Tag: writing

Trade Talk: New Indie Book Bestseller Lists

January 14, 2026
Bookshelf

Publisher’s Weekly has announced that “The Independent Publishers Caucus, a collective of 117 small and independent publishers, has announced the launch of a new weekly bestseller list in partnership with the American Booksellers Association, creating what organizers say is the first national ranking focused exclusively on independent press titles sold at independent bookstores…Dubbed the Independent Press Top 40” (find the rest of PW’s article here).

Regularly publicizing a ranking of independent press titles (“indie books”) sold at independent bookstores is a great idea. This promotes small businesses. It provides attention for authors whose voices might not otherwise be getting large-scale public notice – making it more possible for readers to discover new-to-them authors.

A couple of examples demonstrate the value of this “Independent Press Top 40” list.

  • I personally buy several books per year from several niche publishers in a specific industry whose books (topics) I value. I happen to be “in the know” about the particular market for which these book publishers provide titles, so I know to follow these publishers. With that said, I know people who would likely want to read the same types of books I’m reading, but who aren’t likely familiar with the publishers whose websites I visit regularly. Any mechanism that supports “get out the word” for such indie publishers is a win-win-win-win for publishers, authors, readers, and the sustainability of “shop local” business practices.
  • My hometown (Bellingham, Washington) – like many communities – has a beloved local bookstore. Village Books and Paper Dreams is a valued hub in the community. This new weekly national “Independent Press Top 40” ranking is another way to keep such small bookstores in the public eye – thereby supporting great businesses.

While we’re talking indie booksellers, I’m happy to plug my two favorite online booksellers:

  • Hamilton Books. Based in Connecticut, Hamilton Books is based in Connecticut, USA and has been around since 1969. They specialize in selling discounted books to U.S. customers. I love Hamilton Books. They sell books via their website and a print magazine. I discovered them more than twenty years ago when they somehow got my name and mailing address; they sent me one of their magazines listing a sampling of their book inventory. It was actually their magazine that I fell in love with – their listing of quirky and off-the-wall titles of available books. I started buying from them for the purpose of staying on their mailing list (this is a sentence that every marketer wants to read!). Reading their lists of “off-the-wall titles” – such as “off the beaten track” historical books and books on political and religious conspiracy theories from “every end the political and religious spectrums” – literally became Friday night entertainment for me.
  • Thrift Books (their marketing angles: “gift more, spend less” and “read more, spend less”). This Washington State-based bookseller calls themself “the largest online independent used book seller. A friend told me about them last spring; I have already purchased enough books to achieve their highest reader/purchaser tier of “Literati Elite.” Their “Reading Rewards” program is simple yet fun – the more you buy, the more book-buying benefits you get….. Their membership tier program seems to be tied into our digital age approach to tapping dopamine receptors – our brains get a “dopamine high” every time we “like” or “achieve” something via a click-of-the-mouse….. Of course, book lovers like joining “Literati Elite” status……

I encourage you to click on this weekly Independent Press Top 40 and add to however you track websites that you visit regularly (add it to your browser faves, whatever). You just might find your next great read!

Kim Burkhardt provides writing services – including ghostwriting, “corporate storytelling,” articles, how-to manuals, and editing – at Burkhardt Writing Services. Contact us about your wordsmithing and storytelling needs.

The written word: how we present ourselves matters

December 30, 2025
leather bound book
Book with leather cover

Why work with a contract writer-for-hire?

Most of us learn during high school or college that how we dress for a job interview can impact whether we get the job.  How we present ourselves matters. “Dress for success.”

Several years ago, I was dealing with a serious illness and was getting bounced from one medical specialist to the next (appointments initially started with “We don’t know what medical condition you have” and then moved into “We don’t know how to treat this”).    I considered that appearance matters; I took to dressing well for medical appointments to be taken seriously (i.e., “This woman looks important – we need to put in a serious effort to resolve her medical issue.”).   (Side note: it was my cat’s veterinarian who finally came up with a treatment plan. There was no way to see that coming!)

How we present ourselves on paper also matters.  People judge us via the written word just as much as they judge us by how we dress.  How many times have you read something and wondered, “What was that person trying to say?”  Or, “Was that person asleep in their high school writing class?”  Likewise, readers also judge you by how you present yourself on paper.  Your ability to develop and artfully articulate ideas on paper – or not! – makes an impression.  Most people want the impression they convey to be positive.   “Write for success.”

Consider an example of how people present themselves on paper.   During an earlier stage of my life, I would wonder how famously busy people – politicians, actors, etc. – found time to write their memoirs.  Today, there’s an increasing willingness for well-known people to acknowledge using ghostwriters, researchers, editors, etc. for their memoirs.    Just this year, my mother gave me Bill Gate’s memoir – Source Code /> My Beginnings (published in 2025) – as a Christmas gift.  Bill openly acknowledges in his book – by name – the wordsmiths, researchers, editors, friends and relatives, former teachers, etc. who helped bring his memoir to print.  He only has so many hours in a day and writing may or may not “be his thing” – yet, he wanted his memoir to be presented well.    He was variously present during the memoir’s development process – his “writing support team” helped turn his concept of a published memoir into a book worth sending to a publisher and sharing with the public.

Everyone can consider that how we – including you – present ourselves on paper matters.

Those of us who write professionally know how to present you – and your ideas – successfully.   Working with a professional writer means that you can spend your time and energy “doing what you do” while being confident that we writers will competently present your written ideas “for success.”  If you want your ideas to be taken seriously, present them in way that will be taken seriously.  How you present yourself and your ideas matters.  

“Yes, but I don’t have Bill Gates’ budget.”  Yes, well….. Your ideas will be taken seriously if they are presented in a manner that people take seriously.   Present for success.

Kim Burkhardt provides writing services – including ghostwriting, “corporate storytelling,” articles, how-to manuals, and editing – at Burkhardt Writing Services. Contact us about your wordsmithing and storytelling needs.

Writer reflection: could you write this photo?

December 20, 2025
Seattle skyline at night
Seattle Skyline

Seattle has joined the ranks of high-traffic-congestion cities.

When I need to drive anywhere, I look for opportunities to go at times when traffic is likely to be less congested. Last fall, for example, I was commuting to a job that had some flexibility in terms of start times. So, I would leave home at about 6:45 am.

Leaving home at 6:45 am shares something in common with being a writer. Opportunities.

Nearly every situation has some kind of opportunity embedded within it. It’s up to us to find it.

In the case of an early morning commute – before daylight – I spotted the opportunity to take a night-time photo of the Seattle skyline – complete with the iconic Space Needle and Lake Union. People like this photo.

As writers, our writing is likewise well received when we bring appreciable observations to the written page. It is up to us to make insightful observations and find interesting ways to bring them to print.

I was able to bring viewers the photo above by moving beyond the snap-and-shoot mechanics of photography. I had learned what constitutes a good photo – identifying a visually interesting scene and learning how to frame it well with a camera’s lens. I did back flips – of sorts – to find a place to safely pull over to take this photo.

Writing – like photography – “comes to light” when we move beyond basic writing mechanics: “I saw downtown Seattle at night. You would find the scene beautiful if you saw it.” Rather, “Downtown Seattle’s skyline quite literally lights up at night. Anyone who finds themself driving southbound on I-5 at night takes in the collective beauty of hilltop business district towers and shoreline buildings left alight to ward off would-be intruders. Those who have read Katherine Kurtz’s novel St. Patrick’s Gargoyle can – when seeing downtown Seattle’s night time skyline – imagine a monthly gargoyle conclave in Seattle to protect the city equivalent to Dublin’s gargoyle conclaves. Quite striking.” (A personal aside that I would happily work in to a longer article with an opportunity for individual reflection: Dublin is located in the Emerald Isle, while Seattle is the Emerald City…. I had a memorable flight in 2018 in which I watched the sun rise in Dublin and set in Seattle….).

Being a writer is clearly more than mechanically stringing together words. Writing involves observation about the world around us, an understanding of what people want or need to think about, and an ability to bring all of that to the page in readable language. For each type of written publication, there are also genre-specific writing considerations – creativity is needed when writing novels, an ability to be factual and insightful is needed for business publications, an ability to be factually descriptive is necessary when writing how-to manuals, etc.

Kim Burkhardt provides writing services – including ghostwriting, “corporate storytelling,” articles, how-to manuals, and editing – at Burkhardt Writing Services. Contact us about your wordsmithing and storytelling needs.

Writer’s approaches to developing written content

December 16, 2025

Last week, the Textbook & Academic Authors Association published a helpful blog post directed at new (or newish) writers about dealing with a blank screen. The blog post is worth reading.

If you are a writer, what is your writing methodology?

I have several approaches to putting words to paper. Each has a time and place:

  • When I wrote my first book, Competitive Intelligence Workbook (2001), I was seeking a way to “make a name for myself” as a market research consultant. I scanned the existing literature about competitive intelligence to identify what type of book hadn’t been written. I identified that there was no book about how to organize and present competitive intelligence data. So, I wrote such a book. I thought through what types of competitor data needs to be collected by competitive intelligence (CI) professionals and created topical charts that could be populated as data is collected with the end goal of analyzing and presenting data as it is collected. The books’ purpose dictated the writing process. The book served a need; therefore, I made a profit on that book.
  • In another instance, I found a distant cousin who had been doing family genealogy for twenty years. He hadn’t organized the data he had collected into a centralized format. When relatives would ask him for family history data, he would – in each case – share information on a piece-by-piece basis. I wanted to save him time and effort of continuing to repeat this process with additional relatives, so I started organizing the data he had collected into a single repository. As I worked through this process, I saw the opportunity to take linear, timeline data and incorporate a narrative discussion into the mix. “Here’s why our ancestors were living in this location during X time period.” “This relative was able to move from job to job during the 1860’s because Ireland’s new railroad system was emerging to allow easier travel” (this was before automobiles). As I contacted other relatives, they shared family stories, old photographs, historical family letters that had been kept – all of this was added to “bring the family history to life” in a genealogy book that is now appreciated in the homes of numerous relatives.
  • Sometimes, I write creatively – inserting ideas into a document as the creative process unfolds. In these cases, I write in a rather free-style approach and then find ways to make all of the various ideas readable in a collective document.
  • When I write something short – such as an email – I think about what the recipient needs to know and how I can present the information succinctly and in a readable manner. I want to hold their attention. I focus on sharing (or requesting) information – get to the point and keep it simple. When I write an article, I consider how to write informatively and to-the-point using a style that is engaging, and authoritative.

I always think about the reader when I write. What does the reader likely to already know about a topic? What does the reader need to know (that’s what I need to write!)? What writing format and style is going to hold the reader’s attention? A facts-and-figures document is going to be written very differently than a novel or a humorous anecdote for a news story. Always: “Is what I’m writing readable? Why and how? How can I improve this document?” Making text readable is the responsibility of the writer – it’s not the job of the reader to figure out what the writer meant!

Kim Burkhardt provides writing services – including ghostwriting, “corporate storytelling,” articles, how-to manuals, and editing – at Burkhardt Writing Services. Contact us about your wordsmithing and storytelling needs.

In the news: growing need for “corporate storytellers”

December 15, 2025

In our world’s changing media, social media, and overall communications landscape, companies are seeking effective ways to communicate meaningfully with their customers and communities. More and more, companies are hiring “corporate storytellers” – those of us who present companies via “the written word” on all the mediums that are part of “corporate branding.”

Check out the Wall Street Journal’s December 12, 2025 article on the growing need for “corporate storytellers” (by the way, WSJ came up with a great “corporate campfire” image for the story!).

Kim Burkhardt provides writing services – including “corporate storytelling” – at Burkhardt Writing Services. Contact us about your wordsmithing and storytelling needs.

Author reflection: writing ancestor’s biographies

December 12, 2025
Book: Harriet Susannah Ellis
Biography: Harriet Susannah Ellis

Harriet Susannah Ellis was born on February 5, 1863 in Riverstown, County Sligo, Ireland.

Her oldest surviving son – my Irish-born great-grandfather – lived until I was thirteen. I have fond memories of him – including the time when he fell asleep at my birthday party (I was turning eight) and the party stopped so that the children in attendance could watch him snore with an Irish brogue. When I was three or four, he carried me around his yard in a wheelbarrow – great fun for a young child. I still buy deep purple pansies because he had deep purple pansies in his yard when I was a child.

When I was growing up, we heard stories about my great-grandfather’s childhood in rural Ireland (County Wicklow). We heard about his blind father (I, in turn, was raised by my blind mother). We heard about his paternal uncles and paternal grandfather who were doctors (in 2018, I visited Trinity College Dublin where they did their medical degrees in the 1800’s. It gave me chills to realize they had walked the same hallways when I walked through the campus’s historical library).

Yet, I realized in 2013 that I knew nothing about my great-grandfather’s mother. Surely she had existed, confirmed by the fact that she had children whose lives I knew about. I had never heard any mention of her. I didn’t even know her name.

Because we live today in a digital age, I was able to go online in search of information about my great-grandfather’s mother. Within a fairly short time, online genealogical research led me to her name. Harriet Ellis. Specifically, Harriet Susannah Ellis. Beyond that, I didn’t find much. In January, 2014, I decided to do a Google search of her name. Fortunately, I found a post on a genealogy website written by her youngest brother’s grandson. Great! I contacted him.

When I contacted Harriet’s youngest brother’s grandson, it turned out that he lives in a Dublin suburb. Much to my happy surprise, he had been driving around Ireland for twenty years looking up genealogical records of our ancestors (I am fortunate – not every budding genealogist finds such a relative!). He was happy to share the information he had been meticulously collecting.

Fast forward. I began organizing data about my Irish ancestors into book form. I contacted other descendants – collected their info about recent generations. I collected old family photographs, old family letters that had been saved, family stories that had been passed down. All of this became our family’s genealogy book (see my previous post about my Irish genealogy book).

By the time we printed our genealogy book and had the first family reunion since 1980, I had learned much about Harriet’s life. She was born in the same Irish county as William Butler Yeats’ family at about the same time (did she ever cross paths with him?); the county where she was born was also where Bram Stoker’s mother was born (Bram Stoker seems to have gotten several ideas for his Dracula novel from stories his mother told about County Sligo’s cholera epidemic in the 1930’s). Harriet had thirteen children, ten of whom lived. She filled out the birth certificate and the death certificate for her first-born child who died two hours after an unattended home birth. Her father was a school master who moved from job to job, taking his wife and children all over Ireland via Ireland’s newly-emerging train system. She eloped. As the daughter and sibling of school masters, she valued education for her children. She emigrated in the 1900’s. She died the same day that the Soviets invaded Poland. I suggested to my Dublin-area distant cousin that we continue on, writing Harriet’s biography. We did.

Writing Harriet’s biography was made possible as a result of many years of genealogical research. A point I want to stress is that books are often the end-result of much learning and effort. The book was also a labor of love. Writing a book is an effort that requires learning the mechanics of writing (we learn at least some if this in school), learning what’s involved in making information presentable and interesting, and putting in the time to write. Having an editor go through one’s written material helps identify needed improvements before publishing a book (identifying spelling and grammar that need correction, spotting incomplete presentations of information that are overlooked when knee-deep in the writing process, noting shifts in perspective or narrative style that need correction, etc.).

I am also pleased to have contributed to bringing stories of every day historical women’s lives to print. After we published Harriet’s biography, I came up a research network that studies “Perceptions of pregnancy.” I wrote an article for their website about Harriet’s experience of childbearing: An Experience of Home Births in Rural Ireland: 1883 – 1903.

I hope you will take an interest in Harriet’s biography.

Kim Burkhardt provides writing services at Burkhardt Writing Services. Contact us about your wordsmithing needs.

Writer’s Challenge: Describe this photo

December 1, 2025
cat looking at fish
Cat, fish tank

A skilled writer will be able to conjure up the fullness of the image and all the connotations that come to mind (make a few sentences worth a thousand words….)

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Writing tip:

  • Mentally identify what it is that makes this photo eye-catching.   When we look at a photo that captures our attention, it grabs our attention without us necessarily articulating an explanation of why the photo interests us – a good writer articulates these matters to create a mental response equivalent to our visual response to a photo.

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Sample written description of this photo:

  • In the next moment, rather than seeing the face of one brown-eared, brown-legged, brown-tailed long-haired cat, we see the back of its’ white head as the seal-point Himalayan stares intensely at goldfish swimming furiously – likely in stark fear – in their ten gallon fish tank not much taller (or longer) than the very-focused feline…..

Kim Burkhardt provides writing services at Burkhardt Writing Services. Contact us about your wordsmithing needs.

Writer’s Skill: Incorporating perspective

November 28, 2025
Mountains, clouds
Mountains with low-lying clouds

I currently live just over one hundred miles from where I grew up.

When I drive from south of Seattle to my hometown of Bellingham, Washington, my favorite part of the scenic drive is the commonly-occurring mountain-level clouds in Skagit and Whatcom Counties.

I recognize now that locals in Whatcom and Skagit counties likely take these clouds for granted.  I did while I was growing up.

Now that I live a two hour drive away (when traffic’s not bad!), I live just far enough away to not have these low-lying clouds be a daily (or near-daily) occurrence.  Thus, I now notice them as a locally distinct event when I go home.  They are visually engaging.

A good writer does the same thing when writing – noticing and/or developing perspective – and then using descriptive narrative – to incorporate that perspective into the written word.

When written text lacks perspective, the reader will notice the text only in observing that what they are reading is not worth reading.  They may not know that perspective is what’s missing, but they won’t want to continue reading.  It is incumbent upon the writer to identify perspective and incorporate it into the text.

Providing perspective – among a host of skills involved in understanding the world and one’s audience – is necessary for the writer who wants an audience.

Kim Burkhardt provides writing services at Burkhardt Writing Services. Contact us about your wordsmithing needs.

Bringing the written word to life

November 28, 2025
Book of Irish genealogy
Bookey-Ellis genealogy book

In this writer’s blog, I discuss what it means to write. I give examples of what it means to bring the written word to life. Making words meaningful is done in varying ways in different contexts.

Today, I will give the example of bringing words to life in the context of genealogy.

I co-wrote the genealogy book for my Irish-side relatives (2014).

When I say that I co-wrote the book, I mean exactly that. I took the lead on writing the book.

Much of the historical genealogical research was done by a distant cousin in Dun Laoghaire (“Dun Leerie”, a Dublin suburb). He did twenty years of on-the-ground records searching, verifying historically-accurate family data going back to the 1700’s. I followed up with current relatives to collect current family data. I then organized the data chronologically, by relative. There was a tremendous amount of work involved in this research – our family is immensely grateful to my cousin for the years of effort he put into uncovering our family history. This data collection made it possible for us to know who our ancestors were, where they lived, how many kids they had, often finding out what they did for a living.

In this blog, I write about writing. When we published our genealogy book (relatives asked that information in the book about living relatives not be shared publicly for privacy), a friend of the family saw the book on a coffee table and asked for my contact info. When the family friend contacted me, they expressed appreciation for the book because it is different from other genealogy books they had seen. Too often, they observed, genealogy books only – or strictly – list names, dates, dates of birth, locations where people lived and died, and other historical data about relatives. Not so with the genealogy book that I co-wrote. In this genealogy book, I took the lead in including information that brought our ancestor’s lives “to life.” For example, we included:

  • Old family photographs of previous generations
  • Old family letters that had been handed down over the generations
  • Photos of the ships that ancestors rode when they emigrated
  • Photos of the rural schools attended by our Irish ancestors
  • A photo of the baptismal font where my great-great grandmother was baptised in the 1860’s
  • A photo of the door of the hotel where my great-great grandparents stayed when they eloped (the door is still there!)
  • Family stories that had been handed down. At the turn of the 1900’s, for example, my great-great grandmother discovered that her children were skipping school when the schoolmaster contacted her to ask if she was planning to send her school again; her children said years later that when their mother discovered they were skipping school, “she brought out the switch.” Also, the family home had no plumbing at the turn of the century – the children washed dishes in the stream that ran through the property (I’ve been there and saw the stream. The stream was just a trickle in the summer. Imagine washing dishes in a stream in the winter….). At the same time, a traveling seamstress would come through every six months and stay with the family for a week while she made the family’s clothing…….
  • Historical explanations such as what it meant for my Irish ancestor’s small rural village to be “a market town” that had market once a week.

Writing, as indicated above, informs the reader of the context surrounding data – bringing the written word to life.

Kim Burkhardt provides writing services at Burkhardt Writing Services. Contact us about your wordsmithing needs.

Writing Style: Be Clear, Be You

November 25, 2025
leather bound book
Book with leather cover

The purpose of writing is to communicate.

Actually communicating via the written word requires more than factually stating information. I indicated in my previous post, for example, that Robert M. Goldstein’s biographical tale of riding the Trans Siberian Express succeeds at being a laugh-so-hard-you-cry narrative because he did more than state where he travelled and what he did. He was self-transparent, thereby humanizing the story, in describing his mishaps – discovering two days into his trip-of-a-lifetime train ride that he was on the wrong train and telling about his only pair of shoes getting stolen.

At times, the written word does – in fact – call for literal, straightforward facts-and-figures communication. A how-to-assemble document for a piece of furniture or a bicycle requires literal step-by-step instructions. A good communicator, though, recognizes when such step-by-step communication is appropriate – and brings to the communication an understanding of how to be straightforward. “You will need a hammer for this project” demonstrates a writer’s understanding of the human experience involved when crafting the assembly of a useful how-to manual – while also knowing what information not to include (no one cares if your cat sat with you while you crafted the how-to manual). Personal insertions of information might be relevant – on the other hand – when assembling a how-to-ride-the-Trans-Siberian-Express manual (“Here’s a tip I learned on how to avoid getting your only pair of shoes stolen”).

Writing to communicate with an audience isn’t about you. Except when it is about you (an autobiography, for example). Written communication is for the reader. Yet, the reader will be able to see you in the written communication. Does the writer know to tell me to have a screwdriver when assembling a bookshelf? Does the writer know when to insert personal anecdotes to make a story human and therefore compelling? A reader of a professional journal will evaluate the writer of an article – does the writer know industry standards well enough to know the appropriate communication style(s) for that industry and that publication? Does the writer of a novel have enough experience with people to know the communication tools that make a narrative interesting?

I am currently reading a book by an author who narrates U2’s (the Irish rock band) use of visual imagery at their rock concerts. The author observes in the book that when there’s upward/downward tension co-occurring in a song, one band member will walk up stairs while another band member walks down stairs. I had never noticed that in watching U2 concerts. I appreciate author Kevin Ott – and have an increased appreciation for U2 – as a result of Ott’s insightful and descriptive narrative in Ott’s Shadowlands.

Writing – when effective – is clear, descriptive, and informative. When done well, writing also tells us about the writer. Of course, the best writing renders readers so absorbed in content that we don’t notice the medium…..

Kim Burkhardt provides writing services at Burkhardt Writing Services. Contact us about your wordsmithing needs.