Tis the Season of Book Festivals in the Midwest
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October 13, 2015

Book festivals are celebrations of reading and writing and they bring authors face to face with their audiences.  Don’t overlook them in your marketing plan as you will find they are a wonderful way to meet your readers and market your books. Like rock concerts and music festivals to recording artists, book festivals are the performance highlights to any author’s book tour. Autumn and book… [Read More]

Are you a member of the Authors Guild?
by,
October 6, 2015

The Authors Guild is the nation’s professional organization for writers, aiding and protecting author’s interest in copyright, fair contracts, and free expression since 1912. It supports working writers, advocates for author rights, and provides a community for its members. Any author who has been published by an established U.S. book publisher or by periodicals of general circulation in the US qualifies for membership. You may… [Read More]

Is an Online Writing Class Right for You?
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September 22, 2015

Joyce Maynard found ads for James Patterson Master Class in her Facebook newsfeed and signed up to discover the secrets to writing a bestselling book. She wrote an article for The Observer about what Patterson had to teach her about writing – and selling – books. That she herself was a published author of a couple memoirs and a dozen novels did not prevent her… [Read More]

How to Turn a Good Book into a Great One
by,
September 15, 2015

The July publication of Go Set a Watchman revealed Harper Lee changed point of view when she rewrote it as To Kill a Mockingbird. The new book is an unedited version and shows Harper Lee sloppily slip-sliding between first-person and third. The difference between a story narrated by Jean Louise Finch, a 26-year-old daughter, about her disillusionment in Atticus and small town bigotry, and the… [Read More]

Managing the business of being an author
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September 8, 2015

To be an author is a status many work hard to attain. Most of that work is invisible to the reader’s eye. Much of it doesn’t involve creative writing. The roles and responsibilities of an author go far beyond producing a wonderful manuscript. Writer is one role and the manuscript is one important responsibility. There are other roles besides writer and many more responsibilities. The role… [Read More]

Six Myths About Copyright Permissions
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August 25, 2015

Myth #1: “Fair Use under the US Copyright Law covers this.” It does not. “Fair Use” pertains to educational use only; not for profit. Publishing, however, has a commercial intent and therefore authors are not excused from seeking copyright permission for work that is not original. This includes photographs, poems, song lyrics, artwork, or an excerpt from another book or publication. Myth #2: “It must… [Read More]

4 Things to Know About Publishing (From an Intern’s POV) – Samantha Kolb
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August 18, 2015

This summer Samantha Kolb completed an internship with Swenson Book Development LLC. Here she shares some of what she learned in the last 10 weeks. As an English major, I have learned to endure perplexed looks when family and friends ask what my major is. I have also learned to gracefully answer no to the follow-up question; “Oh, are you going to be an English… [Read More]

Paths to Publishing
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August 11, 2015

The business of publishing continues to evolve and new finance models have emerged in recent years. There is a lot of new middle ground between self-publishing – Amazon, Smashwords, Lulu – and the traditional route of finding an agent who sells your work to one of the big commercial trade presses – Penguin Random House, Hatchette Book Group, Harper Collins, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster…. [Read More]

Narrative Arc for Nonfiction Writing
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August 4, 2015

Blame Aristotle.  Blame classical Greek culture. Blame all of Western Civilization. But every story must have a beginning, middle, and end. And more than that. Without narrative structure, non-fiction writing is just a boring recitation of one thing after another. You may think because it is based on your experiences, historical events, scientific experimentation, or natural observations that you don’t need a story to write… [Read More]

Literary Medic
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July 14, 2015

The hardest part of my job as a book development editor is delivering bad news to a writer. An agent is not interested in offering you representation. An acquisition editor decides to pass after reading your proposal and sample chapters. You failed to make necessary editorial revisions. Rejection is a hard message to deliver. And it happens to be a task I do more often… [Read More]