by Tom Ashford
Welcome to the SPF Weekly Write-Up, where each Wednesday we’ll be collecting together the self-publishing news of the week so you don’t have to.

This week: the Diagram Prize is awarded to the book with the weirdest title, Stuart Bache is judging your book covers, and enrollment for Ads for Authors closes today!

The Joy of Water Boiling

Each year, for the past forty or so years, the Diagram Prize has been awarded to the book with the weirdest title. And this year’s winner, with fifty-six percent of the vote, is…

The Joy of Water Boiling

It’s actually written in German – only the title needs to be in English for the book to qualify – and is described as “an innovative cookbook-project that presents 100 recipes for your water boiler” (so not just kettles, then).

For the sake of a laugh, the five runners-up were: Equine Dry Needling, Jesus on Gardening, Are Gay Men More Accurate in Detecting Deceits?, Call of Nature: The Secret Life of Dung, and, my personal favourite, Why Sell Tacos in Africa?

Don’t all rush out and buy it at once.

Think You’ve Got a Good Book Cover?

Prove it.

Cover designer (and friend of SPF), Stuart Bache, is running a competition over at his website, The Author’s Guide to Cover Design. The Cover Design Awards are open to anyone, so long as the cover is from your own book and published in 2018 (that also includes books due to be published in December).

But hurry – the window for submissions closes 30th November! I’m not sure what the winners get besides prestige, but if you’ve released any books this year, why not give it a go?

Click here!

Ads for Authors closes tonight!

Last (but certainly not least), today is the last day on which you can sign up for Mark’s Ads for Authors course. If you haven’t heard of it (and let’s be honest, of course you have), it’s full of hours upon hours of vital tuition on advertising through social media and Amazon – specifically crafted for writers of both fiction and non-fiction.

If the SPF 101 course is a guide to getting into the driving seat of your indie-author career, Ads for Authors is akin to strapping a jet engine to it.

Find out more here – but be quick!

Tom Ashford

Tom Ashford is a professional copywriter, author of numerous dark fantasy and sci-fi novels, and the Head of Content at the Self Publishing Formula Blog. His books include the Blackwater trilogy and the Checking Out series.

He lives in London with his wife, in an apartment that doesn’t allow pets. Find out more about Tom here.