For a writer of memoirs, Mary Karr has had a charmed life. That is, a lot has happened, almost all of it colorful, much of it painful.
You can mourn the death of publishing or you can start bushwhacking a new book trail. These women certainly have.
Here I am. With my mission: to educate folks about mental illness and to offer support to those who, like myself, suffer from mood disorders.
"Do you think we can get Oprah?" Generally asked by an author whose book is wildly inappropriate for Oprah and who has never actually seen Oprah, but who's heard that Oprah sells books.
Emotional honesty is a lot harder to take seriouslywhen you constantly undercut it by using the same hoary one-liners and jokes from Mr. Show.
Editors want to take authors to the next level or make a splash with a debut. Publishers want to gain traction with new electronic formats. Sales and marketing teams want to make a splash. Everyone is desperate for a hit.
Last night the 16th annual Giller Prize celebrated excellence in Canadian literature, reminding us of the incredible dedication, passion and talent with which authors in this great nation write.
You can see authors smiling on our websites, taking questions on our publisher's web page, chatting on Facebook. And now the author video.
There is a word that publicists love almost as much as "yes." And it's "no." Seems counterintuitive, right? But it's true. There is little I love more than a solid "no."
If change is elusive for most people, real transformation seems far out of reach. But there have been new findings, ranging from neuroscience to genetics, to support the once-mystical notion that inner transformation is real.
I love the form and feel it is mine the way others feel poetry or the short story is theirs, but memoir is still seen as the first cousin of the tabloid, is it not?
Conceived on the beach, The Tide Always Comes Back is woven with hope, humor and gentle reminders of what we know to be true.
Book publishing is not dying, it's evolving. How much energy and money can we save if we stop publishing hardcovers?
What do a Spanish renaissance princess, a book-phobic overweight girl and a vegetarian child desperate for artificial sweeteners have in common? You'd think, not much!
I've never really been able to imagine myself in a job that didn't have something to do with books, which is how I ended up as the HuffPost Books Intern.
One wildly successful program has helped thousands of writers get published. It's called National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. Every November writers are challenged to create a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.
Your publishing career requires maintenance. And sometimes if you want the job done right, you'd better do it yourself, or at least keep an eye out to make sure it's getting done.
When you put something online, it can almost live forever. That means that we have to be careful what we share, what we say, and the footprints we leave online.
As the budding author, you are also President of your own marketing team. I mean think about it: if you write a book or invent a new product, who is going to buy it?
What I learned during my book tour is that I was dying to have people actually read my book, and if they were going to read it, I was first going to have to sell it to them.
Capturing one's best images, thinking, learning and experiences in a book need no longer be something most people aspire to but never accomplish.
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