When your writing is published, expect to go public. Positive engagement with your audience is critical to the success of your book. Readers want to connect with authors. And writers like to hear feedback from their readers. During the last decade publishers have come to expect authors to create and manage their online personas on various social media platforms to promote and market their books. Few authors relish the time they spend on social media and most are uncomfortable with the loss of privacy. Shortly after novelist Elena Ferrante’s identity was revealed in October by an Italian journalist, author and journalist Marie Myung-Ok Lee wrote an essay for The Millions about the end of privacy for writers. She wrote about feeling the need to buffer or filter her public image when selecting a new author headshot. Instead of a photograph, her official avatar is a sketch by artist Kate Gavino. Women are judged because of their looks. Not too old. Not too young. Not too serious, but serious enough. Author headshots matter for men, too, however, the quality of their writing is not assumed to be reflected in their physical appearance. When you go public, you make yourself vulnerable to cyberbullying. When your book is published, you have no control over what others will say in customer reviews on Amazon. If you share a link to your blog or your book on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn, you are expected to reply to comments. When you put your book out…
What’s the buzz about? It’s just another social network and another way to waste time on the Internet, right? Not quite. A few weeks ago, GalleyCat shared a post on how writers can use Pinterest. Then they followed up last week by collecting several fun reader-themed boards, proving the speed of the network’s growth as publishers like Vintage Scholastic and Chronicle Books hop on board and… [Read More]
Filed Under: blogger, brand recognition and loyalty, company pinboards, innovation and creativity, interview, Mitch Joel, pinboards, pinning, Pinterest, Regency writer, sharing visual content, Social Media networks, Twitter, writing tools
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If a man in a boat is crossing a river and an empty boat drifts along and bumps into his, he won’t get angry. But if there is someone in the other boat, then the man will shout out directions to move. …If a man could make himself empty, and pass like that through the world, then who could harm him? Mark Salzman’s ebook The… [Read More]
If you have a have a nonfiction book project or a completed fiction manuscript and you want to publish it traditionally, you need a book proposal. To get a publisher’s interest, you need to provide information about your book, your audience, and yourself. Though introduced by a query letter, the book proposal explains the nuts and bolts of your book: number of chapters and their… [Read More]
I begin with two confessional caveats. One, Harriet Goldhor Lerner is my second cousin; we communicate by email, but have never met. Two, I am not Marriage Rules’ (Penguin, 2012) target audience even though my husband of 16 years and I have been in marriage counseling for two years. In 1985, Harriet (she’s family, I can call her by her first name) took the world of… [Read More]
Agents talk. Editors talk. Publishing is a small world and your book proposal only gets one shot at success. Learn which mistakes to avoid while preparing a winning proposal that will command a contract from an agent or publisher. Last November, Swenson Book Development, LLC offered a workshop outlining what to include in a book proposal. This February, we continue the adventure with an intensive,… [Read More]