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‘When talking to an agent or publisher about your novel, practically the first thing out of your mouth should be the genre,’ says agent Rachelle Gardner. With so many books out there, readers need help finding the ones that beckon. Genre is a key tool for that, with each genre bringing its own set of expectations. Thrillers offer high stakes and tension, for example, while a romance leans towards feeling and relationship. Genre is not an exact science, though. Although most books will fit into more than one, it’s impossible to write a book that can’t be helpfully described by genre. You wouldn’t want your book to be so different as to not fit into a genre, because then how would market it? It’s useful to think about genre at the planning stage, too, as it will affect the way you think about plot, pacing and character arcs. If you’re planning a cozy murder mystery, for example, it will be long on clues and red herrings but short on gore and police procedure. Tips to help you nail down the genre of your book. Think about audience age. Non-adult books should include the target audience as part of the genre description, More

Substack is all the rage. You can write in newsletter/essay form and start building a platform, because opening a Substack account makes you part of an instant community. New writers are jumping on it. I am receiving queries from people who claim their publishing credits are their Substack articles. A lot of writers are throwing their energies into fleshing out their Substack account, thinking it gives them credibility. I think some are seeking shortcuts to the hard work of gaining a platform. Pros It is simple and lo-tech. (Some cancel a website in exchange for Substack.) You own the mailing list. Your message is delivered both on the site and via email. It has good SEO for search engines. You can amass paid subscribers. Cons It doesn’t replace email marketing. No landing pages, signup pages, or lead magnets that a lot of businesses use. Design is limited. The only way to monetize is via paid subscriptions. No selling ebooks, courses, digital products, merch. Must use another platform. You are basically renting space on Substack. They can delete your account. While you have the mailing list, if your account is deleted, you can lose all your material. No affiliate marketing. No heavy More

I reached a point this week where I was fed up with all the emails about how to market, buy this, subscribe to that, hire this consultant, or sign up for that course. “Become a best selling author!”  Most are from people I never heard of before. Clearly many of these people made all their money from preying on eager writers. I’ve tried talking to some of them, to vet them, and their true colors often come out. They don’t give a darn about what you or I do. I’m not saying they aren’t legit, or even that they are scams. Many are just into milking desperate writers for a few bucks. And all I could think of was how much these purchases and incessant emails got in the way of me enjoying the simple task of writing. Some are good. Some intrigued me. I got blown off by one, so I unsubscribed. Many of them are in the job for now, until sales drop, then they redesign themselves to be something else for what appears to be a fresh idea for a new round of buck-collecting. What I am saying is this about these people trying to make money off More

A recent library fundraiser featured Abraham Verghese, author of The Covenant of Water. Instead of standing at a podium talking at us, he engaged in conversation with Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers. . They sat in easy chairs on a dais and discussed Verghese’s book, writing habits, and philosophies of life. For the release of my historical novel, Courting the Sun, I held a launch event at a local, independent bookstore. Christine DeSmet, writing coach and author of the Fudge Shop mystery series, served as my conversation partner. I chose her because I knew and enjoyed her interview style. Conversation partners are becoming an increasingly popular strategy for both fiction and non-fiction author events. Their draw includes the promise of a “two-for-one” experience. The audience gets an engaging conversationalist—often another author or notable person—eliciting the most personal perspectives from the featured author, along with the best, juiciest anecdotes. A casual but focused and authentic conversation about a book and its author, with the option of the author reading a preselected passage, can offer a truly meaningful and memorable experience for readers. The result is a greater likelihood that attendees will talk about the book afterward with other potential readers. Word of mouth can be a powerful mover More

In the recent and pending Anthropic $1.5B settlement, a lot of writers were disappointed that their work was pirated, used, yet they did not qualify for this settlement, which amounted to about $3,000 per pirated book. One of the main disqualifiers was not having filed a formal copyright with the United States Copyright Office. https://www.copyright.gov/ I read a recent article that cried foul a bit, saying a lot of writers had their work stolen yet they will not be compensated, because of this formality. Why do some writers file and others do not? Most traditional publishers automatically do so for each book, but self-publishing and indie published authors don’t often do so. What are the pros and cons? Pros 1) You demonstrate legal ownership. 2) You earn the legal right to file a copyright infringement lawsuit in federal court. 3) It’s easier to sell rights to a work, potentially increasing its monetary value. 4) Decreases odds of being pirated. Cons 1) Fees. Minimum $65. 2) One more nuisance step in publishing that will not likely generate a return. 3) To enforce in court is often a financial burden. 4) It protects the way an idea was expressed, but the idea can More

Well, I have bronchitis from Covid, my third week of having this damn bug. I am not particularly happy about the situation, but I am trying to see the bigger picture. I am better, just not BETTER. Some would say Covid is the bigger picture, but it’s not. The bigger picture is who I am and what I do and what I want out of life. Covid is a bump in the road. So I write. . . daily. I put on my music, light my candle, fix my tea, and I sit down to work. Sure, I could tell myself I should be lying down, but is that the truth? I’m still resting seated in a chair at my keyboard. I can’t quite go to the gym. I went two weeks ago and crashed. I went last week and crashed. Next week I’ll try again. But for now, I do gentler Tai Chi exercises. The less you move, the worse you feel. I don’t want to return to the gym and can hardly move. What’s the point? The point is you do not let one obstacle stop you. In the gym we have what we call modifications if someone More

Last week I wrote in my weekly newsletter how I was dealing with COVID, on my 8th day of it, as a matter of fact. Well, I returned to the gym and three days later I had a bit of a relapse. Guess I jumped too soon. But that meant my world slowed down, during a time when so many people seemed to have lost their lives in Charlotte, in Utah, atop the remembrance of New York and DC. I felt like it was COVID time all over again, and I almost didn’t want to come out of my room. I emphasized to my followers and friends to avoid engagement with people who chastise them or whatever they represented. I still believe that, but I want to clarify in light of current events. We can hold conversations if we have differing views. I have loads of friends in both parties. I have friends who are and are not Christian. I have old and young friends, gay and straight friends, published and unpublished friends, gym and non-gym friends. To be honest, there’s nobody exactly like me. Just like there’s nobody exactly like you. To wait to find someone just like you More

I’ve spent a lot of time recently trawling through directories of agents and publishers, and I’ve learned some things. Some of these no-nos are golden oldies, but others are newer. Tech avoidance They receive a lot of stories set in the near past – say 20 or 30 years ago – which they put down to avoiding dealing with tech. Technology like the internet and smartphones and satnav have made many traditional plot points harder to pull off or even obsolete. It’s not so easy now for a character to be ignorant of a particular piece of information, or to go completely under the radar, or for all sorts of the misunderstandings to take place that have traditionally driven so many stories. But the world is changing, and we can’t run away from that. No idea about genre You might think your book is special and unique, too unique to fit into any genre, but genre classifications – which are now incredibly granular – are the basic currency of book marketing. If you can’t think of a genre for your book, you’re in trouble. To decide on a genre, look for similar books on Amazon and see where they sit. More

What writer hasn’t wished for regular income from a regular column? This year is my third year as a columnist, and I love it. Believe it or not, some markets are looking for columnists. They are also open to serials, which are similar to a column. You can pitch column ideas to your local newspaper, magazine or regional publication. Some markets that are open to columns include Wellcome Collection (https://wellcomecollection.org/get-involved/propose-a-story), The Cut and Inc.com. You can also go solo, writing a column on Medium or through Substack, and once you get traction and regular readers, an editor may approach you to write your column for their publication. If not, approach them with statistics under your belt; statistics showing you have the material for column writing, and you have the talent to attract followers. Any editor would love you bringing your readership with you to theirs. Once you land a column, or are in the throes of establishing one, here are tips to keep it going: Know the Audience Know and understand who you are writing for. The editor who enlisted me to write a column about books emphasized that the audience is readers, but I need to be able to More

I received a sweet email from a fan of my novels. “Hi Hope.  I just wanted to thank you again for your newsletter and to let you know I requested Murder in Craven at the Vancouver, WA library. I have a goal to read forty books this year and am hoping to add the Craven series to the list. Money is tight right now, so I try to add books from local authors to my library’s collection.” What a wonderful gesture! Authors ask their fans to buy their books all the time, but do they ask them to order the books via the library? Because if the book is not on the library shelf, and someone asks, there’s a chance the book will be purchased and stocked. And if the book is part of a series, even better. A library buys a title once for it to be read free by dozens of readers. To some authors, that means dozens of readers not buying the book. While that is partly the case, those readers just might buy other books in the series, or buy another book outside the series, tell their book club about the book they read from the More