We authors are constantly begging for readers, and then we’re constantly begging those readers to please review our books on Amazon, Goodreads, and the like. (Considering Amazon keeps removing reviews of my books, it feels like a losing battle, but hope springs infernal.) Readers who don’t review regularly are sometimes paralyzed by the task, which feels daunting to them. It’s
Yet another Twitter (or X, if you prefer) post asking about paying for a manuscript edit before querying and whether it (a) makes the story better and/or (b) increases your chances of landing an agent. Way back when (and I remember those days because I’m old), you could send a manuscript off to an agent and, if they saw potential
I have been informed by my teens that proper punctuation in texts is seen as passive-aggressive. Sadly, I simply cannot stop myself from typing full words and using punctuation (unless I’m trying to be funny). So, while I acknowledge my feels on these may be old-fashioned, and understand that the point of any communication is to get one’s meaning across,
Someone posted a question on Twitter (X) earlier that caught my eye: What do you think of publishers that don’t offer distribution to bookstores? My immediate gut reaction was, “Nope.” Now, to be fair, my husband will tell you “nope” is my default setting. So I paused to read a few responses. Many requested clarification in that there is a
As the number of major publishing houses seemingly continues to shrink, and with more and more people seeking representation from an evaporating pool of agents, many hopeful authors turn to small (sometimes called “indie”) publishers. These are publishing imprints that don’t require agents to submit manuscripts. They’re often run by a small group, or sometimes even just one person. They
I read a tweet a little while ago about “high-concept stories” and how they can be distilled into a single sentence. This is, generally speaking, true. But then the example given was… Well, I’m not going to post it, but it was not a high-concept logline. It was more of a tag line. You know, the kind of thing you’d
Lately on Twitter, I’ve seen many hopeful authors announcing they’ve finally gotten some kind of request from a query. Though the most excitement stems from “full requests” (meaning an agent has requested to read the full manuscript), even partial requests are a cause for celebration. And… Yeah. I think authors need to embrace even small victories. But I fear, based
As often happens, a question arises on social media (in this case, Twitter) and I spend way too much time answering it via a long thread. So I thought I’d also put it all here in a handy, dandy blog post. Does anyone read blogs anymore? Well, just in case someone does, here’s the setup: I admitted that I once
I get a lot of questions about age categories for books. It seems the lines have become somewhat blurred as more and more adults pick up young adult, and even middle grade, novels. So many writers think that, based on their characters’ ages, their book must be x, y, or z. But character age is not the only—or even the
Years ago, when I was feeling bad about my lack of success as a writer, I made a timeline of my writing history to remind myself of how far I’d come. I don’t know where that timeline is now, or even what software I used to make it, but I do still find looking back at my journey gives me