Synopsis

For those working on writing a synopsis of their novel:

Miss Snark wrote a blog post about what a synopsis is actually used for, and she also did a Crapometer on a bunch of synopsis.

Author Lisa Gardner has a useful lecture on writing synopsis on her Craft of Writing website page.

How Agents Do Their Work

Jessica Faust at Bookends wrote several posts on how different agents agent differently, including Standard Agent Practices and I Get Paid to Pester. She also wrote an interesting, semi-related post about This Book Won't Sell.

Nathan Bransford wrote a post about How Long Does It Take to Sell A Novel?

Ask Editorial Anonymous wrote about The Heroic Journey of the Requested Manuscript.

More Personal News

I just don't have the time right now that I used to. I can no longer read a large number of publishing/writing blogs. I barely have time to do my writing. So I'm going to reduce my posting to once a week, probably on Mondays near noon CST.

An alternative is that I can post interesting information as I discover it. However, I'd then like to set up a feed that allows readers to sign up to have new posts delivered directly to their e-mails. Does anyone know how to do this? I've seen them on other blogs, but it's not immediately obvious to me how to set it up on blogger.

Thanks.

Statistic on Returns

On GalleyCat, from the article Who Knew? Eliminating Returns Reduces The Book Business's Carbon Footprint:

In 2005, 31% of the roughly 1.5 billion books printed in the US were returned to publishers.

That's nearly one-third of all the books shipped! As for the reason the return policy is currently needed, GalleyCat wrote an article called Why Printing Fewer, Non-Returnable Books May Not Save the World. In the article, Wiley marketer Andrew Wheeler is quoted saying:

If there are three books on a shelf, and two customers come looking for it, two sales will result. If there is one book on a shelf, and two customers come, one of them is out of luck—and so is the bookseller. You end up with returns because it's impossible to always have precisely one book for every purchaser in the right place at the right time.

Writing and Money

Jennifer Jackson wrote about deals may be about more than money - the agent perspective and Royalties.

Kristin Nelson at Pub Rants wrote about Royalty Statement Time, Payment Schedules, and Payments on Pub.

Miss Snark wrote about Split Royalty Checks and Royalties on "Net".

I'll Post Regularly Again Soon

I've been down with a severe case of bronchitis for the last two weeks. I'm better now and busy playing catch-up. I will try to get back to posting things next week.