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I was completely impressed with how many of you chimed in on Friday’s post on You: The Marketing Machine. You eloquently expressed your enthusiasm, your dread, and/or your ambivalence about the need to market your own book. One of the themes that cropped up frequently was the romantic fantasy of the writer as a loner,…

A couple weeks ago I was having dinner with a group of novelists (who also happened to be my clients). We were talking about the terrible waiting that’s always involved in publishing. At every step of the journey, whether you’re agented or not, published or not, there seems to be a huge need for patience.…

On Friday, in his This Week in Publishing post, Nathan Bransford gave a nod to my post last week on proactive vs. reactive protagonists. (Thanks, Nathan.) One of the commenters on Nathan’s blog said: Whenever I read something like: “you have to have a proactive protagonist,” I immediately want to go out and write a…

First off, if you don’t read anything else this weekend, read this article from the Washington Post. It doesn’t say much that we haven’t already discussed on this and other publishing blogs. But I think (for many of you) it will confirm what you’ve already heard: Yes, it’s a whole new world for authors, and…

This week I’ve been writing on topics that were brought to the forefront of my mind when I was at the ACFW conference and spoke with dozens of writers about their books. Today I want to talk about your protagonist, or MC (main character). I’ll make this brief: Your MC must be proactive and make…

One thing I’ve noticed lately in fiction pitches – verbal pitches or queries – is that some writers want to tell all about the theme or the emotional journey of the story, but they have a hard time conveying the actual story. Every novel has a theme. There’s a character arc, in which a character…

Over the weekend when I was at the conference, my ten-year-old had a gymnastics meet which I was bummed to miss, but Brian texted me her scores on each event, and he took video so I could see her performances. (I put one on YouTube.) Now, if you watch my daughter doing gymnastics, you might…

I just came from ACFW, the annual conference of American Christian Fiction Writers. It’s a large and terrific writers conference, with top notch writing courses and plenty of opportunity for networking. This year there were something like 540 writers attending, and 60 faculty and staff. Donald Maass gave an all-day seminar on opening day, and…

We started this month with my birthday (a shameless self-promotion, I realize, but I can’t help it, I just love my birthday). Let’s end the week celebrating another birthday of sorts: The day YOUR latest book was released. If your book came out in the last year, tell us about it and include the Amazon…

Anonymous wrote: I recently fired my book agent for a number of valid reasons and her response was to say that I OWE HER thousands of dollars because she spent time on my project (never submitted it to publishers because we kept rewriting the book proposal because she kept changing her mind about what she…

A big thank you to the nearly 180 entrants in my guest blog contest! It wasn’t easy, but I’ve finally had a chance to choose my Guest Bloggers for the rest of the year. (See A Blog Challenge for You.) Here are the guest posts I’ve chosen (twelve instead of ten): Reesha: Christian Art –…

So here we are on September 11th. Many things have happened on this date in history. Perhaps some of you were even born or got married on this date. But I think we all carry with us a very powerful memory of September 11th, 2001. Let’s send up a prayer for all whose lives were…

Shelli asked: in your experience – what is the average advance $ amount? debuts vs others? I think it’s misleading and unhelpful to talk about “average” advances. All that matters is your advance. If your advance is far below the average, you’ll be bummed and it will take some of the joy away from getting…

I’m back from the long holiday & birthday weekend… thanks for all the great birthday comments yesterday and thanks for the 181 responses to my Guest Blog Challenge! It’s going to take some time to get through them, so please be patient. Hope your holiday was terrific! Today I’m going to discuss the cold, hard…