Category Archives: Books

Books do so much. They teach, inspire, motivate, educate and entertain. You can travel to other parts of the world, simply using your imagination, as you read travel books. This blog that is written largely by author Denise Turney has a wealth of material on the book industry. Whether you are an author yourself, an editor, publisher, freelance writer, content marketer or literary agent, there is something for you at this blog. Enjoy exploring the articles and learning from what is shared in the articles here.

How Reading Good Relationship Books Opens You to Love

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By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

man and woman sitting on the floor reading good relationship books
Couple Reading Good Relationship Books – Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Reading good books is a great way to escape the world’s rigors. You learn, grow, exercise your brain, enjoy virtual travel, are introduced to favorite characters and much more. If you read a lot of books, you can shortcut the time it takes to understand new material at work and school. One of the greatest rewards gained from reading books may have escaped you. When you read good relationship books, you can open to love more.

How so?

As you read fiction or nonfiction relationship books, your guard drops. It’s not like you’re reading a draft of your biography or autobiography. Fear of being criticized or judged is reduced, perhaps isn’t present at all while you read, allowing you to gain what is being shared more fully.

That’s a huge benefit.

Good Relationship Books Drop Your Guard to Love

After all, if you don’t retain what you read, it’s akin to looking at computer code you don’t understand. More ways that reading good relationship books opens you to love follow:

  • Novels not only help you drop or remove an internal mental guard, they show couples interacting and communicating with each other up close. Witnessing these couples engage can offer tips on what you could do to strengthen your relationships.
  • Of course, communication is key to healthy relationships. This is an area where nonfiction relationship books can yield a wealth of positive results. While reading nonfiction, you can learn communication techniques such as how to be an active listener and the importance of thinking before you speak. PsychAlive also shares that additional solid communication techniques include sticking to the facts when communicating with your partner, being honest and being sincere.1
  • Books make it easy to take in information together, keeping couples free of feeling as if one person in the relationship is offering most of the information or “telling the other person what to think, feel or do”.
  • You can learn about you and your partner’s attachment styles while reading good relationship books.
  • Even more, you can discover you and your partner’s communication style.
  • Opportunities to identify how couples express and receive appreciation is also unearthed through reading.

Relationship Books with Quality Research on Love

Fortunately, in today’s book market there are many relationship books that are built upon years of quality research. This is how you get access to volumes of survey responses and empirical science. In other words, you can quickly learn what works in healthy relationships.

To be healthy, relationships also require that each person in the bond love themselves and continue to evolve and awaken to love. Both fiction and nonfiction books dig into the importance of loving yourself. Should you be tempted to focus on your partner more than yourself, reading good relationship books could be a relationship saver, not only as a couple but for you, as an individual.

After all, you’re not just in a relationship with your partner. You’re forever in a relationship with yourself. Hopefully, the communion you have with yourself is loving, healthy and not dysfunctional. If that incredibly important union is dysfunctional, here’s to hoping that you are working to heal gaps or injuries in the union that you have with yourself.

Spotlight Relationship Love and Goodness

Today’s book market also has lots of titles, particularly fiction, that spotlight dysfunctional relationships. Bookstores and libraries, online and offline, shelve novels that focus on physically, psychologically and emotionally abusive relationships.

Gain from reading these books by focusing on what “not to do” in your relationships. Steer clear of believing that dysfunctional relationships are “normal”. Instead of reading books to convince yourself that every couple hits each other, curses one another or belittles each other, focus on what you want from a coupling.

Get clear about how you want to be treated. Then, read books that share effective techniques and strategies you can use to start treating yourself that way and how you can encourage your partner to treat you this way.

Reading to Gain Loving Interactions

Because experiences, including loving interactions, aren’t linear in this world it’s helpful to get introduced to couples who have overcome great odds. Nonfiction and fiction books have facts, stories and background information to help you pull this off.

You’ll probably spot the win early into the book. For instance, a character may have had a troubling childhood or a character might have gone through a challenging intimate relationship earlier in her life. In addition to giving you hope that you too can overcome childhood or past relationship challenges, reading these books could strengthen your belief that you can go on to enjoy being in a healthy, rewarding love connection.

Books Helping Readers Open to Love

Whether you’re reading fiction or nonfiction, a key is to commit to open up to love. In other words, make opening up to love more a primary goal. You could do this by:

  • Pick books that deal with forgiveness if you know you need to forgive to remove an internal block and open up to love
  • Join a book club to get diverse insights and perceptions
  • Complete worksheets in nonfiction relationship books. Talk about a way to learn, grow and awaken. Effective worksheets can help surface parts of yourself that greatly impact your relationship, parts of yourself that you had repressed or kept hidden out of your conscious awareness for years.

Celebrate successes that you have in your relationship with yourself and with others. Recognize that good relationships extend beyond marriage and dating. If you live alone, you’re in communication with neighbors, family, colleagues and friends.

Celebrate Relationships and Greater Love

Reading good relationship books that showcase personal and interpersonal connections can help you grow as an individual and as a relationship partner. At the end of each year, consider how much you have gained from the relationship books you read.

Continue the process of reading books that help you deepen your understanding, awareness and growth. This single decision saves you years of research and trial and error. Additionally, as you complete activities in nonfiction books that aim to remove internal blocks, you can open to love more each day.

Resources:

  1. Top 10 Effective Communication Techniques for Couples – PsychAlive

Power of Kids Seeing Themselves in Diverse Books

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By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

photo of girl sitting on sofa while using tablet to read diverse books
Girl reading diverse book – Photo by Julia M Cameron on Pexels.com

Diverse books tap into the power of kids. Social skills, open mindedness, genuine acceptance of others and natural happiness are a few strengths common to kids. These strengths and others, including active listening, knowledge that there’s a lot for them to learn and a heart for the arts and creativity, empower kids. Seeing book characters who look like them put these strengths into practice opens up new worlds for kids. Even more, books with diverse characters do so much more.

Growing Up Without Diverse Books

Fortunately, the numbers of diverse books for kids are increasing. Growing up there were fewer than a handful of children’s books with characters from other cultures. Back then, it was a challenge finding books for young readers that had strong female characters.

Although I absolutely loved to read, starting and finishing dozens of books a week, I longed for stories with characters who reminded me of myself, my family, friends and neighbors. Years passed before I came across such a book which was Mildred Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. To say I was shocked to discover the book, is a huge understatement.

Simply seeing Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, a book my father gave me, a smile lighting across his face, changed everything for me. Who knows? It might be a reason why I became a novelist.

Kids Finding Diverse Books

That’s the power of kids coming across books that have major and minor characters who resemble them, their parents, siblings, neighbors and friends. More ways that kids are empowered when they read books that have characters and core experiences that mirror theirs include:

  • Supports healthy self-esteem
  • Shows kids what they can do
  • Encourages personal growth
  • Fuels creativity and a desire to continue to develop and advance
  • Impacts a child’s sense of belonging in a good way
  • Makes it easier for kids to connect with what they are reading
  • Enhances learning as kids develop deeper connections with these books’ characters
  • Sends a powerful message that kids from all backgrounds are valued and immeasurably important

A path to getting more diverse books into schools and stores goes through school and retail book buyers. Wholesalers and distributors, including digital distributors, work with independent authors, indie bookstores, libraries, hospitals, schools and major retailers to get books on their shelves.

As parents, educators and caretakers invest in diverse books, wholesalers and distributors work harder to get these powerful books into more retail, school and library outlets. This is when the power of kids can go into effect.

How to Tell Kids Are Benefitting from Diverse Stories

And it should. After all, who better to choose the books they want to read, stories that motivate and inspire them, than kids, the people who are going to sit down and read the books? Once kids feel connected to characters, they might want to read every book in a series.

But what if a child isn’t that talkative, choosing to read more than engage in verbal conversation? There are still ways to tell if a child is getting a lot of positive gain from a book. Among these signs there’s:

  • Parents and caregivers don’t have to encourage kids to read the books
  • Laughter is often heard while young readers are enjoying these stories
  • Kids talk about characters in the stories
  • Acting out fun scenes in middle-school books might become common
  • Should kids have their own cell phones, they can be overheard sharing events written in books with their friends over the phone
  • Children’s confidence rises, allowing them to tap into inner strength and lead projects they had previously shied away from

Connecting Power of Kids Thru Books

The gift of connection aids kids at home, at school and in larger society. Reading books at school that have no to few characters who look like you, speak like you or who are growing up the way you are can send kids the message that they aren’t important enough to be written about, even if only indirectly.

That certainly isn’t the way to acknowledge the power of kids. Admittedly, this is where authors come into play. Increasing sales of children’s and middle school books that have characters from a range of backgrounds encourages more authors to write these types of books.

Furthermore, fueling kids’ reading interest further comes through the chance to meet children’s book authors in person. For instance, schools can schedule author appearances, especially during cultural holidays. Educators can also ask authors to visit schools to close out discussions about a book.

In-Person Meetings with Children and Diverse Book Writers

Several schools are already doing this. These visits are positive for kids in so many ways, including:

  • Allows kids opportunity to get answers to their questions quickly and directly from the books’ authors
  • Shows kids that it’s possible for culturally diverse people to create engaging stories and earn a living doing so
  • Makes reading and writing fun
  • Shifts learning from the page to the classroom
  • Opens children up to different perspectives
  • Builds connectivity among students as they see similarities in their questions, opinions and perceptions

Also, seeing and talking with authors in person makes reading feel “real”. Even adults love to meet their favorite authors face-to-face at book club discussions. These personal interactions bring a spark to fiction.

What Are the Lifelong Rewards

Because reading books offers so many benefits, these interactions can carry lifelong rewards. Help with expanding vocabulary and understanding what has been read are two rewards. Additional rewards are:

  • Stronger empathy which helps kids relate to others
  • Improved writing skills
  • Ability to think through what they hear and read more fully
  • Exercises the brain
  • Inspires creativity
  • Opens kids up to the possibility of working in the arts
  • Enhances ability to communicate with different types of people, a skill that can help kids now and throughout their lives, especially if they step into leadership positions

Diverse Book Offer So Much Good

Whether you are a parent, caregiver, educator or youth worker, you can positively influence children’s lives, particularly middle school readers who might be at a crossroads as it regards deciding to continue or stop reading books for fun. You can power kids up, bringing diverse books that allow them to see people like them doing amazing things.

Look out for books to gift your kids with. Another step you could take is to read kids’ books yourself. See if they grab and hold your attention. If they do, they just might be a hit with your kids. Above all, encourage the kids in your life to appreciate good stories and to read regularly.

Books offer so much. There’s a wealth of information in good books. Make it easy for young readers to access this valuable information. And make it easy for young readers to have fun reading books that spotlight and celebrate characters like them.

Resources:

Importance of reading | Young Readers Foundation

Danger of Keeping Small Town Secrets Across Generations

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By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

empty concrete alleyway in small town
Passageway in Small Town – Photo by Simon Blyberg on Pexels.com

Small town secrets grow like uncontrollable weeds. Their sting is as painful as gossip, yet worse. Unlike gossip, these secrets have a deep, dangerous root. Sexual crimes committed by a star athlete, the whereabouts of a missing person and the deception that a woman is a child’s aunt when she’s actually the child’s mother – those are but a few misplaced confidences with lasting impact.

Small Towns with Old Histories

Other real life skeletons people living in small towns, especially towns with old histories, work hard to keep hidden have affected hundreds of children and adults. Danger associated with these mysteries is what drives people to keep them hidden. If you grew up in a small town that’s known for keeping events in the dark, a few of these mysteries might sound familiar:

  • College hazing that went too far, causing the death of a student, but no one going to trial because the death was ruled an accident and the crime was never properly investigated
  • Neighbor installing hidden camera in a home then using taped information to blackmail the homeowner for acts as simple as showering, relieving themselves and making out with a town schoolteacher
  • Corruption that stems back two or more generations, putting dishonest law enforcement and other government officials in place to keep the corruption going
  • Drugs taking over an entire town, destroying families and businesses while community leaders do nothing to stop the drug infiltration because they’re receiving kickbacks from dealers
  • A handful of business owners meeting and deciding which new businesses will open in the town, cooking up reasons to disallow the strongest competitors from setting up shop
  • Two married people have a lengthy affair, creating a child from the relationship, only to lie to the child about his real parents, not once telling their son their biological connection to him. People who know about the affair and who the child’s real parents are, never tell the child, not even after the child reaches adulthood.

Shocking Small Town Secrets

It’s these types of secrets that get the wrong men and women arrested, that leave children with more questions than answers and that prevent real growth from happening to the town. Believe it or not, some small town secrets are more outlandish and traumatic than those unearthed in large cities.

The real shocker is that small towns with big secrets can look “perfect” from the outside. Everybody knows everybody. Instead of passing one another on the sidewalk without speaking while out shopping, townsfolk stop, wave and chat with each other awhile.

If you didn’t know better, the entire town would look and feel like one big, happy family. Stay in the place long enough and you start to notice relationships and events that are off, that just don’t feel right. You spot a prominent business owner entering a hotel at the edge of town with a minister’s wife only to tell his own wife that he and the minister’s wife are mapping out the details of the summer’s vacation Bible school.

Everyone Knows What You Keep Lying About

Everyone in town knows the businessman rarely goes to church, but no one questions the lie. The chance to live in a place where wrong, particularly seemingly unforgiveable wrongs, don’t occur seems like sufficient motivation to lie, deny the facts and support tragic secrets.

At their worse, small town secrets can conceal a murder. Destroyed evidence, bribes paid to a coroner and a judge and threats made to those seeking the truth, can do more than hide facts. Acts like these can ensure that the wrong man goes to prison.

But why do people tell lies or keep secrets, especially dangerous hidden facts? Desire to mask their own indiscretions is a primary reason. Fear of retaliation from powerful people is another.

Together these two can create a web that’s hard to get untangled from. Greasy Plank in Memphis, Tennessee is a town of secrets, dark mysteries. Religion won’t save Greasy Plank residents.

Break Free

If you grew up keeping secrets, it might be time to break free. Doing so can release positive energy, allowing you to start and finish work you’ve wanted to do for years, but never seemed to find the strength to get to.

Here are more rewards associated with letting small town secrets go, float away like rocks moving down river:

  • Restored relationships with people wrongly suspected of crimes
  • Freedom from unforgiveness
  • Independence from resentment and suspicion
  • Healing from trauma
  • Innocent children and adults regaining their honor

And most of all, wrongs finally made right. Oh, and another advantage. You can sleep at night, your mind lighter from no longer having to carry heavy secrets. Tammy Tilson in Spiral fights for these rewards, for herself and her family, but she has a lot to lose if she tells what she knows.

Her choice to keep small town secrets has a very high price. Yet, that’s the way it goes when you try to hide the truth. Should you be keeping secrets, especially from yourself, consider the weight you’re carrying. See if you can find a way into the light of the truth. You might be able to do it in a way that frees up more people than you know without causing more trauma, more harm.

Resources:

  1. Small Town Secrets – NBC Boston

13 Reasons Why Books Make the Best Gifts

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And Why You Should Buy Books for Your Best Friends

By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

woman lying down on grass beside opened books
Photo by Marcelo Chagas on Pexels.com

Books make the best gifts for a bounty of reasons. Art and entertainment are just two good reasons why your friends love to get books as gifts. Other reasons are hidden gems, to them and to you. Chance to improve your friend’s cognitive abilities is just a start, a benefit with long lasting effects. Then, there’s the psychological and emotional benefits.

Fascinating Artwork Pops

Let’s start with art!

A rare and skillful artist’s pen has helped to craft the artwork on the finest of book covers. Who thinks of paintings, drawings and sketches while shopping for books to give as gifts? Yet, it’s often the artwork on the cover that attracts your eye, isn’t it?

Explosion of vibrant, rich colors. Smooth or rugged texture. Moving shadows and odd, unique shapes. Admittedly, there are book covers so masterfully created that they are a work of art all by themselves.

Check out these winning book covers. See if you can spot what attracts thousands of readers to these covers. Are any of them your favorite, just for the cover alone?

the great gatsby by f scott fitzgerald cover
elskede by toni morrison book cover artwork
george orwell books as gifts 1984 book cover
the stargazers sister by carrie brown book gifts great book covers
books as gifts book cover artwork by terry mcmillan

13 Reasons Books Make the Best Gifts

As if highly crafted artwork isn’t enough, here are 13 more reasons why books make the best gifts. If you read merely for entertainment, several of these advantages might surprise you:

  1. Stronger brain – While reading, the brain’s visual cortex is activated. The temporal lobe and frontal lobe are other parts of the brain that are activated while you read.1
  2. Better empathy – The ability to understand and relate to another person based on emotions they’re experiencing is sharpened while reading good books. How so? Reading stories that spark emotionally charged memories, gets the limbic system fired up. Link loving emotions to a scene in a novel about forgiveness, romance or happiness and you could improve your ability to relate to people in real-life.
  3. Faster learning – Read more, learn more and faster. The more you read, the easier it is to comprehend what’s being shared on the page.
  4. Rewires the brain – Iris Reading shares that reading, “makes the brain rewire itself and creates white matter, making communication within the brain efficient.”2
  5. Improves memory – To pull this one off, read books that challenge what you already know. Pulitzer Prize winning authors dig deep into the human condition. These authors also use complicated sentence structure to convey a message, enough complication to challenge you as you read.
  6. Broader vocabulary – Back to those challenging novels and nonfiction books. Keep reading stories that challenge your current understanding, and watch your vocabulary grow.

Treasure These Rewards

Looking for more reasons to treat your family and friends to great stories? Here you go!

  1. Choose Education – Who doesn’t love to learn! Reading books is a low-cost way to expand your education. When you think about it, there’s hardly a classroom, postsecondary course or certificate-granting webinar that doesn’t require you to read a book to complete the training.
  2. Unleash your imagination – Science fiction and fantasy novels aren’t the only stories that free your imagination, letting your wildest dreams feel alive. Facts and history tidbits you read in nonfiction books rev up your imagination too.
  3. Positive mood shifts – Just like it’s impossible for most people to multi-task, it’s impossible to place equal focus on a project or concern and the pages of a good book. Start reading positive literature, and you could go from feeling angry or anxious to feeling hopeful and happy.
  4. Enjoy a good night of sleep – You don’t even have to read a lot of books to relax and start drifting into the sweetest sleep, fading memories of the last pages of an intriguing story still in your thoughts. If you’re an avid reader, you know how sweet sleep can be after you’ve been reading for entertainment for two to three hours.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

  1. Great media alternative – Imagine seeing an exciting or soothing story scene pop up instead of a negative news piece two to three times a week. What impact do you think that switch would have on your mental health and overall emotional wellbeing?
  2. Deeper dive – A sure way to get to the heart of a situation, historic or modern, is to read through personal journals, history books, biographies and autobiographies.
  3. Inexpensive gifts – E-books cost as little as $.99. Paperbacks, including brand new paperbacks, can be purchased for as little as $5. It’s hard for other gifts to compete with the benefits gained from reading books and their low costs.

Major Reason Books Make the Best Gifts

Not every gift offers 13 benefits, and at such low cost. It really is hard to top books when it comes to gift giving and for so many wonderful reasons! Yet, most of all, the good you gain from reading books stays with you.

Honestly, what gifts offer rewarding effects that stay with you like the effects gained from reading books? You don’t even have to keep a physical book at your side to enjoy the benefits. It’s not like wearing a coat, suit, hat or dress.

Pick stories that your friends and family absolutely love, and you’ll send the message that you care. Select stories the people in your life love, and you’ll let those people know you’re paying attention. It sends the message that you know what they like, and that you’re willing to do the good it takes to make them happy.

It’s Getting Easier as Books Make the Best Gifts

Now, that isn’t to say that finding the right titles for your friends is always easy. Fortunately, booksellers, particularly indie and local bookstore owners, know hundreds of titles that might make a perfect gift. If you’re in luck, you might live in an area that hosts a book fair around the holidays.

Talk about a shortcut to good book gifts. Who knows. You might even get these printed gifts autographed by the authors, potentially increasing the gift’s value. This gain is year-round. After all, new books are published every day.

Good stories, from classics to contemporary stories to the best nonfiction, make great birthday, anniversary, retirement and holiday gifts. The next time you sit down and enjoy a good story, ask yourself if it wouldn’t be sweet to share that experience with a friend by gifting them with a similar experience, all through the pages of a book.

Resources:

  1. Areas of the brain involved in reading and writing – Psychology Info (psychology-info.com)
  2. What Happens In The Brain While Reading? | Iris Reading

20 Ways to Connect with Book Buyers & Sell More Books

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By Books Author and Novelists Denise Turney

woman reading book in bookstore
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Book buyers are a robust team of people. They know what they like and they’re eager to jump into a good story. Check this out. In 2020 alone, print book sales in the United States surpassed 750 million units, according to Statista. Furthermore, Publishers Weekly reports that, during 2020, print book sales increased by 8.2%.1

Can You Spot A Good Thing

A lot of people know a good thing when they see it. And, little beats a very good story. In fact, it may be hard to find another entertainment form that costs so little and offers so much the way that books do.

Even better, Publisher Weekly goes on to say that, “With all major categories posting increases, unit sales of print books rose 8.2% in 2020 over 2019 at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. For the year ended Jan. 2, 2021, units hit 750.9 million, up from 693.7 million the year before.”2

Proof of the deep engagement derived from good story rests in the numbers. Not only did Statista and Publisher’s Weekly see an uptick in print book sales in 2020, they also saw a rise in ebook sales over the same time period. During 2020, in the United States alone, 191 million ebooks were purchased.

Good News For The Book Industry

That’s good news for the book industry. Lockdowns and companies turning to remote work likely had impact on the rising print book sales. That shared, it may take a while longer to determine whether or not book buyers prefer to read their books in print while they are at home. Should this be the case, brick and mortar bookstores and online book retailers might notice a drop in print book sales as larger numbers of people return to the office.

Who knows? Book buyers just might prefer to engage with e-books while they are commuting on trains, subways or while they have their mobile device hooked to a speaker system in their car as they drive to and from work.

Of course, talented authors who are passionate about their work will continue to find ways to identify, locate and connect with people who are passionate about the stories that they write. That’s not all.

Authors who believe in the stories that they write, be those stories fiction or non-fiction, will endeavor to discover new ways to find and engage with new book readers. These are people who have never read a book before. Or they might be people who have never read a novel or the genre of book that the author writes in.

Yet, that doesn’t make finding eager readers and book buyers easy. On top of that, actions that authors, book publishers and book publicists could take to connect with book buyers keep changing. The good news is that many of those book marketing changes are expanding the industry.

Working With Media Outlets

In other words, traditional ways of marketing books still yield good results. For example, authors can still generate book sales if they promote and attend book signings, particularly book signings at large festival and literary events.

And press releases can also gain traction, depending on the topic that the release is tied to. For instance, if an author hooks his press release to a major holiday or current event, the press release could get picked up by a local, regional, national or international media outlet. Authors who work these press release pick-ups the right way could see those media pickups lead to more exposure through radio and television interviews.

Ways To Connect With Book Buyers

However, book marketing actions have expanded beyond traditional book marketing pathways. Below are more traditional as well as newer ways that authors could connect with book buyers:

  1. Build a literary newsletter – Refer to The Book Lover’s Haven to find an example of a literary newsletter. The Book Lover’s Haven is a free literary newsletter that I started designing more than 15 years ago.
  2. Conduct podcast interviews – You can do these from the comfort of your home. Check out podcast directories to find podcast that focus on subjects that you write about in your books.
  3. Interview on traditional offline radio stations.
  4. Reach out to bookstores and schedule in-person book signings.
  5. Apply to have your books carried in Range to see if retailers and military stores will carry your titles.
  6. Attend book festivals and sell your books at these events.
  7. Teach a virtual writing course and spotlight your books at the virtual event.
  8. Do literary newsletter book advertising swaps with other authors.

More Ways To Connect With Book Buyers

  • Start paid advertising at online retailers that run online book ads.
  • Blog and post a link to your books in blog articles that you write.
  • Push out book marketing messages using text messages.
  • Send customized book marketing postcards to members of your target audience.
  • Post flyers about book signings and other book marketing events that you attend.
  • Take our social media ads to promote events that you’re attending.
  • Design an author website.
  • Sit on author panels at virtual and in-person literary events like writer’s conferences.
  • Start a program on an offline radio or television station. Focus on literature and mention your books at the start and end of each show.
  • Run ads on literary podcasts and other podcasts that attract your book’s target audience.
  • Make your books available in two or more formats such as print, e-books and audiobooks.
  • Perform live shows like Facebook live, etc. that center around an event in your book.

Consistency And Persistence Pay Off

There are a myriad of ways that authors, publishers and book publicists can connect with book buyers. A key is to be persistent and consistent. Social media may have proved this well. After all, it’s not enough to reach out to people once or twice a year. Instead, authors benefit when they reach out to book buyers several times a week.

It also helps when authors share valuable content and connect with readers simply to say, “Hello!”

Build Strong Book Buyer Relationships

Therefore, to deepen connections with book buyers, authors should focus on building relationships. Fortunately, several of the aforementioned book marketing actions do help to build relationships. Another good point as it regards book marketing is that readers know when an author has focused on creating a quality story.

A well written story suggest that an author respects her book readers. Whether authors see a well-crafted story as a marketing tool or not, it still stands that a quality product may be the best marketing device there is. So, start from the beginning. Write a good story. Then, start taking smart actions to market your book, finding its readers and turning them into happy book buyers.

How Children’s Books Open Healthy Family Communication

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By Books Author Denise Turney

young girl and boy having fun reading books under tent
Photo by Yaroslav Shuraev on Pexels.com

The best children’s books dig into real-world topics. That wasn’t always the case. Years ago, children’s books were limited to covering light-hearted topics like farm life, welcoming a baby sibling into the family and making new friends at school. Children’s book authors steered clear of deeper social issues. Today’s shift toward tackling more realistic issues could help prepare kids for the real-world. It also opens dialogue for parents and children to engage in healthy family communication.

Children’s Books Tackling Important Life Issues

For example, as a parent, when you ask your child what they honestly feel about school, sharing experiences you may have had with bullying, poor grades or awkwardness, you can open a window of healthy dialogue. Reading children’s books about bullying or a character who’s struggling to fit in at school could also encourage your child to tell you what’s going on with them at school.

You could learn about something that’s been worrying your child simply by discussing a central theme in a children’s book. Even better, to reduce the likelihood that your child might feel as if she’s being probed, you could ask her how she feels about what happened to a character in a novel, lowering your child’s desire to conceal what’s really going on in effort to avoid judgment or embarrassment.

Read out loud to your child and you could do more than encourage literacy. You could introduce your child to characters who help build confidence and celebrate your child’s uniqueness.

Children’s Books That Speak to a Child’s Core

For instance, your child might be drawn to confident, creative children’s book characters like Pippi Longstocking, Matilda Wormwood, Paddington Bear, Arthur, Big Nate or Rosetta Blay. Or they might gobble up books written by authors like Judy Blume, Christopher Paul Curtis, Mildred Taylor, Tetsuko Kuroyanagi or Jacqueline Woodson.

Experiences characters in these and other children’s books have are timeless, making these books great family communication tools. Talk with your child about books he reads and you might learn a lot yourself, a lot about the characters, storylines and a lot about your child.

Living with an aging grandparent, caring for a pet, moving to a new country, dealing with rejection and facing a fear are open conversations you and your child could end up having, simply because you stopped to talk about a book your child was reading.

Children’s Books Relevant Topics

Who knows? You might start turning to children’s books as a way to start a healthy discussion with your child. Fortunately, the best children’s books cover relevant topics such as living in a blended family (with stepparents and stepbrothers and sisters) and living as an only child in a big city. Other relevant topics authors are taking on include:

  • Futuristic landscapes that stimulate imagination, offering entertainment and fun discussion
  • Fantasy stories that probe real life situations. An example is the classic Alice In Wonderland.
  • Competitiveness, self-esteem and confidence cocooned in an exciting adventure story. This may be one of the more popular forms of children’s books.
  • Important social issues that could be happening in a child’s life right now. Examples include books with young characters who are adjusting to their parents divorcing or getting remarried. Immigrating to another country, confronting bullying, accepting one’s body and stepping into leadership roles.

Enriching Reading Practice

As you talk with your child about books she reads, she might feel more valued and included. This could encourage more conversation.

Support reading and healthy family communication by choosing books that entertain and enlighten. Also, let your child choose books that he wants to read on his own.

Another thing – as your child ages, consider presenting him with more text-based stories. And keep learning and growing with your child. After all, that’s what the best children’s books are about – learning, growing and healthy, rewarding relationships, the types of relationships that encourage open healthy dialogue.

How Books Can Shorten Hard Parts of Your Healing Process

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By African American Fiction Author Denise Turney

african american woman using a singing bowl while sitting for healing
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Your healing process is ongoing. It takes courage and work to heal. But that doesn’t mean that your healing process has to be hard. After all, too much struggle and you could become tempted to quit. Face it. There’s no getting around it. In this world, maintaining inner health requires more than thought. If you’re serious about getting and staying well, you’re going to have to take inspired action, including reading books you’re guided to.

Magical Thinking Is Not Part of Your Healing Process

It can’t be overstressed that you have to take smart actions to heal. Magical thinking is not going to save you. Instead, learning, growing and paying attention are healing keys. Reading empowering books can be a shortcut to healing.

Howbeit, reading a lot of books, including popular self-help books, may never be enough if you don’t take the right actions. For example, to gain the most from self-help books, commit to completing exercises and worksheets in those books.

Types of worksheets you might find in self-help books include questionnaires that are used to measure your self-esteem. Others include visualization exercises designed to help you identify your core beliefs. Examples of core beliefs are “life is good”, “life is hard”, “people are kind” and “I succeed when I give my best”.

Books Offering Healing

Surprisingly, some exercises in self-help books are easy to put into practice. Yet, that doesn’t mean that the work won’t dig deep. This happened to me years ago. After experiencing frustration and disappointment, I started reading self-help books. For years, that proved to be rewarding.

At the start of one of the books, the author shared that most people who buy self-help books not only don’t finish reading the books, they also don’t complete the exercises. I took that as a challenge. Before I knew it, I was committed to finishing each self-help book I bought.

More importantly, I was committed to completing each exercise and worksheet in the books. While working on one exercise, I broke down in tears. To this day, it surprises me how much of an impact that simple exercise had on me.

Your Healing Process Exercises in Self-Love

It was an exercise in self-love. Was I ever shocked to learn how hard it was to stand in front of a mirror and repeat “I love you” to myself. Had thought it would be a piece of cake. Actually, at first glance, I thought the sheer mention of the exercise was silly.

By the time I finished that book, I knew I had to work on loving myself, and I did. It was one of the strongest, most clear parts of my healing process.

Reading that book and doing the exercises proved to be an eye opener. Yet, that’s just one way how reading books can help you to heal. Safely looking into the inner workings of a successful person’s life can also prove beneficial.

Committed to Your Healing Process

For instance, if you’re committed to healing from addiction, procrastination, workaholism or a habit that keeps you from living your best life, reading an autobiography or biography about people who have faced the same challenge could keep you from feeling alone or isolated.

Keep reading about how those people overcame the challenge and you might reinforce your belief that you can overcome this challenge too. By way of these lessons, you may regain inner health. You may feel better about yourself and about life in general. The effects can be far reaching.

Although inner health and success (career success, rewarding relationships, etc.) may not appear connected, they are. Additionally, just as poor physical health can drain your energy, weak inner health can suck the life out of your mental stability, hopes and happiness.

Good Inner Health a Hallmark on Your Healing Process

Get into the habit of beating yourself up and you might not notice how your inner health is declining. In fact, make depreciating yourself a habit, and you might start to think that going through the day feeling “humdrum” is normal. If you want to increase your energy and live a joyful life, don’t let this be your path.

Stir up your courage. Ask to receive inner wisdom. Seek out guidance from the Creator. Trust the healing process. Furthermore, take inspired action. As again, it’s not enough to simply want a healing. Additionally, it’s not enough to just think about living with inner health. You have to take the right actions.

Self-Care Priorities

Even more, you might have to take the right actions over and over again. Keep your focus on the outcomes that you want to experience. Stay focused on your fitness goals, relaxation strategies, career successes and the health of your relationships.

Also, keep your self-love and self-care practices top of mind. Reading books, including self-help books and a powerful autobiography or biography can offer motivation. At the start of your healing journey, you might not feel as if you need motivation. But that can change and fast.

Should you feel mentally or emotionally exhausted, a primary source of healing might come through books. Reading about someone else’s courage to overcome offers conviction. This happened to me when I was a kid, trying to make something good of my writing dreams.

More Ways Books Aid Your Healing Process

Learning of other people’s success commitments proved healing for me. Just knowing that someone had surmounted hard odds was energizing. For you, self-help books might provide techniques, strategies and insights that you can use to shift your beliefs away from loss. Other ways that books could help your healing process include:

  • Lower your defenses so you can receive healing
  • Build connection with people dealing with similar challenges
  • Offer clear pathways thru hurt to healing
  • Provide tools to take smart action
  • List treatments and healing organization resources

Ongoing Mental Healing

In turn, you might incorporate healthy, loving actions into your daily routines. There’s so much good that can be found in books. Despite what they look like, books are not just words on pages. After all, books are written by people who’ve faced their own challenges. Effective self help books are authored by people who have spent hours, maybe years, interviewing, surveying and studying children and adults.

Writers of these books have the skill to share medical and scientific results without being judgmental. It’s this approach that could draw you closer, make it easier for you to accept new healing actions. Keep going. Don’t ever give up on yourself. Long term emotional and mental healing could be closer than you think.

13 Easy Ways to Start Selling More Copies of Your Books

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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You’re going to have to free yourself of magical thinking if you want to start selling more copies of your books. Why? Wishing that you’d sell more books won’t get you book sales. It’s not enough just to want to sell your books. You have to take smart actions. This might help. Think of selling books as another artform, of sorts, a measurable artform.

Furthermore, selling books is a mix of online and offline marketing and promotion. That is, unless you plan to only focus on selling books through a single retailer like Kobo, Apple Books or Amazon. If you want to go wide, you’ll want to list your books with a wide range of online and offline bookstores and retailers.

Work with Book Distributors to Start Selling More Copies of Your Books

Another action that you’ll want to take is to list your books with a broad range of book distributors. Ingram, Baker and Taylor, Bella Distribution, Heritage Group Distribution, CBL Distribution, Casemate and Publishers Group West are among dozens of book distributors. If you’re new to the book world, distributors get your books to online and offline bookstores and other retailers.

Because of the role that they fill, book distributors are as close to a must as you may get if you want to go wide and start selling more copies of your books. Therefore, entering into a contract with legitimate book distributors is an early step in the book sales process. Want to keep yourself honest? Create a spreadsheet and track which book distributors you contact, including the date and form of outreach (email, telephone, snail mail, etc.) that you use to introduce your books to distributors. Follow-up with distributors you haven’t heard from.

Before you reach out to book distributors, create a marketing strategy. For example, your marketing strategy might highlight social media marketing efforts, including the number of social media followers your literary accounts have. Other items you could include are scheduled book signings, public speaking events, scheduled book club discussions and the numbers of books you’ve already sold.

Although these aren’t part of the 13 easy ways to be start selling more copies of your books, they are keys to early and ongoing book success. For starters, write a great story. If you’re writing nonfiction, do sufficient research and lay discoveries out in an easy-to-understand way.

Due Your Due Diligence

After all, it’s what’s inside the front and back flaps of your book that readers most want. So, nail the book writing part. To ensure that you pull this off, make sure that an experienced and talented book editor reads your manuscript before you publish it. Another tip is to run a spell and grammar check on your manuscript, even before you send it off to a skilled book editor. Working with an editor who is familiar with the type of book you wrote (mystery/suspense, romance, science fiction, etc.) can yields great results.

Next, create an engaging synopsis, book title and book cover. Don’t skimp on these actions. They will play a direct role in your book marketing efforts and your book sales. Here’s another tip that I want to share with you.

Years of book marketing has taught me the importance of researching book editors, book publicity specialists and book marketing services before a deal is inked. The last experience that you want to have is discovering that you just paid two or three times more than you needed to for editing, cover design or book marketing services. You also don’t want to ink a deal with a specialist who does shoddy work.

Hence, do your due diligence. You’ll thank yourself later.

Easy Ways to Start Selling More Copies of Your Books

And, now for those 13 easy ways to start selling more copies of your books. Steps shared in this article deal with promoting a book that you want to market and sell online and offline.

  1. Create a website that you’re committed to updating at least weekly – Years ago, you could have simply designed an author website to sell books on and walked away, letting the website pull in book buyers. Those days may be over. To keep your author website relevant, update it no less than once a week. Ways that you could do this are to add a daily writing tip or fact about a character from one of your novels to the author website. Or, you could add a quote from one of your characters to your author website. Just commit to updating a data point at your website once a week or more. And, add strong meta data like targeted keywords to your website.
  2. Start a book blog – At this blog, you could write about book conferences, book festivals and book signings that you’ve recently attended or that you’re planning to attend. You could also share insights that are related to your latest book. Another step that you could take is to post feature interviews with other writers at your blog. As with your author website, the point is to keep the blog updated. In fact, you could link your blog to your author website and keep both updated with this one easy step. That’s what I do at chistell.com. This single, easy step pulls in thousands of potential book buyers a week at chistell.com.

Additional Ways to Start Selling More Copies of Your Books

  1. Send postcards and direct mail to bookstore buyers – Even further, build relationships with bookstore buyers. These relationships can make it easier for you to get your new books into bookstores months from now. To keep these relationships healthy, consider sending book buyers (including library book buyers) holiday greetings.
  2. Reach out to military exchanges through organizations like RangeMe to see if you can sell your books at military stores.
  3. Teach a course at a local college. Ask if you can sell and sign your books at the end of the course.
  4. Schedule and conduct podcast and radio interviews – Yet don’t just conduct interviews. Make sure that you interview on podcasts and radio stations that pull in your book’s target audience.
  5. Design a literary newsletter – Building a newsletter can help you to develop your own mailing list. Consider adding a free newsletter subscription form to your author website. Items to include in your literary newsletter are diverse, ranging from feature author interviews to book reviews to upcoming book events to discounts to holiday messages. Sign up for The Book Lover’s Haven to get a feel for more of what you could do with a literary newsletter.
  6. Attend book events – It’s true. You could sell thousands of copies of your books online, without leaving home. However, it’s also true that getting outside and attending book events is a great way to introduce your books to new readers. In fact, you could sell dozens of books at book conferences, book fairs and festivals.

Even More Ways to Gain Book Sales

  1. Use Sign-Up Sheets – When you attend book events, bring sign-up sheets with you. Let people know what you’re using the sheets for. As an example, you could use a sign-up sheet to grow your literary newsletter subscriber list. You could also use a sign-up sheet to email in-person event attendees information about your books, including how to order copies of your e-books.
  2. Feature your books on book promotion websites. Again, do your due diligence before you pay for services at book promotion websites.
  3. Do newsletter cross-promotions with other authors whose books are in the same genre as your books.
  4. Newsletter book market services – Pay for newsletter book marketing services. Make sure that you work with newsletters that have a high open-rate. It may not do you much good to pay for an ad in a newsletter that boast 10,000 subscribers but only has a 3% open rate. Also, work with services that have tapped into your book’s target audience.
  5. Zone in on Social Media – Just 10 to 15 minutes a day on social media can increase your book sales. Test different social media sites to discover which sites generate the best return for your books. Also, pay attention to what days of the week and times of the day are best to post book marketing material. Examples of this material are book covers, book reviews and book quotes.

Amazon Ads and Selling Books

Other actions that you could take to start selling books are to add your book cover, book title and author website URL to your email signature line. Definitely ask family and friends to tell people they know about your books. Reaching out to school book buyers is another way that you could generate book sales.

If you’re promoting a book that sells on Amazon, consider taking out Amazon ads, namely sponsored product ads. You could also build an Amazon store to introduce your entire line of books to readers. But don’t just start Amazon ads. Budget for the ads. Study relevant keywords. Be patient during this process, as this isn’t a quick process. Take your time and find dozens of relevant keywords. You also might find success with relevant Amazon ad categories.

Stay Motivated

It could take one to three weeks to start seeing results from your ads. So, keep your daily spend low or no more than $5 a day when you start working with ads. Download and review monthly reports until you start to notice which keywords, categories and similar products are working to bring in book sales.

Above all, don’t be dreamy about this. In fact, don’t be dreamy about any part of the book marketing process. It’s work. There’s nothing magical about it. Before long, you’ll witness the link between your efforts and the results that you’re seeing. Should a step not yield good results, consider altering a part of the action or replacing the action (in-store book signings, discussion board link shares, etc.) with another action.

Keep at it. There are readers waiting to read great books!

11 Great Things to Love About The 1980s

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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There are so many things to love about the 1980s. It’s a sweet time gone by, but just what is it about the past that makes life seem simpler? Ask your parents to revisit the past and they might wind the conversation down with a statement like, “Life was so much better back then.” Well, of course, it would seem that way.

Challenges, uncertainties and setbacks from that time have been watered down or erased by the mind. Only the most rewarding, joyous, loving and sweetest memories pop up when you revisit the past.

Money, Retirement, Rents and More

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Do that and any time period could seem like the best time in history. The one decade when that just might be different is the 1980s. Vibe during the 1980s was more laid back. And, children actually played outside in the 1980s. There wasn’t a fear of children feeling inadequate because they didn’t have as many followers or likes as their peers. Should a fight break out, those fights often involved no more than fists – not that fighting is ever good.

But, parents didn’t have to worry that their kids might be shot at school the way that school shootings have become more common today. Even more, the 1980s were a time when you could work toward a pension. Put in 30 years with the same company and you could retire with a pension, potentially living comfortably off your pension and a small part-time job. Or – depending on what you earned over your career, the pension could afford you a comfortable retirement all by itself.

According to CNN Money, “The percentage of workers in the private sector whose only retirement account is a defined benefit pension plan is now 4%, down from 60% in the early 1980s.” That was a good path to a happy retirement. Of course, people living in the 1980s may not have realized how good things were.

News, Music and Videos

For example, rent was lower in the 1980s. Check out what Apartment List shares about 1980s rent. Median rent during the 1980s — and this rent is adjusted to 2014 dollars – was below $700 a month. That’s median rent across the United States. Some parts of the United States saw rents that were below $500 a month. Add in the “real” possibility of a pension and the 1980s might start looking even better.

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CNN was just launching (it started June 1, 1980), so people hadn’t yet become addicted to watching the news day and night. Cable television played a whole lot of music videos. Back then, it wasn’t enough for a song to have solid lyrics and a great sound, artists had to tell a visual story with their songs. And it’s this that brings us to the list of 11 great things to love about the 1980s. Ready? Let’s go!

  • Music – Whitney Houston, Cyndi Lauper, New Kids On The Block, Prince, New Edition, Run DMC, Madonna, Guns N Roses, Fleetwood Mac, Alanis Morissette and U2 are just a few of the many artists who produced great work during the 1980s. Music was fun, putting out hits like “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”, “I Want To Dance With Somebody”, “I’ve Had The Time Of My Life”, “Let’s Groove” and “Walking On Sunshine”.

Great Things To Love About The 1980s

  • Working Out – Who doesn’t remember those gym memberships? Looking back, it seems like large public gyms took off during the 1980s. You could get a monthly gym membership for less than $20. Fitness instructors taught dance and aerobics. Remember? Jane Fonda came out with hit aerobics videos. And, who can forget those leotards, headbands and thick roll-down socks.
  • Ice Cream Truck – The 1980s were a time to start saying “so long” to the ice cream truck. Not sure if this is a great thing, but if you loved running out to the ice cream truck, the 1980s may have been your last chance to enjoy this neighborhood treat.
  • Mobile Entertainment – Okay. Admittedly, this equipment is not as robust and easy to carry in your pocket as – say – an iPhone or even an iPad. But, mobile equipment from the 1980s was a start to what you can enjoy today. Rewind the clock, and you’d have boom boxes for music, hand-held cassette players, video recorders and DVD machines. Blockbuster was the joint back then.
  • Waterbeds – At its top end, the waterbed market comprised 20% of the mattress market. People who owned a waterbed often talked about how comfortable and relaxing the beds were. There was just that one downside. Every now and then, a waterbed would burst, spilling water all over the floor.

More Great Things To Love About The 1980s

  • Hairstyles – Can you think of a time when there were more popular hairstyles? There was the fade, jheri curl (don’t miss that one), mullet, cornrows, buzz cut, mohawk and big curls. You could do nearly anything with your hair and look cool. In fact, it was almost as if nothing was off limits as long as you were authentic and rocked a style that highlighted your personality.
  • Movies – Gotta start with Al Pacino in Scarface. Didn’t you catch that movie back in the 1980s? The first Batman came out in the 1980s. Stand By Me, Dead Poets Society, The Color Purple, Rain Man, The Untouchables, Flash Dance and Fatal Attraction are a few other hit movies from the great 1980s. What were your favorite movies from the 1980s? Some of these movies are classics today.
  • Games – Let’s just start with Pac-Man. I knew people who spent their entire check playing this game. You could walk to a community recreation center or an arcade and play one electronic game after the next. Later, there was Rubik’s Cube, Tetris, Ms. Pac-Man, Centipede, Zelda, Star Wars, Donkey Kong and Super Mario.

So Many Great Things To Love About The 1980s

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  • Cabbage Patch Dolls – Couldn’t leave this one out. I worked at a retail store in the 1980s and couldn’t believe how people actually fought over Cabbage Patch dolls. They were immensely popular. People collected the dolls. Kids loved to play with them, and then, just-like-that, it’s as if they went away. But they were so popular during the 1980s.
  • Family Meals – Back then, families at delicious homecooked meals around the kitchen table.
  • Books – You didn’t think I was going to leave this one off, did you? I was less than 10 years away from publishing my first novel – Portia – in the 1980s. Popular 1980s books included The Joy Luck Club, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Color Purple, Beloved, Patriot Games, The House On Mango Street, Lonesome Dove, The Bonfire Of The Vanities, Matilda, Sister Outsider and This Boy’s Life.

What are your favorite things about the 1980s? Or is that a time that is so far back to you, it’s hard for you to think of anything that was cool then? Fortunately, the great music, movies and books are still around.

Speaking of books, Love Pour Over Me is a book that takes place during the great 1980s. You’ll get the music, movies, intrigue and fun from the 1980s while reading this romantic suspense novel. Treat yourself! The 1980s was such a great time!

Books That Help You Gain Deeper Relationship Connections

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl and A Belle In Brooklyn by Demetria Lucas are books that explore what it takes to gain deeper relationship connections. Among the other books that take this focus there’s The Cinderella Complex by Colette Dowling and The Greatest Salesman In The World by Og Mandino. Whether taking a deeper examination of the human mind, relationship beliefs, the single life or marriage, each of these books invites readers to accept truths that they may have spent years turning away from.

Discovering Books to Gain Deeper Relationship Connections

It’s this acceptance that encourages readers to do the work to cultivate deeper relationships. Yet, as much value as good books offer, it’s not always easy to find a relationship path that’s made clear in a book. Why? A book that focuses on a relationship path isn’t always a bestseller. In fact, these books might be hidden at the bottom of a discount books rack.

Or they might be at the back of a bookstore in the faraway reference section. The good news is that discovering books that offer techniques that help you gain deeper relationship connections may be destined to happen, especially if you’re an avid book reader.

If you’re not up for either of those ways, here are more, proven ways to start discovering books, including fiction, that include the material you need to gain deeper relationship connections. To begin, check out local book clubs that discuss nonfiction and fiction books that explore deep life meanings.

Book Clubs and The Local Library

It shouldn’t take long. A good place to start is your local library. Local bookstores host book club meetings too. Ask a librarian or bookstore clerk if book clubs meet at their facility. Find out the name of the book club.

The name of the book club might reveal the types of books that the club reads. If not, ask the librarian or bookstore clerk if she has details on the book club. At the least, get the contact information of the book club president. Contact the president and find out the titles of the last five to six books that the club has read.

You’ll soon know if this is a book club that discusses books that explore the science of the mind and relationships. Even if the books are fiction, they may be so well researched that they read and feel like nonfiction, offering real-life relationship benefits.

Another Path to Discovering Good Relationship Books

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Another path to discovering books that share practical techniques you could use to gain deeper relationship connections is to read at a slower pace. For example, while reading nonfiction books on the brain or the role that emotions play in relationships, consider reading one chapter a day. Give yourself time to process what you read.

Actually, allow yourself to be impacted by what you read. Even more, while you’re taking your time reading these books, highlight texts that resonate with you.

What To Highlight While Working to Gain Deeper Relationship Connections

And yes. It’s sort of like being back in school. But if you recall school, you know how highlighting text can strengthen memory and make parts of a book jump out that much more for you. Don’t be surprised if you have dreams that are related to what you read and highlight. Pay attention to these dreams. They could clue you in on changes that you want to take to gain deeper relationship connections.

This includes romantic relationships and non-romantic relationships. It’s good. Because, when you think about it, non-romantic relationships make up the bulk of your relationships. For this reason, a book that attempts to show you how to develop a deep relationship should show you how to cultivate deeper friendships.

More ways to find these books is to join online Meetup book groups. As a tip, you may get more from attending in-person book club meetings. It’s during in-person book club meetings that you can start to build quality relationships with other book lovers. Talk about a way to learn how to sharpen communication skills and gain deeper relationship connections.

Take a Deeper Dive

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Check out these ways to find books that offer solutions to help you gain deeper relationship connections. None of these ways take a lot of time. What can certainly help is a strong desire to learn, grow, awaken and actually enjoy deeper relationships.

  • Ask friends to share details on good relationship, psychology or human development books that they are aware of
  • In a similar approach, join social media book groups. Goodreads, Poets & Writers, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble and Google Books are good starting places. You’re bound to learn about books that focus on relationship development if you’re active in literary groups.
  • Attend book festivals. You can find these festivals online and in-person. Additionally, attending book festivals is like diving into a literary gold mine.
  • Follow your favorite authors at sites like AALBC.com, Book Bub, Amazon and Barnes & Noble. When these favorite authors release a new book, you can be one of the first people notified about the new titles.

Find a Path Toward Deeper Relationship Connections

For nonfiction, a good way to find a book that helps readers gain deeper relationship connections is to check the reference section at the back of the last relationship book you read. Nonfiction books lean on a lot of research, including surveys, the results of laboratory work, interviews and individual and group studies, all which may be listed in the book’s reference section.

However, the true test of a book’s impact is the changes that you experience while you’re actually reading a book. A good book will guide you toward positive, long-term relationship changes. Here’s another benefit. Unless you loan your books out, you can return to good books for years, putting relationship insights, techniques and advice at your fingertips.