I see a lot of cool stuff from authors before anyone else has even heard of them. 2009 was no exception. Here are the highlights from my own personal reading list
Before you even target a blog for your pitch, you should get to know them first. Here's how.
How do two people write a novel together? It's the first question everyone asks. Our response? "How do people write novels alone?"
Maybe that's what miracles are. Something grabs you up by the roots and transplants you somewhere new. And after the shock wears off, you get another surprise. You find that you're thriving there.
I realized that we were all descending, en masse, into a vast swamp of self-promotion that is just not becoming of the writerly class. So I have come up with ten-step pathway to grace for writers.
One of the biggest mistakes authors make is selling their book. Remember it's not about the book; it's about what the book can do for the reader.
Do you feel strongly enough about the impact of what you have to say that you can live with cutting down trees to make your book?
Everyone's clamoring about the rise of the Indie author. Couple that with blended printing and distribution channels and you've got a recipe for Indie author world domination...maybe.
Orhan Pamuk's new novel, "The Museum of Innocence", is about the collectible evidence - the earrings, the cigarette stubs, the views out the bedroom window - of a blissful love affair going bad.
Current Waldenbooks employees have come forward to alert the public that the company plans to dispose of many unsold books in the cheapest, easiest, least responsible way possible - by trashing them.
If publishers can no longer accurately guess at an audience even for formerly safe categories like adult trade nonfiction, will they continue to gamble so much money on big advances for a small number of books whose success is increasingly difficult to predict?
Suketu Mehta's masterwork, Maximum City, did for Bombay what the immortals Dickens and Balzac did for London and Paris.
In artist communities around our country, it is imperative that we support each other and gather the support of others outside the community, especially in times of trouble.
I wanted to write about the Battle of the Marne because I regard it as the most decisive land battle since the Allies defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. I regard its impact to have been spectacular.
When other girls were asking for Barbie dolls, I was wishing for a typewriter, one that would actually tap out a world of my own creation.
Assumptions that the Publishers Weekly Top 10 Books of 2009 emerged from the hazy cigar smoke of an old boys' club are likely misguided.
We've been doing "online" for a long while now and we've seen many changes, but one thing has remained consistent: regardless of where you go or how you pitch, you must know your market.
My granddaughter who was eight kept my book by her bedside and was fascinated with everything concerning it. One day she told her mother she wanted to do a book report on "I Can Do This."
You don't know the right people and traditional publishers don't believe your book will ever sell. Fortunately for you, the publishing industry is in transition and you might have a chance.
A few years back, proving your platform meant whipping out your big black book of press clipping. You know, the ones that proved you could get into the media at will. Not any more.
At age 51, I never thought I'd be "debuting". In fact, I thought I'd be on the downward slope of a successful advertising career. But, plans were meant for changing.
