For many recent college graduates, or really anyone with big aspirations, New York City is the destination – and was the destination for most of my friends graduating from college this past May. New York also has the reputation of being the book publishing epicenter of the East Coast. Searching for jobs online on Publishers Marketplace or MediaBistro, many entry-level jobs posted are based in New York. “You want to work in publishing? Why not New York?” people asked me. I couldn’t quite say New York, everyone’s dream city, felt cold and uninviting, while Boston beckoned me; exciting yet approachable. It’s been about a month now since I made a quick and somewhat spontaneous move from the Ithaca area to New York’s smaller, cleaner, preppier counterpart. Since I arrived, I’ve been working part-time for Swenson Book Development and part-time as a sales associate for The World’s Only Curious George Store, a quaint children’s book and toy store in the bustling heart of Harvard Square in Cambridge. Working at a bookstore is one exciting challenge after another. A customer will come in with an incredibly specific request, like the perfect book for a precocious 6-year-old who loves mermaids but hates princesses. The next will be searching for a gift for a child they barely know and will leave it to me to find a book with near-universal appeal. All the while, I’m becoming familiar with what books people are drawn to and introducing people to the books I love – and to…

How to prepare for a successful reading Once your book is published, expect to schedule events where you read an excerpt of your work out loud to an audience. Reader engagement sells books and one of the tried and true methods for authors are public readings. How can you best prepare for a successful reading? If you have been to enough author readings you know what doesn’t work. The author who does not make any eye contact with the audience but puts their reading glasses on and focuses on the paper in front of his face. The author who adopts the sing-songy voice of a liturgical reader. The author who doesn’t know when to stop and puts the entire audience to sleep. If an audience turns out to hear you, don’t disappoint. Here is a list of 10 steps you can take to best prepare for your reading. Remember it’s an oral performance. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Time the reading so you know how long it is. Longer than 10 minutes and you begin to lose your audience. Slow down your reading. Be kind to your listeners. Enunciate. Make the right selection for a public reading. Some passages simply aren’t appropriate. Dialogue doesn’t work well if there is nothing more than ping-ponging of he said/she said. Reading the end of the book might be a spoiler. The selection shouldn’t raise questions in the mind of the audience you don’t answer. Find an excerpt that stands alone. Edit the excerpt to make…

Before you send out your query or a book proposal, take a second look. Have you answered these questions? What is the “genre” of the book? (humor, history, memoir, travel, how-to, etc) What is the main subject of your book? (what subject headings would a library give your book?) What topics will be covered? (what keywords could describe your book?) Describe your approach to the subject. What makes your book idea different from what is already available on the bookstore shelves about this subject? If the answers aren’t rolling off your tongue easier than your elevator speech, you may want to ask yourself the following questions. In a bookstore, what section would you look for your new book? Describe the books on the shelf next to yours. Be specific about the current competition for your reading audience. Titles, authors, approaches. On the back cover of any book you always find subject heads. Go shopping in a bookstore and look at the back covers of books you would place in the same subject area as yours. Think carefully about what subject heads you want to appear here. It determines where your book will be shelved in any bookstore. Also on the back cover you often find “blurbs” about the book. What do you want those blurbs to say? Who do you imagine would provide a blurb endorsement? What do you envision on the front cover of your book? Describe what your book “looks” like in aesthetic terms. Will there be illustrations,…