A successfully self-published book can propel you down the road to a book contract at a commercial publishing house.
That’s the truth of the matter, despite the worries I hear from writers that self-publishing could doom their hopes of ever landing a real book deal. Don’t listen to those persistent rumors and urban myths that […]

Psst!  Wanna write a scorcher for the booming YA market?
OK, here’s the secret: The first thing you need to do is create an authentic, quirky, true-to-life voice.
The story and characterizations in Young Adult fiction are crucial too, of course, but the most important element is that distinctive narrative personality.
The strongest and most powerful voice is […]

“Writing a memoir is an act of courage. Be brave. It means exposing who you really are, which is hard to do, even to yourself.”
That advice comes from a conversation I had recently with Linda Joy Myers, Ph.D., President of the National Association of Memoir Writers. She’s the author of a new book, The Power […]

“Everybody’s looking for the next big thing — a work of great literary fiction from an unknown writer who’s never been published.”
That’s according to Jay Schaefer, an editor-at-large at Workman Publishers in New York City and its subsidiary, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Schaefer, a publishing veteran best known […]

Readers are fans. They love author appearances!
What’s more, a successful author reading can spark sales and help build a following for a new book.
Publishers know this, but unfortunately, the days of big budgets for glamorous book tours and star-spangled author events are now largely behind us.
Author readings still a hot ticket
Established and emerging authors, nevertheless, […]

Q: I haven’t had any luck finding a publisher for my book. What’s the secret to getting in the door?
A: Here’s my advice on how you can beat the odds and overcome the biggest reasons most books get rejected.
But first, I’d like to give you an idea of what it’s like behind the scenes at […]

Short story collections are big business. Thousands of anthologies are in print with many more published each year. A quick look at Amazon shows 29,000 story collections listed. Of those, more than 3,500 are anthologies of stories by a single author.
That may surprise some short story writers, including those who’ve asked me if they have […]

A shopper who watches a video about a product is more likely to buy it.
That’s why publishers and video producers are rushing to collaborate on low-cost video book trailers.  Publicists and marketing professionals believe these videos are the best new way to create the kind of buzz that attracts readers and sales.
In the past few […]

In the increasingly difficult competition to get published, writers know they must put their best foot forward by sending out only a professional, polished, and persuasive new proposal or manuscript to any prospective literary agent or publisher.
Many authors have come to understand the value of objective help before taking the plunge, and I don’t mean […]

An author friend of mine couldn’t figure out why he was having so much trouble selling his new book.  He had a respectable list of published books to his name, a regular schedule of speeches and workshops, and a solid platform in print and broadcast media.
So on a hunch, I looked him up on Nielsen […]

We all know it’s cheaper to buy books online or at the big box national discount chains.  I could have saved $12.10 the other day if I had gone on Amazon or over to Barnes & Noble.
But if we’re lucky enough to have a local bookstore nearby we ought to do what we can to […]

Every day legions of writers and wannabes trek over to literary agent Nathan Bransford’s blog for a dose of some of the smartest, most honest, entertaining and generous advice on the book business I’ve seen online.
Leading the charge
Bransford, 28, an agent since 2005 with the venerable Curtis Brown Ltd with offices in San Francisco and […]

Book publishers know that web promotion is the best way to reach readers directly, so for help they turn to experts like Fauzia Burke.
“It’s our job to find an author’s audience online,” says Burke, founder and president of FSB Associates, one of the first firms to specialize in internet book publicity and marketing.  “Our strategy […]

Does my book really need an index? And I have to pay the indexer?  Wait, isn’t that the publisher’s job?  OK, well can I just put it together myself?
I often hear questions like these from authors I work with. So I explain that an index is an indispensable tool for almost every non-fiction book.
An index […]

Reports about the demise of book publishing are once again premature.
Traditional book acquisition is alive and well.
This despite all the free-floating anxiety and doomsday scenarios about money drying up, massive cutbacks and publishing houses closing up shop.
I know this from personal experience. I got blown out of the water by aggressive colleagues at other publishing […]

“It’s a contact sport.”
That’s how one author summed up his experience in a refreshingly frank and illuminating first-person account of what it’s really like to publish your own novel.
A minefield with roads forked in every direction
David Carnoy started out with a literary agent and high hopes for placing his novel Knife Music with a traditional […]

Nothing in the publishing process seems to provoke more conflict than designing the book jacket.
Every editor, designer, sales person and publicist in the company can have a different point of view, often causing intense turf battles, expensive start-overs, blown production schedules, and snarky rants hurled between colleagues like:
“Sure, go ahead with that pretentious Picasso rip […]

This hard-working writer has been on the road selling his novel The Art of Racing in the Rain since before it was a Starbucks pick for Spring 2008.
I caught up with Garth during a recent stop in here in Berkeley for the 75th public reading of his New York Times best-seller. Earlier that day, […]

Being called “America’s Worst Mom” after letting your 9-year-old son ride home alone on the NYC subway from Bloomingdale’s is not the usual way to get a six-figure book deal for a first time author.
Media fire storm
But when the mom in question, Lenore Skenazy, a columnist and feature writer for the New York Sun, wrote […]

The secret to getting more up-front money is persuading your publisher to project higher book sales. Every publisher I know has an internal “advance offer calculation” process, based on a formula for estimating first year sales, revenues, and royalties.
The formula for book advances
It’s not a shot-in-the-dark but a scientific data dump that projects a precise […]