Buy other authors' books when you go to their events. Even if you aren't going to read it. Even if you are going to give it away. Even if you aren't interested. Not just for the author but for the bookstore. It's karma and just plain good manners.

I shared the disillusionment that comes from watching your Amazon sales rank ebb and flow, then ebb again. I'd also tasted the same bittersweetness of the mixed review.

It wasn't something he expected to happen on such a dreary drizzly day, but he did, in fact, come to understand the meaning of life. And it wasn't one of those drunken enlightenments. No, this was the real thing.

A host of new books have already come out this year to inspire you on your next project. (Like many others, we've enjoyed reading Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In as part of a book club this season.)

After seeing many tantalizing mentions of Tara Books over the last few years, I was delighted to receive Joydeb Chitrakar and Gita Wolf's The Enduring Ark and get a firsthand look at one of their creations.

With The Selection sequel The Elite currently on the New York Times bestseller list, Kiera Cass is an author to be reckoned with.

I am a fast reader. By nature or nurture, I cannot say. My mother is a fast reader, as is my eldest son (he is a very fast reader). I've always felt...

Three months later and the Fringe universe is still thriving. Fans are writing fanfiction and creating art, and the first official tie-in novel, The Zodiac Paradox, comes out this month.

Going through my first Kickstarter campaign, I learned a lot that I wanted to share with others considering this route to crowdfund a novel or writing project:

A lot of my bookworm qualities and habits stem from a childhood surrounded by and bolstered by the stacks of books my mother read. While the whole family was distinctly bookish -- we really have more books than is healthy -- my mom was book hoarder in charge.

"If you were the President of the United States or the Queen of England, you couldn't have a person who would be more protective than my mother was for me. Which meant really that I could dare to do all sorts of things. And I could even dare to be somebody."

Something strange happened to me around when I started college: I stopped reading books. Not "I stopped reading." Not "I stopped reading stories." Not "I stopped reading for long periods of time without interruption." I just, specifically, stopped reading books.

When that eureka moment hits you though, what happens next? That huge PDF file on your computer isn't going to leap out and sell itself. You have to know how to put it out to your audience and go through the steps you need to take to get it ready for consumption.

It does not matter if a writer's work is delicate or deep or inventive or learned or crass. With thousands of books published each week, authors are begging for a signing in a prestigious store, no less a radio interview or a feature newspaper article.

This question originally appeared on Quora. Answer by Cristina Hartmann, Writer Jay Gatsby is so great, so compelling because he's one of th...