Over the course of the year I bookmark lots of articles, websites, and whatnot with every intention of turning those choice items into even choicer blog posts.
For a variety of reasons (which, by the way, my voice recognition software often interprets as “for a Friday of reasons”) many of these items never make the final [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘book business’
January 25, 2010
Seven Blog Posts I Didn’t Write in 2009
June 17, 2009
Question: Is My Book Too Long for Today’s Marketplace?
A reader writes:
My manuscript is over the limit on word count, but I think I can get it down close enough to acceptable levels that I am not really concerned.
I have two friends, however, who have written tomes. Yes, I hang out with overachievers. I’ve read one completely and bits of the historical. Both have [...]
June 1, 2009
Question: Should I Offer My Book for Free?
A reader writes:
For background: I’m an author with some decent short story credits, I edit a fiction magazine, I speak regularly at local conferences, I have several more short stories in constant circulation, and I’m shopping an urban fantasy novel to agents. I generally write speculative fiction.
I’ve been thinking recently about offering one of my [...]
April 2, 2009
Question: Agent Green-Hungry? Or Agent Salty-Busy?
A reader writes:
I’m been putting final polishes on my manuscript, and I think I’m there, so now, I’m looking at agents. Actually, I’ve been building a list for a while, but when looking at some larger agencies, I wonder as a first-time novelist, what would be the ‘good idea’ when deciding which agent to send a query [...]
March 26, 2009
Question: (I Have 20 Projects!)
A reader writes:
Help! I have ten paper children and a series of WIP’s that seem to be multiplying behind my back. I can’t stop writing, it’s like crack. I only know writing. I would like to know a literary agent, a publisher, a marketing genius, and perhaps even an author who could steer me in [...]
February 23, 2009
Question: Does Ghostwriting Count?
A reader writes:
Do ghostwriting credits carry any extra weight with agents? Does this help you with an industry “in” as well as the learning curve of book writing?
When I worked for a literary agency, we often got query letters from aspiring writers who had what you might call “related experience.” In other words, they had [...]
February 11, 2009
What We Can All Learn from Book Beast
I’m generally not one for sudden outbursts of digital enthusiasm, but I’ll say this:
Hooray for Tina Brown!
With newspapers cutting back, she is cutting up? with Book Beast, the new Daily Beast book site. If you haven’t checked it out, I encourage you to give it a look.
Here’s what I took away:
“Long tail” mentality
The “Rediscovery” tag [...]
February 9, 2009
Advertising and The New York Times Book Review
As many of you know, lack of advertising recently killed The Washington Post Book World. As this Times article on the demise of Book World notes:
The New York Times Book Review is now the largest remaining Sunday tabloid section, publishing at least 24 and as many as 30 or more pages a week with a [...]
January 6, 2009
The First Ten Books in Little, Brown’s Spring ‘09 Catalog
A publishing friend of mine just sent me Little, Brown’s spring catalog. For those of you who haven’t seen a book publishing catalog, they are fascinating, part preview of things to come and part re-view of what editors thought was relevant/interesting/saleable 12-24 months ago.
And so I present to you, without comment or judgment, the first [...]
December 11, 2008
A Tale of Two Agents
Agent A
Agent A goes into the office first thing and checks his e-mail. There are usually anywhere between 30 and 40 electronic queries from people the agent has never met. Nevertheless, he goes over them with great care, weighing the pros and cons of each one, and thinking deeply about their literary and commercial potential. [...]
