Derek Haines

Derek is an experienced English teacher, writer, and author with a passion for grammar, creative writing, and all forms of publishing. He also enjoys experimenting with technology and tools for writers.

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The grammar police

The Grammar Police Are Carefully Watching Every Word You Write

The Grammar Police are around online in their thousands nowadays. They are ever watchful and incredibly quick on the draw. Whenever the tiniest grammatical error, typo, or erroneous spelling mistake hits the ether of the Internet, they are onto it. And in a flash. So fast, I might forget about the tedious task of proofreading…

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Ten Common Punctuation Mistakes

Ten Common Punctuation Mistakes You Need to Avoid Making

Accuracy is vital in producing good writing, but what about common punctuation mistakes? Basic grammar and spelling mistakes weaken any text, so you always need to correct them. However, it is easy to overlook the most common punctuation mistakes if you are not careful. Sometimes laziness can create punctuation errors, so you need to check…

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KDP Delivery Costs Can Cut Ebook Royalties

KDP Downloads Charge Reduces Your Kindle Ebook Royalties

If you publish with Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), do you know the royalty structure for Kindle ebooks? A KDP downloads charge is always deducted from your royalty. When a reader buys one of your Kindle ebooks, Amazon deducts a small amount from your royalties for delivery. You probably never noticed, but there is a royalty…

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9 Book Promotion Ideas That Do Not Work

9 Book Promotion Ideas That Will Fail To Get Book Sales

Some new authors stretch the reasonable boundaries of book promotion ideas and wonder why they have trouble selling books. Here is a short listing of nine very annoying methods that I have received and experienced from newly published authors. They are, of course, desperate to sell their books, but they will all fail very badly.…

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Learn How To Install A Wordpress Sandbox

How To Use A WordPress Sandbox To Safely Test Drive Your Site

Many writers now use a self-hosted WordPress blog to earn extra income from content marketing, books, and advertising. A WordPress sandbox is the best way to protect your income. WordPress is a powerful blogging platform. But the vast number of useful features, themes, and plugins, require good website management skills and basic security knowledge to…

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My Books Are Not Selling

My Book Isn’t Selling On Amazon – 10 Actions You Can Take

My books aren’t selling on Amazon! With so many books now published on Amazon, the competition to attract book buyers is fierce. There are countless sources of advice and marketing tricks on how to sell ebooks and books online on Amazon. However, the two most important factors are having a great book and attracting positive…

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