Charing Cross Road, London.

Concerning The King of Craw – a new Ron Rhody novel

Ron Rhody

Ron Rhody

Outer Banks Publishing Group author Ron Rhody is finishing up a new novel based on true events and the nefarious characters that lived and ruled in an area called the Kingdom of Craw in Kentucky’s Capitol City during the heady days of the Roaring Twenties.

Famous throughout the southeast, Craw was Storyville on the Kentucky, the Barbary Coast in the Bluegrass – gambling and women and booze, knife fights and gun fights and party till the lights go out. Anything. Any time. All the time.

The plot revolves around John Fallis, a real character, renown as the King of Craw, and two boys who fall into his orbit. Fallis was a Robin Hood to the poor and powerless and the devil incarnate to the powers that be.

They wanted him gone and his story has taken on mythic proportions in the area.  His death is still a matter of controversy.

We’re shooting for a publication date of mid-year.

Front cover lo res CHere’s a sneak peak at one of the cover drafts.

Ron is the author of the THEO trilogy of novels, Soccer, a Spectator’s Guide and Wordsmithing, the Art and Craft of Writing for Public Relations. See all his titles on Amazon.

 

10 Most Popular Modern Authors

Can you guess?

Pray for the people of France

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We stand with France

20 Ways to Double Your Writing Productivity (Infographic)

Good Advice for any Writer

of grammarcheck.net

20 Ways to Double Your Writing Productivity from Best-Selling Authors (Infographic)
Source: www.grammarcheck.net

6 Reasons to Write an eBook for Your Business

Tell the world you are an expert

 

write book

Republished with permission from the author, Eileen Batson

By Eileen Batson, owner and founder of Batson Group Marketing and Public Relations

While there are a variety of reasons to write an eBook, here are six that are proven winners.

  1. It can establish you as an expert By sharing your knowledge you can help others while building your reputation as the ‘go to person’ in your particular niche.
  2. Write it once and it is there forever. You may need to update it from time to time but that’s not a difficult task.
  3. eReaders provide a movable feast for knowledge and entertainment and the demand is growing. By 2025, e-readers are projected to make up approximately 75 percent of the total market.
  4. An eBook is to your email list as plant food is to, well, plants. Make your eBook available to download for sale or as a freebie from your website – to get people to sign up for your newsletter. The buyer needs to enter their name and email address to download it or use it as bait (as a freebie) to get people to sign up for your newsletter. Either way you have a valuable new contact on your atabase who may go on to buy your product or service.
  5. Increase traffic to your website By promoting your eBook across social media platforms you will drive traffic to your website or blog. Seed your eBook with a call to action. Include your web address and special offers that direct readers to your site where they may buy more from you.
  6. Exposure is a good thing. The more you are seen around the internet the easier it is for you to be seen as an authority – exposure breeds credibility and being able to say you are an author takes you to the next level.
Batson avatar 100 (1)

Eileen Batson

EILEEN BATSON has been a publicist and owner of Batson Group Marketing and PR for 25+ years.

She offers consultation and implementation services for business owners, authors and artists to help them be well known, well thought of and well-remembered.

For more information contact Eileen at Eileen@BGMPR.com or visit her website at www.BGMPR.com

Writing may make you healthier

First published in Arts.mic

Science Shows Something Surprising About People Who Love to Write

Hands on computer

Rachel Grate's avatar image By Rachel Grate

The benefits of writing go far beyond building up your vocabulary.

No matter the quality of your prose, the act of writing itself leads to strong physical and mental health benefits, like long-term improvements in mood, stress levels and depressive symptoms. In a 2005 study on the emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing, researchers found that just 15 to 20 minutes of writing three to five times over the course of the four-month study was enough to make a difference.

> Read the rest

Writing advice from the Master of Horror

10 Writing Tips from
Stephen King

By Yelena Melnichenko
Originally published by Mental Floss

This tip is my favorite because if you wait for your “muse” your whole life will pass before you.

Stephen King

The Master of Horror – Stephen King

“There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement kind of guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. Do you think it’s fair? I think it’s fair. He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist, but he’s got inspiration. It’s right that you should do all the work and burn all the mid-night oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There’s stuff in there that can change your life. Believe me, I know.” – Stephen King

Get the other 9 tips here>

Women want to read everything

21 Books From The Last 5 Years That Every Woman Should Read

The Huffington Post | By Nina Bahadur

The one struggle of being a woman who reads is that you want to read everything.  It’s easy to get overwhelmed by bestseller lists, because there just isn’t enough time in the day to read every hot new book. Between near-constant recommendations of amazing memoirs, new sequels and a terrifyingly long list of bookmarked Internet longreads, it can be stressful to choose what you should pick up next. Knowing which classics you’re missing from your reading repertoire is easy — it’s a little harder to remember what you’ve missed from three years ago.

We’ve done a little bit of the hard work for you (or maybe just increased your book stress… sorry) by pulling together a list of incredible titles from the past few years that you should add to the pile on your bedside table. These books by women are just a few of the incredible titles published recently — an exhaustive list would be hundreds of books longer. Those listed here are some of the most-discussed, thought-provoking and life-changing books from a diverse group of women writers. They make you rethink what being a feminist means, offer life advice to women of all ages, and reinforce your long-held belief that Tina and Amy should be your best friends and life coaches forever. The novels are some of the finest writing from woman authors. From lighthearted memoirs to harrowing thrillers, there’s a genre here for everyone.

Here are 21 books published in the past 5 years that all women should read>

21 books

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