business
Many writers, myself included, keep an eclectic assortment of books on their desks at any given time: a novel or two, a book of poetry or short stories, perhaps a few research books for the WIP. And as might be expected, many of our desks also have a stack of dog-eared books about writing.
I love when people ask for recommendations about books on the topic of writing. There exists such a variety of them: instructional, informational, inspirational. No matter the direction a particular writing resource takes, I always find gold nuggets of wisdom to incorporate into current projects.
In the spirit of a baker’s dozen, below I’ve listed thirteen of my favorite books about writing.
1. LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET by Rainer Maria Rilke (Inspirational)
“…admit to yourself whether you would die if it should be denied you to write,” Rilke writes in the early pages of this classic. The book is a compilation of letters from mentor (Rilke) to mentee (young officer Franz Xaver Cappus). Interspersed throughout the letters are countless bits of wisdom about life, writing, suffering, art.
2. BEFORE AND AFTER THE BOOK DEAL by Courtney Maum (Informational – Business)
This guide to finishing, publishing, promoting, and surviving your first book asks all the hard questions we’re too scared to say aloud: Do I need an MFA? What if I don’t like the offer I get on my book? What happens if I don’t like my agent? What if I die before my book comes out? Maum liaised with countless industry professionals while writing this book; the advice is second-to-none.
3. WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL by Donald Maass (Instructional – Craft)
Touting one of our own here, but this book is too good to not include in this list. I skim this book before starting any new project. It includes invaluable advice on story premise; stakes; plot approaches; and theme, all of which evolve with each new project. “Every protagonist needs a torturous need, a consuming fear, an aching regret…” Maass writes. This book is a must-have on your reference shelf.
4. BIG MAGIC by Elizabeth Gilbert (Inspirational)
This inspirational guide on the balance of fear and creativity is the reason I’m a writer. I was lucky enough to attend one of Gilbert’s talks when she was on tour for this book years ago, and she asked the audience to think about how we’d feel if we didn’t pursue our dreams. Suffice it to say: the next week, I began penning my first novel.
5. SAVE THE CAT WRITES A NOVEL by Jessica Brody (Instructional – Craft)
For the structure-lovers among us, this book breaks down the three-act story structure in a way that prompts interesting questions to consider in our projects. An excellent resource when outlining a project, particularly if you feel your plot is lacking in tension or pace. Don’t get lost in the formulaic nature of some of the chapters: like any writing resource, the information in this book exists to guide you, not constrain you.
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Some of my friends know the whole story, but not many do. I’ve kept details to myself from the start, including the size of my first book deal (major, 2-book) and the expectations of my agent and acquiring editor (also major). In Germany, a thrilling foreign auction fueled all of our hopes. Then the 2008 crash obliterated the global economy, and aside from one other sale that was all the foreign publishers wrote. The splashy Big Five Publisher luncheon that had been scheduled in honor of the book was cancelled (though it had always felt surreal that it had ever been planned). It became clear at some point that my marketing team’s tone had changed—that somewhere along the way we’d moved from genuine excitement to the crossing of fingers to the bracing for a harsh reality, which I now know was probably based upon a clear view of preorders. The book released, but it far from sounded the bell, and then the trickle of disappointment everyone felt turned into a wave.
My debut, the one I’d worked on for ~five years, was a sales dud.
I spoke about it all with a trusted author-friend, who advised me to fight, question, push—get more PR, something—because the numbers were maddeningly unreal to her when I shared them. I purchased ads and a book tour, and wrote more articles, but nothing seemed to move the needle. And I did speak with folks at my publishing house, to see what–if anything–might be done.
Then someone in power delivered a few ominous words that landed like a threat—about the sales threshold that needed to be met for a book to move from hardcover to paperback, about how my book would be published in paperback despite not meeting that threshold only because of the size of my publisher’s debt over my book. About how this was the sort of scenario that killed careers, but wasn’t I “lucky” that I had a two-book deal in order to attempt a recovery.
I did not feel lucky. I felt petrified. That feeling amplified when my editor left, my imprint was shuttered, and I was inherited by another imprint–one that was not invested in me or my story. I came to believe, and not without reason, that I was viewed as a tax write-off.
Might not surprise you to know that I struggled to write what became my second novel. I battled block, wondered if I’d fail at finishing and have to pay back my advance, and had a great deal of doubt about the worthiness of both my story and myself as an author.
But I did finish it–a story about the pursuit of an impossible goal while maintaining hope. It took some astute book clubs for me to recognize the irony of what my subconscious did there.
The Moon Sisters was published in hard cover in 2014. It was awarded starred reviews and close to zero marketing dollars. It did not sell well out of the gate, and so a few weeks after it was released my publisher decided not to publish it in paperback. The End.
I don’t have anything to be ashamed of, right? I did my job and did it well, said my (genuinely wonderful, 4th) editor, delivering the news. […]
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This has been on my brain for some time, and what better time to write about it than the holiday season. Here goes…
I believe we’re forgetting to say our thank you’s. I also believe that because of our on-demand society, we’re forgetting that human beings don’t function like an app. While you can get a good Barolo in the hour to enjoy with your dinner ordered from Seamless, your marketing team may not deliver as quickly when you text them at 11 pm for an update.
So spend some time this holiday season saying thank you to those that have given you a referral, plugged your work, given you a compliment, provided sage counsel, or just lent a good trusting ear. And as you begin 2022, don’t allow your attachment to desire overcome business etiquette. Be patient with responses. Be gracious with requests. Remember that there are boundaries when it comes to the workday. Be mindful of how you’re communicating. Be mindful of why you’re communicating.
Now, let’s unpack some PR and marketing questions asked in the Writer Unboxed Facebook group:
How can you persuade yourself that marketing is necessary, that contrary to how it feels, marketing does not drain the soul from your body?
You don’t have to persuade yourself that marketing is necessary. You already know it is. And you may never feel comfortable doing it, but it’s important you make peace with it. I was reading an article today written by a client Elazar Aslan, co-author with Joe Loizzo of Boundless Leadership: The Breakthrough Method to Realize Your Vision, Empower Others, and Ignite Positive Change, he writes that clear decisions start with clarity of the mind. What could distort our lens is ignoring your reality.
You can’t ignore what’s part of your work even though it’s not the preferred part of your work. This might be TMI, but when I came home from the hospital after my second C-section, I made sure I had stool softener in my medicine chest. Find your stool softener.
What is the most efficient way to do marketing vs. what do people think is necessary but isn’t?
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Author and Publisher Vijaya Bodach
One of the best things about the author community is the cheerleading section of writers who support every blog post, new release, and story as if they were their own. It’s only fitting then, that in my last Author Up Close feature of the year, I spotlight one of Writer Unboxed’s most supportive members, Vijaya Bodach. Vijaya grew up in India and now lives in South Carolina. She’s a scientist who became a children’s writer and publisher, an atheist who became a Christian. And as the author of over seventy books for children, her journeys, both the physical and spiritual ones, have played important roles in her writing career. In today’s Q&A, Vijaya shares some of that journey and wisdom with the WU community, and unsurprisingly, she’s just as motivational in her Q&A as she is in the comments.
GW: Thank you so much for agreeing to this Q&A. The first thing I like to ask authors is about their author origin story. It’s kind of like a superhero origin story but with a pen.
VB: After nearly a decade of reading WU, I feel as if I’ve arrived at some level to be featured here, so thank you for inviting me, Grace. My origin story, as you can imagine, begins in childhood and is tied to my heroes—Albert Schweitzer, Fr. Damien of Molokai, Mother Teresa. I dreamed of being a doctor-nun. However, I lost my faith at age 12 (that terrible problem of suffering) so the convent went out of the equation, but around the same time, I read A. J. Cronin’s Adventures in Two Worlds, and I knew I wanted to be like him: practice medicine and later in life, write.
I studied microbiology in college, worked as a research scientist, and eventually earned a PhD in biochemistry and biophysics, enjoying the intellectual freedom that academia provided. I married my college sweetheart. Then came babies. They became the priority. I wasn’t going to miss out on any part of motherhood, so I stayed at home to raise them. I’ve not regretted a single minute. My husband has been hugely supportive. When I was pregnant with my second baby, I took a children’s writing class, and it was a homecoming. I immediately embarked on the Great American Novel but realized very quickly I didn’t have the necessary skills, so I focused on shorts—stories, poems, articles for children’s magazines. That was twenty years ago. I’ve learned so much and still have so much further to go (always the gap) but along the way, discovered writing to be another healing art.
GW: You’re a hybrid author who has published work across a number of topics including botany, science, math, as well as YA fiction. Why do you write about these subjects, and what have you learned about the market for your types of books?
VB: I’ve always loved the basic sciences, understanding the nature of things, how they work, so I sought publishers in these areas. I also have a knack for explaining complex topics to kids, how toys work, for instance, so writing for children is a great fit. But the biggest reason is my sense of wonder that I share with […]
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I believe most of us here focus our writing efforts on long-form fiction and nonfiction, but Scrivener is also great for creating and organizing shorter works and non-writing projects.
Here are a few ideas for getting value from Scrivener beyond your manuscripts.
Blog Posts, Newsletters, and Articles
I have one Scrivener project that contains all of my blog posts and newsletters from the last decade. They’re organized by year and month, but you could just as easily sort them by topic or website.
I use the Label field to color code them by website, which also lets me create a list of every blog post I’ve ever written for, say, Writer Unboxed with a couple of clicks. Then, once I have that list, I can easily search within it for a specific word or phrase.
You can use other fields like Keywords or Status to track things like topics, site, and submission status. Even just scanning the titles has saved me from accidentally writing a post on a topic I already covered last year.
By having all of my posts in one place, I can not only avoid embarrassing duplicates, but also quickly find an old post and use it as the basis for an updated version, or for an article.
It’s also pretty cool to instantly see that I’ve written more than 270K words in blog posts since 2011.
Storing my newsletters in the same project allows me to easily create a blog post from the public portion of my newsletter content. I also have a folder where I capture ideas for future posts and newsletters so everything’s in one place.
To get the blog post out, I just copy and paste the text into WordPress or MailChimp, or export (File>Export) the selected document to a DOCX if I need to send it to someone. You can also export to HTML, MultiMarkdown, and other formats.
Poems and Short Stories
Similar to using Scrivener for blog posts and articles, you can create a single project to hold all of your poems or short stories. Or maybe one project for each topic or series or “world.”
You’d then have the ability to move the documents around to play with the order, and compile varying combinations of files.
Public Appearances
This might not apply to everyone just yet, but if you’ve ever submitted a workshop proposal, or been asked to speak at a workshop, Scrivener can be an excellent way to track everything about that (potential) appearance.
For example, I paste in the key email(s) from the conference/group organizer so I have the details of who, what, when, where, how long, and the payment offered.
Under the section for that event, I have separate documents for
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A good writer can transform any idea into a captivating, intriguing story. In writing, masterful execution can compensate for a mediocre idea.
You couldn’t say the same about book cover design as it’s, first and foremost, a marketing tool.
A proper cover should target a book’s genre, cater to your target audience’s preferences, and intrigue the viewer. A good idea — the main pillar of an effective cover design — helps achieve that.
So
As a writer, you have two challenges:
Here at MiblArt – book cover design company, we can help you with both challenges.
If you ever struggled with a book cover idea or were unsure about the ones you have, we can provide you with ideas and consulting for free.
MiblArt team works with any fiction and nonfiction genres and has already helped dozens of authors get the covers that do their books justice.
As for the book cover design itself, we offer
Take a look at the cover examples we have recently done.
We want to help you get the book cover you’ll love. And if you need help with a book cover idea, feel free to contact us
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What’s the most challenging thing for you during the book cover design process? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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