Update

Guest Blogger: Chuck Sambuchino

Editor, Guide to Literary Agents Would You Pay More For An Agent? Money. It’s always a touchy topic—in any environment—and no one’s really started an intelligent discussion on agents and commissions … until now. About a year ago was the first time I heard an agent discussing a change to her commission structure. Wait—what? A…
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Word of Mouth – Who Knew?

So our poll on Friday (see sidebar) led to some spectacularly predictable results. Exciting! It appears we find out about books mostly through various recommendations, either online or from friends or acquaintances. Otherwise known as word of mouth. We also find a lot of our books through browsing the stacks (physical or virtual) and picking…
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How We Hear About Books

Lately, we at WordServe have been trying to analyze some of our clients’ book sales in comparison with the amount of online marketing the author and publisher put into it. It’s not scientific, of course, but we’ve been trying to determine whether there’s any correlation between the number of Google hits for an author, and…
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Why Authors Need Agents

Many times on this blog, I’ve answered the question of why you, a writer (singular), might need an agent (also singular). I addressed it in posts such as 10 Things to Expect from an Agent and Earning Our Keep. Agent Nathan Bransford gave a terrific run down on what agents do, here and my client…
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A Culture of Free

Yesterday I speculated on one aspect of the future of books, the idea of how technology will (or won’t) affect the presentation of a book. Today my speculations are more about the market and the changing perceived value of a book. One thing that concerns me about our current Internet culture is that it’s conditioning…
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For the Love of a Book

Last week Publishers Lunch featured a guide to the latest eReaders coming down the pike (here). It’s fascinating and makes me think of all kinds of possibilities for the future. The new readers will have terrific uses in business, for games, for keeping up on news, for editors and others in publishing, and many more.…
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The Book’s the Thing

I’ve been thinking about all the information for writers available now on the internet. It’s great for writers because although getting published has never been more challenging, there has never been so much information available about how to do it. But there are so many people giving advice that it must get overwhelming sometimes. Getting…
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Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

Today we have a glimpse of my daily mailbag. Er, inbox. The following is an example of some recent correspondence with a writer I didn’t know. Hi Rachelle. I have a problem and I need your help. I’ve been writing a novel for nine years, pouring sweat, blood, and tears into it. Recently an acquaintance…
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