By Writer's Relief staff: If you’ve sent your query to a handful of literary agents and one comes back asking you for an exclusive, don’t get n...

I have been blessed to be a published author both by the traditional process and I have self-published where I managed every aspect of the process. From both processes, here is what I have learned.

The process and emotions are eerily similar. I plot, plan and carefully script the query to my novel hoping that the object of my desire will say yes please, show me a bit more.

Maybe the Mayans had the American publishing industry in mind when their calendar conked out. If you thought 2012 was a bad year for traditional book publishing, and it was, you'll be nostalgic for it by the end of 2013.

One time I got a package containing a tattered copy of my book along with a handwritten note. To a writer, this is like going up to a stranger and telling them that a) they could use some plastic surgery, and b) you'd like to perform it yourself.

In modern America, the heyday of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, also known as the WASP, is some decades behind us. But in American literature, WASPs continue to fascinate -- perhaps because the publishing industry is one of their last redoubts.

I keep meeting authors who rave about their agents as if they were combinations of the Buddha and Captain America. My own experience with agents has been anything but positive, and the first agent who took me on was a paragon of imperfection.

By Writer's Relief staff: Beginner and veteran writers alike can be victimized by shady literary agents. If you don’t know what to look for, you...

So, after years of torturing yourself beyond emotional repair, making several highly unnecessary sacrifices to the gods, and, finally, signing a contract (in blood) entitled Deal with the Devil, you've managed to finish your book.

From Writer's Relief staff: It’s hard to be patient when you’ve sent out a query letter and still haven’t heard back from your literary age...

From Writer’s Relief staff: Let’s face it: Writing a book requires different skills than writing a query letter. While there are no “rules”...

Celebrity entertainers and politicians have no problem getting their memoirs published. So a book partly about celebrity entertainers and politicians should have had no problem getting published, right?

From Writer's Relief staff: In the tradition of David Letterman’s Late Show Top Ten, the submission strategists at Writer’s Relief want to shar...

"Dracula" author Bram Stoker was more than a skillful Gothic penman. He also studied law, and his talents are evident in the legal contract for his bl...

I have made a couple horrible, irremediable decisions in my life, but this decision to accept the writing of The Road Back for Knopf would go down as the worst I have ever made.

I started to believe I had written a dreadful book, that Sideways was unpublishable. Then I got a call informing me that St. Martin's Press had offered $5,000.

From Writer's Relief Staff: In the old days of publishing, literary agents had a clear and pretty much singular function: to advocate on behalf of ...

The 'slush pile' is the collection of unasked for, unpublished work that writers send to publishers. Wading through it is often a thankless task given...

One of the most painful lessons I struggled to accept was that my words and ideas were not sacred.

Every time I walk into a bookstore and I see a novel written by a celebrity or some newly-minted reality star, I cringe. Yes, I'm jealous and resentful. But the truth is the book publishing business is a terrible business.

From Writer's Relief staff: If you’re an aspiring writer, you’ve probably got an “I’d like to thank the academy” speech ready and waiting...

The wish for fame, so illusory a thing, can kill you. Or at least, it can kill your novel.

Big rejection numbers in publishing are not important. Big numbers in general are not important. No, the number to worry about is one. One. That's how many sentences you have to impress an agent or editor.

"We're closing in on a deal," my agent told me on the phone. "I'm just turning him upside-down now and shaking him for loose change."...

After the media tsunami surrounding the Casey Anthony verdict, 'analysts' have come forward stating she could reap nearly seven figures for a book deal. That's a crock and here's why.