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…

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,…

Elaine Mansfield is the author of Leaning Into Love: A Spiritual Journey Through Grief (Larson, 2014). Gold Medal Winner of the Independent Publisher Book Award 2015, her memoir captures your heart—from the extraordinary closeness of Elaine’s marriage to how she and Vic transformed their struggle with cancer and despair into a conscious relationship with mortality. After Vic’s death, Elaine leaned into her ongoing love as grief led her through overwhelming emotional and spiritual depths on a journey beyond their time together into her new life. Working closely with Elaine Mansfield during the past several years I observed her as a writer who pulled others to her words using social media. When I review her social media metrics over two years it tells a powerful story about how a book found its audience. More than a year after her book’s release, Elaine’s blogs continue to be routinely shared several hundred times on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. She has more than 1,000 Friends on Facebook, 4,000 followers on Twitter, and 500+ on LinkedIn. And she has engaged with most of them in conversations about the topic of death. When I hear from aspiring authors they have no interest or intention in building an audience platform online I want to introduce them to Elaine and let them hear her story of finding readers. Jill: You have a following and community of readers with whom you engage on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google + that is the envy of many aspiring authors. I know…