Author-ized Articles

In my experience, pitching yourself as a podcast interview subject is very different from pitching your book to a publisher or getting on television, with one exception: you have to do your homework.
Pitching your manuscript to a publisher requires a formal proposal containing certain elements, such as a marketing plan and a competing and complementary […]

To find out what literary agents and acquisitions editors are really looking for, read their blogs. Or rather, their LiveJournals, in many cases. LiveJournal and Blogger/Blogspot seem the platforms of choice. Blogger is both simple and free, though it lacks the ability to tag or categorize posts, making it hard to search by topic. I’m […]

There’s an inside joke (a “meme” in blogging lingo) about being “a nobody” going around the blogosphere. Person A referred to Person B as “a nobody in the PR world,” and suddenly we had the International Association of Nobodies, with a logo and everything, as fellow PR nobodies rallied around Person B.
Since I’m not in […]

A hook is a one-line zinger that describes your book in a way that would let anyone’s grandmother in Topeka understand not just what the book is about but why she should buy it.
Without one, it’s very difficult to sell a book to a publisher. That’s because the editor your agent approaches at the publishing […]

What’s the thing most consultants and professionals ask me when they first hear that my business is turning people like them into authors? Not the one you might expect. The first question is usually “How do you do that?” Almost inevitably, though, when I explain that I’m a ghostwriter and editor, they ask “Do you […]

Most avid readers know how awkward it is to read lying down. You end up twisting either your neck or your wrist—or both—at an awkward angle. Reading while lying on your stomach at the beach is a little easier on the eyes, but not much good for the elbows, and reading while lying on your […]

A recent report that only 20% of CEOs who blog write their own blogs has some prominent bloggers and PR professionals up in arms—even though they take it for granted that the CEOs in question don’t write their own speeches or annual reports, never mind their own books. Why should blogs be different? Should ghostwriters […]

In many respects, the worlds of fiction and nonfiction are very different. One of the most notable differences, from the author’s perspective, is that nonfiction books are usually sold on the basis of a proposal and written afterwards, whereas a novelist needs a completed manuscripts before approaching publishers. (This requirement may be waived for those […]

Many novelists dream of selling the film rights to their books for big money. Certain kinds of nonfiction, like memoirs, true crime, and political exposes, are also popular with Hollywood. In most cases, however, publishers won’t be interested in the film rights for your cookbook, business book, or how-to.
But don’t dismiss the performance possibilities of […]

Random House and Oprah Winfrey have more in common than you might think. Hopeful authors see both as the route to fame and fortune, and besiege them with proposals. And both publishers and the media reject—or even ignore—most of the pitches they get.
This isn’t just because proposals outnumber available TV segments (or publishing slots), either. […]