Blank Page to Best Seller

Biz Buzz Time Blocking For You In this week's Biz Buzz we talk about time blocking. Whether you are an author or a business owner (or BOTH!) the way you manage your time is crucial! We talk about one way to better control your calendar: Time Blocking.  CaZ has worked on a brand-new sprint course releasing in the coming days where she teaches you all you need to know to begin time blocking. This we...

Biz Buzz The Resurgence of Indie Bookstores Where do you enjoy buying your books? Recently there has been a resurgence in the number of indie bookstores. Why are these bookstores making a resurgence? We talk all about the rise in indie bookstores, why they are so important for local communities, and how indie authors can partner with bookstores to showcase each other.  Timestamps Biz Buzz Segment:...

Biz Buzz What's happening with the nonfiction paperbacks? We talk about an article Peter read recently about the changing times of the nonfiction format, specifically the nonfiction paperback. The industry is always changing so what are we seeing from the big publishers and what ways can indie and self-published authors take advantage of the changing formats?  Timestamps Biz Buzz Segment: What's h...

Biz Buzz An Intro to The Author's Voice Short Courses We just released a brand-new short course which goes through the full checklist you need to upload a book into a printing service. As we release this new course, we did so on our brand new store which you can see all of our short courses, our full-certification courses, and few other selections like our Friend of the Show subscription.  We talk...

Biz Buzz How To Prepare Your Book For Design Once your book is all written, you've sent it off for the edit and proofread, and polished it as much as you can, it's time to set the book for design. But what does that mean? Who do you work with? How does you make sure your document is ready?  We talk all about the interior layout in this week's segment and touch on everything involved in the process...

Biz Buzz FROM THE VAULT - Summer Beach Reads This week's episode is everything you ever wanted to know about summer beach reads!  June is the start of summer which means vacation season. It seems like every bookseller, magazine, or any one related to the publishing industry are release their best summer beach reads list. But have you every wondered what a summer beach read is? Are you writing a be...

Biz Buzz How You Can Turn Your Book into a Film Since the beginning of film, filmmakers have turned stories found in books, magazines, and other print formats into film adaptions for the big screen and television. Today, not much has changed!  So how do you take your book and turn it into a film or television series?  We talk about the process you might take to pitch your story, who you would talk...

Biz Buzz Creating Our Mt. Rushmore of Authors In this week's Biz Buzz, we celebrate our 100th episode with a monumental discussion! We each create a Mt. Rushmore of authors. What are the criteria? Who do we place on our own monuments? What authors do we have in common? Whether you have listened to all 100 episodes or this is your first, we hope you enjoy this week's show. If you have listened to u...

Biz Buzz Celebrating Mother's Day We celebrate Mother's Day this week with a fun discussion about our favorite memories of reading or books with our mothers! What was each of our mother's favorite genres? Who did homework at the same time as their mother? What was the Christmas present of choice?  We celebrate our mom's and our love of books in this week's show.  Timestamps Biz Buzz Segment:  Cele...

Biz Buzz What Are the Classics and Do We Need to Read Them? This week, we ask the question, do we need to read the classics? As people who work inside the publishing industry do we need to know the classics and if so, why? As authors, editors, and other professionals inside the industry, having a base level of knowledge in the classic pieces of literature gives us the ability to have clear and eas...

Biz Buzz What Are Distributors and Do I Need One? There is one area of the publishing industry authors do not normally interact with: distribution! But what are book distributors, who do they normally work with, and do authors actually use them? Most independent authors would be surprised to know who their book distributor is. Even if you are self-published your book has a distributor, you just ma...

Biz Buzz How Readers AND Authors Can Support Local Bookstores! They say that bookstores are dying. That's not really true and whether you are a reader, an author, or a publisher you can help your local bookstore by buying books online. We discuss the site bookshop.org in this week's Biz Buzz segment. It's not always possible to visit your local bookstore and sometimes you want to support more than...

Biz Buzz What Are My Self-Publishing Options? There are many options authors have to self-publish their book. We begin by defining the term self-publishing and then go into more details about some of the options authors have to self-publish. We cover some of the major players like Amazon, IngramSpark, and Draft2Digital but we mention a few newer options as well. This is by no means an exhaustive l...

Biz Buzz Celebrating International Children's Book Day Happy International Children's Book Day to you! Coming up on April 2, ICBD is a celebration of all things children's books. In this week's Biz Buzz segment, we dive a little deeper into the celebration like why it's on April 2, who puts the celebration together, and how we can all celebrate this day. Plus, we talk a little about the book award...

Biz Buzz What Is Poetizer?  In this week's segment, we review the Poetizer platform where poets can share their poems in a social media platform geared specifically towards poetry. Plus, the platform offers poets a way to create and publish a book using the poems they create and share on the platform.  We look at the platform from our experience as publishing professionals and share what we learne...

Biz Buzz Ghost Categories On Amazon  What is a ghost category and why should you stay away from them? Amazon rarely makes it easy for us to understand the inner workings of the website. In this week's Biz Buzz segment we talk about one of the confusing parts of Amazon's website - the ghost category. When a publisher puts a book on sale, they have the option to select three categories from a prescr...

Biz Buzz The Death of the Mass Market Paperback Recently, news came out announcing the death of a popular book format - the mass market paperback. At the end of 2025, the largest distributor of the mass market paperback disclosed they are no longer distributing them to retailers.  So what is a mass market paperback and why are we sad to see them go?  We look at the life of the mass market book and...

Biz Buzz What does it mean to have won a book award? Who gives these awards? And how can you apply? We take a closer look at the book award industry to help authors (and publishing professionals!) better understand how book awards fit into the publishing industry.  We look into some of the more well know awards, discuss what these awards recognize, and look at how authors or their publisher put th...

Romance Is In The Air! This week we celebrate Valentine's Day by talking about the romance genre! Everyone has fallen in love with romance so we talk about the effects this has on the genre specifically and the industry as a whole.  If you have fallen in love with the Blank Page to Best Seller podcast, you can support us by becoming a Friend of the Show. Link down below and in the show! Biz Buzz H...

Readers Can Now Ask Your Book A Question In what surprises no one, Amazon released a new feature on some Kindle apps that allows readers to ask a book a question with a response from an AI chat bot.  Biz Buzz Within the last month or so, Amazon has released a new product feature in some Kindle apps called Ask This Book. So we ask each other what the Ask This Book feature is and why some authors an...

Changing how DRM works with Amazon e-books Amazon is always changing and evolving and we're staying updated with all those changes so you don't have to. In the latest big change, Amazon is changing how authors work with DRM in their e-books. We talk about all fo that and more in this week's Biz Buzz segment.  Biz Buzz There is one BIG massive change coming soon to Amazon that will effect both auth...

Kicking Off The New Year! This week, we are kicking off the new year with a double episode! We're looking back at what we accomplished in the year 2025 and also looking forward to what is coming up in the new year of 2026. From some great celebrations like our 2 year anniversary of the show to our future endeavors that we'll be sharing more about in the future, we've been busy helping authors and...

Biz Buzz Memories of Our First Clients The three of us, Peter, Colleen, and CaZ look back at some of our first clients and how e each got into the industry. We cover each of our starts, how we have maneuvered through an ever-changing industry, and how the three of us came to meet.  Timestamps Biz Buzz: Memories of Our First Clients (4:11) The Author's Voice Links  Become a Friend of The Show! Supp...

All about BookBub This week we begin with a quick overview of our upcoming holiday schedule. We're planning on having a normal schedule until the week of Christmas where we'll release our latest episode of the year on December 23. We're planning to take the next week off and then hop back into the swing of things beginning January 6, 2026(!).  In our Biz Buzz segment this week Peter is joined by C...

Protecting Your Book with Copyright What does it mean to have copyright protection? Copyright protection helps authors (and other creatives and businesses) protect their creations from other people stealing their work. We talk about the true ways authors need to copyright their book to guarantee they can receive the proper protections for their book no and in the future. Biz Buzz Segment What Is C...