Business

One Way to Make Everything Better

October 5, 2020 By Jael McHenry 5 Comments

There are no easy answers in writing and publishing, right? When I went through some of the biggest changes in my writing career — for example, getting an agent, or inking my first publishing deal — I thought, “Oh good, now everything’s different.” Surprise! Some things are different, but some things remain very much the same. And no matter what stage of your writing career you’re in, whether you’ve published zero books or two dozen, you never really get to stop worrying. All that changes is what you’re worrying about.

So! Why am I claiming that there’s one way to make everything better in your writing and publishing career? Because there’s one thing that you might be particularly worried about doing, and I’m here to tell you it’s the one thing you need never worry about.

Here’s the one thing you can always know it’s right to do: ask.

Not sure whether you should follow up on hearing from that agent you sent your full manuscript to three months ago? Ask. Wondering whether that fellow writer you met at a conference one time might be interested in exchanging manuscripts for a beta read? Ask. Thinking it might be a good idea to ask that well-known author you met at a reading once to take a look at your soon-to-be-published manuscript for a blurb? Ask. Not sure whether your publisher is delivering the marketing punch you want and think your agent might have an informed opinion on the matter? Ask, ask, ask.

There are ways to go about asking wrong, sure. Don’t follow up with agents too frequently or too aggressively. Don’t hassle fellow writers. Don’t presume that the author you met once will definitely deliver a blurb, and certainly don’t trash them on social media if they don’t say yes or even respond. (I’ve seen it. It’s not pretty. And it doesn’t make them look bad; it’s not a great look for you.)

But a humble inquiry? From you to virtually anyone involved in the publishing process? [Read more…]

PR: When a client genre jumps

October 1, 2020 By Ann Marie Nieves 4 Comments

John Cunningham, my longtime client, called during the height of COVID, when many of us were either crying daily or making sourdough, to say he had dusted off an old manuscript, re-wrote much of it and was sending it to his editor. It was my cue to be prepared for a PR and marketing campaign. There was a catch. It wasn’t his usual Caribbean action adventure featuring hard on his luck protagonist Buck Reilly that I had worked on for the last eight years. This novel was … [Read more...]

A Hack for Getting to the Heart of Your Story—and Staying There

September 30, 2020 By Sharon Bially 6 Comments

When my younger son was in the first grade, his teacher gave the class a writing assignment that consisted of finishing this sentence: “The most important thing about [insert your name] is____” My son, Alex, wrote, “The most important thing about Alex is that he tries really hard.” Now, eleven years later, as I read over Alex’s draft college essays, I realize that this “most important thing”—he tries really hard—was true about him then and is still true about him now. In fact, this simple … [Read more...]

Hook and Inciting Incident: The Power Couple of the “Must Read Now”

August 13, 2020 By Kathryn Craft 29 Comments

When I set out to write a “body of work,” I didn’t intend a “string of failed proposals” to define its completion. I had hoped to leave a legacy of, well, you know. Actual written novels. Yet it was time to try again. From a fresh page, my cursor blinked at me; I cursed and blinked right back. Where to go from here? My attention strayed to my bookcases—in particular, the way I’d organized them. The one on the left holds a couple hundred new and used novels that piqued my interest. I plan to … [Read more...]

Four Ways to Answer a Blurb Request

August 3, 2020 By Greer Macallister 3 Comments

Yesterday, I spent most of the day working. In the end, I wrote 40 words. And it was a successful working day, not a failed one; those 40 words will make someone very happy. A poet, I suppose, might be able to make the same statement, but I haven't written poetry in years; what I'm talking about here is writing a blurb for a less-established novelist. A lot of time goes into reading an entire book and thinking through how to phrase your praise. Though it's time-consuming, it's also one of my … [Read more...]

The Guy Who Wrote Fight Club Just Kicked My Ass

July 24, 2020 By Keith Cronin 36 Comments

At the beginning of 2020 (which must be about 40 or 50 months ago, right?), I stumbled onto a book that literally changed how I think about writing. During an email exchange with my dear friend and fellow writer Jocosa Wade, she recommended an early novel by Chuck Palahniuk, whom I only knew as the guy who had written Fight Club. I loved the movie by the same name, but had never read any of his novels. To be honest, I’d always been a little afraid to read him, figuring he would be way too … [Read more...]

Spoilers Won’t Spoil Your Book Promotion. How to Use Them to Pull Readers In.

July 21, 2020 By Sharon Bially 5 Comments

Spoiler alert: this post is not going to talk about COVID-19 or the state of our world and the ways in which we’ve all needed to adjust. But it is going to look at the pandemic as an example of something I’m asked about all the time. You guessed it: spoilers. Rarely does a week go by when an author does not ask me whether posting a particular snippet with plot information to Facebook, or sharing a description of their main character’s conflicts or fate with a reporter will “give away too … [Read more...]

What I’ve Learned About Presenting Online Writing Workshops

July 15, 2020 By Sophie Masson 12 Comments

Like most professional writers, I’ve always supplemented my writing income with speaking gigs—workshops, talks, presentations of all sorts, both for adults and for children. Although over the years I’ve presented the odd Skype or other remotely-delivered live presentation, the vast majority of my speaking gigs have been face-to-face and in person. They've often involved travel of some sort or the other—usually long distance, sometimes close to home. Since late March, when the shutdown began … [Read more...]

Publishing in a Pandemic: An Insider Interview with a Book Publicist

July 7, 2020 By Nancy Johnson 19 Comments

The first half of this year has been a monumental test in flexibility and resilience for authors and everyone in publishing. My debut novel, The Kindest Lie, will release on February 9, and that publishing date has changed several times as the William Morrow team attempted to position my book and others in their catalog for optimal success during these uncertain times. Recently, I joined the team of A Mighty Blaze, a new organization that formed to help authors and books find their readers … [Read more...]

Communications in 2020: What Do Authors Value?

June 30, 2020 By Ann Marie Nieves 3 Comments

I think constantly about value. What will bring value to my client’s book—the write-up in People, the outreach to book clubs, the branded swag for influencers, a radio satellite tour to bring a specific message to a large audience. What is the marketing communications mix for my client? How will I generate conversation, drive influence and sales, gain the implied endorsement from a reputable source, build an online buzz. I recently spoke with bestselling historical fiction author (a Get Red … [Read more...]

Blurbing and Being Blurbed

June 10, 2020 By Barbara Linn Probst 10 Comments

A note to my friends at Writer Unboxed: As a Type-A to-the-max sort of person, I prepared this essay weeks ago, when the world was different. Now, an essay about how to solicit praise for one’s book seems frivolous, irrelevant, and downright offensive—and yet I do want to offer it to you. Rather than retracting the essay, I’ve decided to offer it in the hope that you will save it for when it may be useful. Is there any writer who actually likes asking for blurbs? I suppose there … [Read more...]

Writing as Collaboration

May 25, 2020 By Catherine McKenzie 3 Comments

You know the drill : writing requires you to put your ass in the chair and write… alone. We’ve got our characters, sure, but they aren’t colleagues. The conversations we have with them are really conversations with ourselves. I think this is one of the reasons that writers flock to social media – finally, other people to talk to all day! Writing can be lonely. I did a (unscientific) survey recently of many writers I know who write full time and that is one of the touchstones they didn’t … [Read more...]

9 Authors on Hope

May 1, 2020 By Ann Marie Nieves 8 Comments

I was on the phone with author Barbara Taylor Bradford on Tuesday morning. We were just having a check-in to see how things were going in quarantine. I complained about my mornings of remote learning with my five and eight-year-old children. We both agreed that as women who have worked from home for years—she 40 and me 15—not much had changed for us in that respect. But having lived through WWII, she wanted me to know that it would be OK, that things would get better, that I had to have hope. … [Read more...]