Rachelle Gardner

I was amazed at the comments on my Friday and Saturday posts, not just the number, but the depth, the passion and the thoughtfulness in many of them. It shows how diverse we all are, and how many different opinions and ideas we can have about the same topic. Again, I want to say I…

First of all, I want to reiterate that I absolutely love all the conversation yesterday’s post inspired. This is why I blog – to have an interactive experience, and to be able to engage with the writing and publishing community. It’s invaluable to hear all your perspectives, regardless of whether I agree or disagree (or…

This week another major publisher, Harlequin, announced their entry into the self-publishing business. The blogs have lit up over it and there’s a lot of interesting reading out there. I think Victoria Strauss gave a great overview on the Writer Beware blog (here.) I have to admit that the idea of all these major publishers…

Answering Questions from Last WeekI’m glad my two posts last week, How Do Book Royalties Work? and Is Your Book Worth It? seemed to be helpful. There were quite a few questions, a few of which I’ll try to answer here. Sara asked: If an author wants to help sell their own books (lectures, readings,…

Like most of you, I do a fair amount of reading on the web. I keep up with what’s going on in publishing and I like to read what industry professionals are saying. However, sometimes I cringe when I read advice that doesn’t square with what I’ve experienced. It might not be wrong, per se,…

I’ve been thinking about all these publishing blogs, and why we read them. (Yes, I read them too.) I’m interested in hearing your perspectives on the blogs. Feel free to answer any of these questions: What are your primary reasons for reading the blogs? How often do you read blogs? How often do you comment?…

Yesterday I told you how book royalties work, so today I want to go further and explain a little more about the finances of publishing, this time from the publisher’s perspective. One of the things that’s hard to remember is that the publisher makes a significant financial investment in each writer, with no guarantee that…

This is one of those basic topics about which you may be confused if you’re just entering the world of publishing. You’ve heard the terms advance and royalties but you’re not quite sure how it all works. I’ll try to explain as simply as possible. The concept of a royalty is that the author receives…

I have to tell you, I loved all your comments on Friday’s post. Wasn’t that fun? It was great getting to know some of the more surprising things about you. There were a couple of details I could have lived without but for the most part, I was fascinated! You might have figured out that…

Don’t you love how daily life offers so many great decent ideas for blog posts? This week I was being interviewed for a magazine article and one of the questions was, “What is something about you that writers would be surprised to know?” Of course, I share so much about myself on the blog and…

Today I thought I’d talk about an aspect of novel-crafting that I don’t see addressed very often, even though I deal with it all the time when editing novels. It’s the technique of foreshadowing and its black-sheep cousin, telegraphing. Foreshadowing is when you purposely drop tiny hints about what’s going to happen later in the…

Most of you know that I live and work in beautiful Colorado. In honor of our state’s early slide into winter this week (big snowstorm), I thought I’d share some Rocky Mountain humor with you. Enjoy! First, a winter statistic: 98% of Americans say “oh sh*t” before going off an icy road into a ditch.…

Several people have asked me lately how the process of getting an agent works. Not from the writer perspective, but from my perspective. It varies from agent to agent, but here’s an approximation of how it looks if you submit to me. You send a query. It sits in my inbox until I get to…

I’ve been a fan of editor-turned-agent Betsy Lerner ever since I read her brilliant book The Forest for the Trees when it came out in 2001. If you’ve never read it, you should immediately. It’s one of the best books for writers, right up there with Stephen King’s On Writing. Get the book! Anyway, that’s…