Once you have a book contract, the editor is your best friend in the company.
It’s your editor’s job to not only help you develop a great manuscript, but to shepherd the book through the all-important stages of copy-editing, design, production, manufacturing, publicity, and sales.
You need your editor’s dedicated support
At each stage of this process, your […]

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 […]

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 […]

“There are definite advantages for me operating in Manhattan. I can visit editors at their offices and schmooze over lunch,” says top literary agent Nat Sobel.
“It’s terrific. Two or three days a week, I’m talking to an editor about projects I’ve already sold them and are now in publication, or new projects I’m pitching that […]

“I’m eager to discover writers who aren’t famous yet but will be,” says San Francisco-based literary agent Elise Proulx.
“My mission is to promote literature and make some money for deserving authors,” said Proulx, whose five tips for unpublished writers appear below. “My specialty is both high quality fiction and what I call “pragmatic nonfiction”, meaning […]

Stop worrying about getting published and concentrate on getting better.
That was some of the sage advice the celebrated novelist offered writers at a literary seminar last week in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
“Focus on the work itself and not on what may or may not eventually happen to it,” Robbins said. “If the work is […]

Business is booming at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. Eleven new major book deals nailed down and that was while Sandy was vacationing in Europe.
So look out, now that she’s back!
Widely considered the most powerful agent on the West Coast, Dijkstra has been called “tough” and “abrasive” with a keen nose for new talent.
A […]

Many successful books are written by ghost writers, co-authors, and other, often uncredited, collaborators.
If I sign up an author who’s a highly regarded expert in the field but not a professional writer, I bring in a ghost who’s a pro at getting under someone else’s skin and producing a seamless work in the author’s voice.
It’s […]

Q : I have so much material for my memoir. How do I sort out what to include and what to leave out?
A : This is the key problem a writer faces when constructing a non-fiction memoir. Here are six specific steps to consider when making your […]

Editors pray for the perfect book title: a tight high-concept combination of words that crystallizes the content and intention of the work. A title so scintillating and irresistible that millions of readers want to run out and buy this book immediately.
Eureka! It happens.
Think of Chicken Soup for the Soul, or Men are from […]

I’m among the publishing veterans who admired and benefited from the creativity and courage of Clay Felker, who died this week at the age of 82.
This celebrated and deeply influential editor made a big difference at the start of my own career when he assigned his young star reporter Tom Wolfe to write what turned […]

It’s the #1 question aspiring authors ask me: How do I get your attention?
Here’s how: Send me a compelling, convincing book proposal that knocks my socks off!
For those who’ve heard that a query letter should always precede a proposal, my view is that you may want to skip the query entirely and instead […]

M ost agents and publishers recommend a brilliant and scintillating letter that pitches and pleads for the right to send a full proposal and sample of the manuscript itself, but frankly I don’t encourage it.
Break this rule!
The only thing writing a query letter demonstrates is how well you can write a query letter, and they’re […]

As an acquiring editor, one of the first things I look for in an author’s proposal is the “platform”, that is, the writer’s reputation and public visibility – and the ability, willingness, and experience to promote themselves in the marketplace.
What we publishers all hope for when opening a proposal from a literary agent is not […]

Garth Stein’s new book The Art of Racing in the Rain posted extraordinary sales of 15,215 copies the first week out. Of these, 3,515 flew out the door of retail bookstores, 2,217 were ordered on Amazon, and a whopping 9,483 sold at Starbucks stores throughout the country.
The relatively unknown writer’s book made a big […]

N ot all writers conferences are created equal. As a faculty member, I’ve appeared at events where authors were treated respectfully and came away with valuable information.
But I’ve also seen chaos, confusion, no-show speakers, and disgruntled attendees, to wit: “The speaker went on and on about how terrific she was and then autographed her […]