A Mix of Things

Jessica Faust at Bookends wrote a A Publishing Dictionary explaining commonly used publishing terms.

Adrienne Kress wrote about So you want to get published . . . getting an agent and about So You Want To Get Published . . . from agent to publisher.

On the Shrinking Violet Promotions blog, there were two interesting posts: Marketing Task Recap and More on ARCs.

Writing Advice

Nathan Bansford has written an intereting post on Character and Plot--Inseparable.

The Author! Author! blog by Anne Mini has a good post about The plague of passivity V: Help! I’m tied to a train track!

Editing, Working with Agents, and Doing Contracts Yourself

Jessica Faust at Bookends wrote two good posts, one about the Stages of Editing after the publishing contract is finalized and one about You Have an Agent . . . Now What on what happens once the author-agent relationship is established and what an author can do if problems arise.

Janet Reid, Literary Agent, wrote a blog about what to do if you intend to negotiate a contract for your book without an agent.

On Editors

Nathan Bransford wrote a post about Editing vs. Copyediting on his blog.

Novelist Inc. has posted an interview with Senior Editor Liz Scheier who talks about what she looks for in books and in authors.

Promoting Your Book

Shrinking Violet Promotions has two interesting blog posts about marketing. The first is An Interview with a Real Live Publicist: Random House's Kathy Dunn, which talks about what shy authors can do to help promote their book. The second is BEA ARCs: A Marketing Study, which talks about the different types of marketing your publisher might do for you.

Carol Berg on Creating Suspense

Carol Berg wrote a post, Me, Myself, and I - Part 2, in which she gave to following good advice:

Giving the reader information that the POV character doesn’t have is ONE device that can enhance dramatic tension....Tension is raised when a person in a dramatic situation lacks critical information and knows it. This is the key to many mysteries and suspense stories - things keep happening and the protagonist doesn’t know where the hammer will fall next. It is a sense of inevitable danger....

Example: if you’ve read (or seen) Touching the Void, the story of the two UK climbers in the Andes. One breaks his leg in a terrible storm and the other, to save his own life, is forced to cut the rope. He climbs down, assuming his partner is dead. The guy with the broken leg doesn’t die, and the book tells how he crawls out of a crevasse and all the way back to camp with a broken leg and no water. One of the greatest points of tension in this book is that the guy crawling doesn’t know whether or not his partner has broken camp and left the area. Switching out of his POV would actually KILL tension.

So what if you want the POV character to be “innocent,” unaware of her lack of information? Then you have to add the spooky music other ways. Warnings. Concerned friends or colleagues. Other events that the reader might be able to pick up on. The risk here is making your POV character seem stupid or incredibly naive - both turnoffs. But consider which is more dramatic…having a piano fall suddenly on your hero’s head or having him see the piano dangling and the rope fraying and knowing his foot is caught? Consider whether we really needed to know what dangers Frodo was to face or the entire history of the Ring before he set out on his journey? There was plenty of spooky music playing.

The author-publicist relationship

Stephanie Mayabb, Tolly Moseley, and Rusty Shelton at Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists have written posts on making the most of the author-publicist relationship:

Part One: Fatal flaws of authors
Fatal Flaw #2: Saturating contacts
Fatal Flaw #3: Not playing your part

How Not to Act

You might have heard about this already, but Moonrat has writen a blog post about how an author shouldn't act when an editor is discussing revisions with him pending a book deal. The post is How Important Is Your Book, or, Top Ten Ways to Blow a Book Deal #4

Agents on Partials

Nathan Bransford wrote about what he looks for in a partial in Reading Partials: You've Got 30 Pages, Pal. Some might find the advise useful, especially if you're writing fiction.

Revisions

Jessica Faust at Bookends wrote a good blog post about revisons.

The point I liked best was:

Revisions should only be done if they resonate with you, the author, and if you agree that they will probably make the book stronger. Revisions that are done only because an agent [or critiquer] asked for them are never going to work. If you don’t believe in them you probably don’t understand why they are needed and aren’t going to do exactly what that agent feels needs to be done.