Doing what you love for 70 years? Priceless.
May this inspire you today.
Blog
I Can’t Believe I Wrote the Whole Thing
You’re an author with lots of talent and a great idea! You know the market and are confident your story will work. There’s plenty of plot to make word count. So why not sell on proposal? Selling on proposal seems ideal, but might not be a good idea for the new author. Why not? Pacing A new author can’t necessarily gauge how long it will take to write a book. Perhaps the first book rode like the …
Seven Tips for Your Next Writers’ Conference
I attended my first writers’ conference in 1989. Yes, I am that old. I was a magazine editor at the time, and knew absolutely nothing about writers’ conferences. Since then, however, I have served on faculty more than a hundred times, and have learned a thing or two about writers’ conferences, knowledge that I am happy to impart—for the right price. Today, since we are approaching the height of …
Are You Curating or Creating?
Every once in a while, a book proposal crosses my desk and catches my attention with its creativity and approach. It is engaging and makes me think. Whether I agreed to work with the author or not, I needed to give them kudos for their great work. Rarely, if ever, does something catch my attention (in a good way) which is simply assembled from or built entirely on the thinking of someone else. I …
How Do You Count Lifetime Book Sales?
A key element in a book proposal is your sales history. Of course, you can ignore this if you’ve never published a book before. But if you have published, either with a traditional publisher or independently, your sales history must be included in your next book proposal. Here is an example: Sales History: The Bestest Book Ever (XYZ Publishers, 1996) – 12,449 sold The Other Bestest Book I Wrote …
Fun Fridays – January 19, 2018
Could you make a paper airplane out of a manila folder? Maybe. But doubtful it would look like this. I found this story to be a metaphor for those who write. Those who choose each word carefully with the precision of an x-acto knife. Painstakingly crafting their art over years. And being unafraid to delete what doesn’t work.
It’s All About You — Sometimes
When I visit the bookstore or library, I seldom fail to see at least one novel where the entire back cover consists of an author photo. That’s it. No endorsements, no story blurb, no author bio. Just a picture of the author. And usually the front cover doesn’t offer many clues, either. Maybe a vague illustration, along with the title and author’s name. To my mind, this means this author has built …
Fix These 16 Potholes on Grammar Street
Don’t worry. I hated grade school grammar as much as the next guy. Still, as a magazine editor and, later, as a freelance book editor and (now) literary agent, I have come across far too many grammatical and usage mistakes in writing submitted to me. Not all of us can be Strunk or White (though every writer should own their valuable book, The Elements of Style). But we can profit from a little …
You Think The World is Bad Now?
History has always fascinated me. Once you look deeply into it, you see the seeds of an important event being planted years, decades or even centuries before. Nothing happens out of thin air. For instance, it is widely agreed World War Two was a direct result of the way World War One ended. A hundred years ago, Adolph Hitler was a disgruntled corporal in the defeated and humiliated German army. …
Morality and the Book Contract
Seven years ago I wrote a post about the morality clause in book contracts. It was met with a collective yawn. Today the landscape is a little different and I hope you will take the time to read this carefully. From Hollywood suddenly trying to find a moral compass to corporations trying to define bad behavior, the issue has become the latest buzzing conversation. The issue is not one to be …