When JK Rowling first wrote Harry Potter, she couldn’t land a publishing deal. That’s right, the greatest money making book of our time was passed over repeatedly. However, it was finally accepted…not because an editor actually read it, but because one of them gave the first chapter to his eight-year-old daughter and said, “Here, you…
Category: Marketing
Publishers Who Accept Unsolicited Manuscripts
I’ll try to keep this list updated. Please let me know of any good or bad experiences with these by dropping me a note at [email protected] Books for Adult Readers Baen Books Baen Books is a science fiction and fantasy publisher. It accepts unsolicited manuscripts for all books and prefers electronic submissions through its manuscript-submission…
Creating Your Author Website – A Checklist
What authors should have a website? Every one of them. But a writer or illustrator should have a website that contains information of value. Simply having a book⏤whether publisher or in-progress⏤listed on an author’s website is of little use to the viewer. Having information to support that book adds value. One of my students compiled…
How to Write a One-Page Synopsis
An important selling tool is the synopsis. For novels these can sometimes run many pages, but it’s also useful to have a shorter, one-page version, and it’s the primary selling tool if you are writing a screenplay. Try to aim for about 500 words. A good rule of thumb is to only name three characters…
Query Letters and Literary Agents
This is a quick description of the query process for beginning authors. Why write a query letter? Unless you already know a literary agent, book publisher, famous author, or are extremely lucky, a query letter is your best chance to get your foot into the publishing business. What is a query letter? A query letter…
Hi/Lo Books: Writing for Reluctant Readers
by Eugie Foster As writers, we’re already sold on the premise that reading is fundamentally enriching as well as essential. However, reading is a skill that eludes a growing number of children, reluctant readers who have never been engrossed in a book, or who think of reading as a chore, work to do rather than…
Advice on Novel Writing
by Crawford Kilian Contents Foreword Developing Efficient Work Habits Elements Of A Successful Story In the opening… In the body of the story… In the conclusion… Throughout the story… Style: Checklist For Fiction Writers Manuscript Format Storyboarding Ten Points on Plotting The Story Synopsis Understanding Genre: Notes on the Thriller Symbolism and all that The…
Look, look. Dick and Jane are back.
Go, Spot. Go and find Dick. Go and find Jane. Run, Spot, run. Dick and Jane, the children’s book characters who taught an estimated 85 million children from the 1930s through the 1960s how to read, are back in print, and nostalgia-crazed baby boomers are scooping up the titles as fast as they are being…
The Golden Age of Self-Publishing
If there was ever any doubt about this being the golden age of sef-publishing, these statistics should demonstrate what a great time it is to be an author. Hugh Howey, author of the bestselling, indie-original science fiction series Wool, has published a report on independent author earnings from ebooks sold on Amazon. Here are some…
Ten Effective Tricks for Marketing Your Book
Publishers spend little or no money marketing new authors these days, which is a great reason to publish your own book. On-demand printing services such as Amazon’s KDP provide a nearly free way to get into print and sold through amazon.com. Best of all, you’ll make ten times as much on each copy as you…