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.
It's true: social media is here--and there goes your life! Well, maybe not entirely but it sure seems that way sometimes, doesn't it?
These days it seems like everyone's book marketing budget is a little tighter. If you're feeling the pinch, here are some tips that could help keep you on track.
I piled cringe upon cringe Friday -- first because I read Steven Pinker's vivisection of Malcolm Gladwell's new collection, second because of what I found when I Googled a flub Pinker wielded against Gladwell.
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!
