Looseleaf Editorial & Production
Book Editing & Design
After you’ve hiked the Line Edit Foothills, you come to a crossroads: Do you try to entice a traditional publisher to edit, design, produce, and market your book; do you do that work on your own to self-publish; or do you start a new writing project?
If you want a publisher to put out your book, you’re going to trek through the Querying Sands, a hostile-looking path. [Read more…] about The Querying Sands
Since you just don’t get enough of me from my own blog, I’m linking you to a guest post I wrote for Charlie Holmberg’s blog. It’s called “Working with an Editor” and I’ll give you one chance to guess what it’s about. Charlie is a good friend, and she comes up with delightfully different ideas for her stories.
This is technically from last week, but I found it this week so it still counts, right? In this blog post editor/author Daniel Nayeri talks about his views on books for girls. The way he uses a Lego ad to describe the target audience he feels is being neglected is awesome. And I think he addresses an issue we have in fiction (markedly, I believe, in genre fiction). If a woman is feminine she’s weak, and if she’s strong it’s only because she has become so masculine. There are some books that break that mold, and I love them. Finding more of them would not stop me loving them either, so I’m on the hunt as much as Nayeri is.
For romance and science-fiction/fantasy/horror titles, Publishers Weekly is no longer requiring physical galleys for reviews. You can now submit electronically on their website. They prefer ePub format (no surprise there), though they’ll accept .mobi and RTF as well. I’m not sure how they would react to a book submitted from an indie author, but the worst they can do is trash it, right? They don’t have anything specific mentioned in the instructions regarding indie authors, so I don’t think it would be a big issue.
Developmental editor Alan Rinzler looks and what it takes to get on the New York Times Bestseller List, mostly by pointing out that conventional wisdom does not apply, and that wonderful writing and wonderful stories will always find a way to the top.
I’ve heard people say that there’s a stigma against self-publishers that makes traditional vs. self-publishing an editor-or decision. I’d like to present some evidence to the contrary that I found in this week’s Publishers Lunch.
Author of No. 1 Kindle bestseller A LITTLE DEATH IN DIXIE, said to have sold over 250,000 units on Amazon, Lisa Turner’s two untitled Southern mysteries, to Tessa Woodward at Harper, in a very nice deal, by Robert Gottlieb at Trident Media Group (world).
Eric Kahn Gale’s debut THE BULLY BOOK, originally a self-published ebook that hit #1 on Amazon on the children’s mystery list and #7 on the children’s book list, about a boy who is just an average kid until he becomes the class grunt; he suspects a bizarre conspiracy and is determined to solve the mystery, to Phoebe Yeh at Harper Children’s, in a pre-empt, in a two-book deal, by Erica Rand Silverman at Sterling Lord Literistic (NA).
One person went from self-publishing to sell her next two books; the other is selling the North American rights to a book he’s already put out. If you reach readers, you can publish either way. It’s not an either-or choice. You do what’s best for your books and your goals.
This is hilarious. Go read it now. Because I said so.
