Six or seven years ago my advice to aspiring authors of nonfiction books was to build an audience platform by blogging. An example of how critical blogging could be to securing a publishing contract can be found in the case of Ann Marie Ackermann, author of Death of an Assassin: The True Story of the German Murderer Who Died Defending Robert E. Lee. After an initial assessment of her manuscript, I had recommended she start a historical true-crime blog, and she did. In fact, the editor of the ideal book series at Kent State University Press became a fan of her blog and invited her to submit a book proposal. Her book won a 2018 IPPY in the True Crime category, closed a 180-year-old cold case, and has also been translated into German where it received critical acclaim and was recognized for its scholarly contribution to the history of forensics. Today, blogging may or may not be something an author decides to invest time and energy in. If your authority as an author is based on your subject-area expertise, it remains an important goal to have a visible presence on the internet establishing your credibility. Whether blogging is the best means to achieve that goal depends on you and your project. It may be more important to be listed as an expert source available to journalists and appear as a credible source in news publications covering your subject area. HARO (Help A Reporter Out) may be a better fit to…
Literary agents agree. Editors at Big Six publishing houses agree. Bestselling authors agree. If you want to publish a book, you need to use social media. But what is social media? How can YOU use it to sell your book-in-progress? Why have a blog, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn? How will you write your book if you are always online? And who really cares about social… [Read More]
Filed Under: Authors, Buffalo Street Books, Literary Agents, Publishers, Social Media
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In WordPress, the Blogroll is a widget that appears in a side column on your blog page. How does a blogroll work? It provides a list of links to blogs (or other websites) you think your readers might be interested in. A blogroll is your personal endorsement of websites – the places you recommend someone visit for related content. To add a blogroll to your… [Read More]
Filed Under: audience building, blogosphere, blogroll, Blogs, connectivity, Golden Rule, letters, links, network, sidebar, themes, virtual endorsement, widgets
Leigh Stein, author of The Fallback Plan (Melville, 2012), will unashamedly tell you that she’s lived with her parents four times. Her newly-released novel, a coming-of-age about post-college angst, is spliced with details from her own experience and speaks volumes to the plight of so many twenty-something’s undergoing a quarter-life crisis. Stein’s protagonist, Esther, is a recent Northwestern graduate suffering from the post-grad blues. While… [Read More]
Are you ready to pick a WordPress theme for your new website and blog? If you’ve been following our Saturday social media for authors blog series and completed the first six “baby steps”, you already have a domain name, webhost, and content management system ready to go. Hopefully you’ve found time over the holidays to do a bit of window shopping and figured out how… [Read More]
Writing a query letter that hooks an agent or acquisitions editor for your non-fiction book concept is the golden key that opens the door to publishing. So how do you hook ’em? Think of your query letter as a sales pitch for the book. Accept the fact that those who read your initial correspondence are trained, so to speak, to judge books by their covers and make their first impressions based on marketability…. [Read More]
Filed Under: acquisition editor, agent, elevator speech, Hollywood 30-second pitch, Pitch, Query letter