My Book is on Submission with Publishers. Now What?
What do you do once you're done submitting a book to potential publishers? Here are four productive activities you can use while you await responses.
Keeping the Writing Faith: Defining & Redefining Success to Mantain Your Motivation
The following article is the first in a five-part series of articles by Jennifer Haupt. In this installment, she discusses how to maintain your writing motivation by rethinking what "success" means as a writer.
7 Cardinal Publishing Rules—And Why You Might Want to Break Them
As a leader and influencer in the publishing world, Skip Prichard knows all there is to know about the process of publishing a book. But when he began his own journey, he broke seven core publishing rules.
Reprints for Creative Shorts: How and Where to Sell a Poem, Personal Essay or Short Story a Second Time
The reprint market isn’t just for nonfiction articles. If you're looking to sell a short story, personal essay or a poem that's already been published, there’s a good chance you can sell it again. Learn how.
Finding the Right Publishing Path for Your Book
Ricardo Fayet explores all the options available to authors and help you decide what the best one is for your book.
Packing For The Labor Of Publishing
Once upon a time, before I was a writer, I attended births. Not as a midwife or a doctor. I was a doula—the person who often came to a labor early, who did their best to stay awake for the duration, who drove home in the wee hours, windows open and...
Contests: A Non-Traditional Route to Publication
Like most unpublished writers, I believed that there were only two paths to getting my words and thoughts before the world’s readers. I could go the traditional route of sending out query letters, and hope my brilliant writing would be plucked from the slush pile on a discerning agent’s desk. She would...
The Small-Press Experience
A little over a year ago, my first novel was published. After countless revisions, querying it to an inch of its life, finding an agent, leaving an agent, finding a publisher, content edits, line edits, etc., etc., my little-story-that-could became a full-fledged, published novel. For months after its release, the question...
How I Wrote a Book and Got Published Without Meaning To
I never intended to write a book. In 2008, I was teaching sex ed classes to 7th graders. I was 37, getting ready to send my only child off to college, and floating around in a long term relationship with a cop who had a magazine addiction and tool hoarding issue. If...
How Writing Taught Me the Need for Patience
Patience. Some regard it a virtue, and if there’s any one thing I’ve learned since embarking upon my journey into the publishing world, it’s that you need it in spades. Many are of the impression the most difficult part of being a writer is the actual writing. And yes, crafting a...
Short Novels Sell
After spending years revising my book, MARRIED SEX, I was convinced that its 37,000 words had split the stylistic difference between James Patterson and James Salter—that this was as novel tight as a screenplay. No adverbs. Few adjectives. Only active verbs. What Orwell called “prose like a windowpane.” Column by Jesse Kornbluth, debut...
7 Things I’ve Learned So Far, by J. Aaron Sanders
J. Aaron Sanders, author of SPEAKERS OF THE DEAD (March 2016, Plume) shares the seven most important lessons of his writing and publishing career.
10 Lessons Learned Behind the Scenes of a Book Deal
A few short months ago, I wrote about my path to getting an agent and a publisher, and promised to share my experiences leading up to the publication of my debut novel, ALMOST MISSED YOU, due out in 2017 from St. Martin’s Press. You might think that as the editor of...
A Book in 30 Days: What Writers Can Learn From Rapid Publishing
BY AMANDA L. BARBARA The Internet has brought about a new age of experimentation in publishing, and stepping into the literary laboratory is the prolific storytelling duo, Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant. The authors’ recent project, “Fiction Unboxed,” was a crowdfunded experiment in writing and publishing a book live in...
5 Lessons I Learned In the Decade It Took to Publish a Second Novel
BY BRIDGETT M. DAVIS Perhaps you’ve heard the one about a journalist who arrived at Joyce Carol Oates’ home to interview her? “I’m sorry,” said her assistant. “But she’s working on her new novel right now.” “That’s okay,” said the journalist. “I’ll wait.” With over 40 novels written — averaging two...
“Publishing Agnosticism”—What It Is, Why It’s Important, and What It Means for Authors
BY EVE BRIDBURG, Executive Director of GrubStreet The first time I heard the term “publishing agnostic” was in November of 2011 at the Park Plaza hotel in Boston. Barry Eisler used it during a talk he gave to the GrubStreet community as part of our NEA-funded Publish it Forward series. He...
I Started a Small Press (and Then Things Got Weird)
BY J DAVID OSBORNE I tried retail for a while, and that was fun, in the way that puking on yourself at a family gathering is fun: you have a story. After a time, though, it stops being a story you laugh at and starts being one that you cry over....
Why I Published 4 Novels in 6 Months
Hi, WD community! Today we’re sharing a guest post from J.E. Fishman, a former editor and literary agent turned author. He has penned Dynamite: A Concise History of the NYPD Bomb Squad and the novels Primacy, Cadaver Blues, and The Dark Pool. His Bomb Squad NYC series of police thrillers launches this month with A Danger to Himself and Others, Death...
An Insider’s Guide: Odd Jobs of the Masters
The history of writing is full of authors striving to succeed in a hyper-competitive publishing world, contending with agents, editors, publishers, critics, and sometimes the greatest challenge of all—overnight success. David Comfort’s new book, An Insider’s Guide to Publishing, looks at every facet of this journey, and reveals an extraordinary amount...
Don’t D-Y-I “Do-Yourself-In” with a D-I-Y Mentality
by Rob Eagar I am one of the few original self-publishing success stories. And, I did it way before the advent of e-books, Amazon, and social media. Over 10 years ago, I left corporate America as a sales executive to pursue what seemed like a ridiculous dream to write a book....