Promotion and More

Nathan Bransford wrote about how a writer can move up from Small Presses to Big Publishers. He also had guest blogger Michelle Moran write on How to Promote Your Book (Part 1) and (Part 2). His second guest blogger, M.J. Rose, wrote about how well Book Marketing works.

Shrinking Violet Promotions wrote about Following the Cyber Trail of similar books to yours to find promotion opportunities.

Tom Doherty on The Mac Blog wrote about Trade and Mass Market books and how well the sell.

G.B.H. Hornswoggler wrote about why booksellers might skip buying a book to stock in their stores.



On a side note, I've always wondered why some people like paranormal romances. Arachne Jericho answers that question in Why the Vampire Romance is Taking Over Your Grocery Market Shelf.

What to Include and How to Write

Jessica Faust at Bookends posted today on when you should index your book, include your acknowledgements, etc., in the publishing process.

The Rejecter posted on what rules of writing an author needs to follow to get published.

Synopsis, Hooks, and Publishing

Natalie wrote How To Write A Synopsis on her Between Fact and Fiction blog.

On Hatrack River Writers Workshop, there's a discussion on How to Bait Your Hook and Catch Readers...

Nathan Bansford wrote about Hardcover vs. Paperback Debuts explaining why some debut novels come out as hardbacks and others as trade or mass paperback.

Jessica Faust wrote about the pros and cons of working with a new agent at an established agency.

And over on the Tor blog, Irene Gallo posted Todd Lockwood’s Stormcaller, [cover art] from sketch to finish.

Publishing, Promotion, and More

Kristin Nelson wrote a blog post on E-Book Royalties and on What Makes A New York Times Bestseller?

Nathan Bransford wrote a blog post on The Difference Between Mysteries, Suspense and Thrillers.

Shrinking Violet Promotions wrote about How Elizabeth Gilbert Sold One Million Copies of Her Book and on Finding Your Cyber-Niche.

Jessica Faust at Bookends wrote What Titles Evoke about choosing a title and Does Your Hook Match Your Genre? in your query letter.

Jo Walton on Tor.com wrote an article on Bloat: threat or menace? about bloat in writing

Bookmaking

Here's how they used to make books:


Printing a Book, Old School from Armin Vit on Vimeo.


Here's bookmaking using the latest on-demand technology:




It's interesting stuff to know.

On Writing

Lucienne Diver has a series of guest bloggers on her livejournal. They discuss the different aspects of writing epic fantasy (though the advice can apply to other genre):

Promotion by Lynn Flewelling

Narrative Arc and the Multi-Book Fantasy Series by David B. Coe

Building Worlds—Epic or Contemporary Style by Diana Pharaoh Francis

Making it Personal, Making it Real by Carol Berg

and she also had some mystery guest-bloggers:

Top 5 things to remember about mystery

Mystery Series by Tony Perona



Deanna Carlyle has some general writing articles on her website:

17 Ways to Improve Your Descriptions

35 Springboards for Creating Sympathetic Characters



And Ally Carter wrote about writing YA novels:

The wrong questions...

The questions that aren't getting asked at all

About the Publishing Industry

Shrinking Violet Promotions posted interesting articles on 12 3/4 Ways to Promote Your Novel and Writing Big.

Jessica Faust at Bookends wrote about the pros and cons of Hiring an Editor to help polish your manuscript.

Victoria Strauss at Writers Beware! wrote about A Publishing Contract Clause to Beware concerning copyright transfers.

Kristin Nelson wrote about Overnight Success Takes 2 to 10 years.

Paperback Writer wrote about questions to ask agents and editors.

Someone wrote an article about Book Publishing Accounting: Some Basic Concepts.

Author Deanna Carlyle wrote very enlightening articles on Do You Know Your Foreign Rights? and The Price of One Book: Or, How Come My Advance is So Low? and Who’s Got the Power? How a Publisher’s Sales Force Can Make or Break Your Book.

Ever More about Queries

Nathan Bransford wrote about Things I Don't Need to Know in a Query. He also wrote Query Stats by Word Count in which he said:

...I basically decided that there is a sweet spot in query word count between 250 and 350 words. Anything shorter than 250 usually (but not always) seems too short and anything longer than 350 usually (but not always) seems too long.

Jessica Faust at Bookends wrote about Submitting Collections.


On a somewhat related note, Moonrat wrote about why you should never submit unagented to publishing companies. It's the editor-side view of why an author should get an agent.

About Artists and Cover Designs

If you every wanted to see a cover artist paint a cover, here are a few video demos on the Tor.com site:

Dan Dos Santos, Painting Fast
Jon Foster Demo
Rick Berry Demos

There was also a post on SF/F Book Cover Review, Hugo Edition: Brasyl by Pablo Defendini which talks about cover design.

A Bit of Everything

Nathan Bransford wrote a post on Unagented Revisions. He explains how it works when an agent suggests revisions to an author before taking them on as a client.

Evil Editor answered an important question about how to write a good query.

Author May Vanderbilt wrote a short but useful post about writing and revising rules of thumb.

Author Anne Dayton wrote about cutting favorite but unneeded passages from your writing. To quote from it:

In The Book of Jane...we had this awesome character Yasmina who did all kinds of hilarious things. She was really hapless and she was always getting into trouble, and provided a ton of comic relief. The thing was, that was all she did. She didn’t have a plotline, and didn’t grow, and ended up feeling really flat and extraneous because of it, no matter how ridiculous her antics were. May and I worked with her and worked with her, trying to save her, but finally, she ended up on the cutting room floor. It was so hard to say goodbye, because she was a pretty major character. But in the end I’m so glad we got rid of her. She added something to the book, but she also slowed it down and made it more complicated and less focused than it needed to be. The book was better for it, and I learned a valuable lesson about holding onto things for the wrong reasons...