Be Your Own Editor

Contributed by Laura College

These days, nearly every business has consultants, and now you can have one of your own! The ghostwriting profession has expanded significantly in the last ten years, and now there is a middle ground between writing your own book and hiring a ghostwriter. When you hire a ghostwriter as a consultant, the ghostwriter will help you to write your book.

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Every aspiring (or published) writer needs to self-promote these days. And the increase in multimedia avenues has introduced a slew of new ways to get the word out about your book or yourself as a book author. I’ve come across this interesting-sounding teleseminar series, hosted by the website Write and Publish Your Book, that will help explain how you can create a podcast or a blog to promote your book. Whether you’re a published or unpublished author, it’s never too early to create a marketing platform that will increase your appeal to potential literary agents and book publishers.

If you don’t know what a podcast is, or how to create and use one to market yourself as an author or to promote your book, this sounds like a great way to get a handle on the basics. Remember, whether you write fiction or nonfiction: every publisher wants authors with platforms.

The first call is on October 25 at 9:00 p.m. If you’re interested, go to their website and search for “teleseminar”:

Write and Publish Your Book>

For most authors, the inner workings of a book publishing house are like the inner workings of the computer on which they wrote their manuscript: a big mystery. But if you’re lucky enough to sign a contract with a publisher, it’s in your best interest to understand the process of turning a manuscript into a published book.

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Contributed by Dawn Arkin

You have probably heard about writing scams and said, “I’d never do anything that stupid. How could someone think this wasn’t a scam?”

A writer gets a letter in the mail: send us your manuscript for an instant evaluation. Maybe they’re a new writer, maybe they’ve been writing for a while. But one thing is for certain: they all want to be published. And they want it badly.
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The new Sobol Award for novelists was officially announced on September 13, and it sounds like a writer’s dream at first glance: all authors who submit a manuscript must be both unpublished and unagented. “Hey! That’s me!” you say. Plus, the top prize is $100,000, with runner-up awards of $25,000 and $10,000, and $1,000 going to seven other entrants. And you get to attend an “Award Gala,” probably with famous writers! Famous people are always attending galas. But don’t click on that link yet: since word of this award first got out in July, it’s become apparent that the devil may be in the details.

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Originally posted on PublishingCentral.com

There is one quality we always find in really great fiction. The stories may be poorly constructed, to some extent poorly written; plot in the usual sense of the term may be wholly absent; the story may run from five hundred words to five thousand ; it may break any of a hundred rules ; but if it has this one quality, editors seem willing to take it, the public seems willing to read it, and immortality always hovers around it. The stories that have endured, that have come down through generations, the stories that grip and hold, that tighten the heart strings— in these there is one quality that stands out above all, and that quality is—appeal. Sometimes it is called human interest, heart interest, story interest; but those terms are more or less vague and indefinite, as every writer knows who is vainly endeavoring to impale them with his pen. In reality, human interest, heart interest, is simply appeal.

Without it a story may sell, and thousands do—the bare story of mystery in which puppets play a fascinating game, and others of like nature. Such stories may sell without it; but stories with it stand the better chance. Like everything else that is valuable in life, it defies detailed analysis; but it admits of dissection to some extent into its elements. And the first great element of appeal is

Sacrifice

To handle this element with a pen is like trying to follow a moth in a dimly lighted room; it is here and there, and nowhere. But we all know what sacrifice is. It enters into all great and noble deeds ; it is part and parcel of big souls and big hearts. Hearing a tale of a noble sacrifice catches and stills the very heart beats. The papers are full of crude little notes of some one’s sacrifice for a loved one—a boy who eagerly gives his own red life blood to save the life of his mother; the workman who shatters an arm to stay whirling machinery to save a fellow workman’s life; and so it runs on.

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