Rivka Levy's Blog, page 2

10 ways to enjoy your writing even if it’s not paying the bills

Tip 1: Stop promoting yourself

This sounds so counter-intuitive, I know, but here’s the low-down: the whole world is absolutely, thoroughly sick and tired of self-promoters trying to get us to buy their latest book, or forcing us to ‘share’ how wonderful they think they are.

Pretty much the fastest way to turn-off your potential readership and alienate your audience is to keep banging on about that book you wrote that you’re t...

If you haven't checked out the Soul Foodie 's excellent blog, I highly recommend you do that.

In the meantime, the blog's author, Nesanel Yoel Safran, just reviewed Unlocking the Secret of the Erev Rav on Sasson, which I'm reprinting below.

If you'd like to learn more, and / or buy the book yourself, please go HERE .

Unlocking the Secret of the Erev Rav by B. R. Levy

The Erev Rav (the mysterious ‘mixed multitude’ of Egyptians who joined the Jewish people upon their liberation from Pharaoh’s Egyp...

Over on Soferet, there's been a bit of a running debate about the lack of choice and good books available today in so many orthodox Jewish book stores. If you want a Gadol biography, or a cookbook - you're in luck! 

But if you want a book that talks about real issues or challenges; or that even touches on the topics of off-the-derech children and sky-rocketing divorces; or the reasons for all the mental health and physical issues battering the orthodox Jewish community - then you probabl...

The title alone tells you that this book is trying to go out on a limb in the orthodox Jewish world, so I was very happy to read a copy of this, author Bracha Goetz’s memoir.

Bracha is best known for authoring more than 30 children’s books, many of which have become a staple in Jewish homes, so this book was quite a departure from her usual style, and her usual audience.

The book spans around three decades of the author’s life, and begins with her diary entries as a young girl, to her ‘diary f...

The title alone tells you that this book is trying to go out on a limb in the orthodox Jewish world, so I was very happy to read a copy of this, author Bracha Goetz’s memoir.

Bracha is best known for authoring more than 30 children’s books, many of which have become a staple in Jewish homes, so this book was quite a departure from her usual style, and her usual audience.

The book spans around three decades of the author’s life, and begins with her diary entries as a young girl, to her ‘diary f...

So, do you remember that I actually wrote a book recently, called The Secret Diary of a Jewish Housewife?

(If you forgot don't worry, because I also did....)

But luckily, the Goodreads Struggling Writers' group remembered, and they just posted up an interview about me and the book, which you can see HERE.

Enjoy!
Ah, I nearly forgot: the book is available as an e-book, paperback and audio, and you can buy it HERE on Amazon, or HERE on the Book Depository (with free postage to Israel).

No wonder...

The Jewish nation is numerically one of the smallest in the world, and when you’re trying to sell books to it, by golly do you feel that paucity of numbers.

But when you’re an orthodox Jewish writer writing in English - and your brand of orthodoxy isn’t so mainstream frum either - well, good luck shifting ten copies of your latest offering.

The Forward won’t be interested in promoting you and your books, with all your backward ideas about God actually existing, and about people having sou...

Someone asked about how to do Print-on-Demand if you're a Jewish author, and this is what I emailed her back. If you're an author with more to add, please feel free to share in the comments field at the bottom. There are really 2 options to use for POD, in terms of getting your book out to the widest number of channels, and those two are Create Space (Amazon's own company) and Ingram Spark.

There are pros and cons for both. Here's a brief rundown of what they broadly are:

CREATE SPACE IS GOOD F...

In the (now far distant) past, I used to wolf down fiction books in one gulp. In fact, my addiction to quality fiction was one of the biggest challenges I had when my kids were very small, because I couldn’t put books down when I needed to, in order to give them the time and attention they needed.

When I moved to Israel and frummed-up, the fiction books got the heave-ho, along with a bunch of other things like movies and internet in my home, which I’d come to realize weren’t so good for my so...

'Yaakov the Pirate Hunter' by Nathaniel Wyckoff is not my usual reading fare, I'll be honest. But I've come to realise that there are so few orthodox Jewish authors out there, that I have to do everything I can to try to spread their word about their books and work, even if it's in a genre that I don't usually 'do'.

Hence, a week spent reading 'Yaakov the Pirate Hunter' by Nathaniel Wyckoff. The book is fiction (I know, like duh! you figured that out without me...) but where it's extremely un...