Set to Sell: How to Effectively Market Your Finished Manuscript to Agents and Publishers

By Aimee Hardy

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So, you’ve written your story. You’ve gotten feedback and edited draft after draft. Finally, your manuscript shines. You’ve been sending it out to agents and publishers (and may have gotten a few requests), but you still haven’t found success. You start to wonder if your story is any good or if your writing isn’t good enough, but all of your feedback has told you that your story works. What could be happening? 

As an editor, the majority of manuscripts I receive are well-written and interesting, but their pitches often don’t do their stories justice. To move your work from the slush pile to the must-read pile, there are a few small things you can do in your pitch that will pay off exponentially. 

Important Details

When you pitch your work to agents, be sure to give them important details about your novel, including genre, word count, and comp titles. Acceptable word counts vary by genre, but a common sweet spot is between 80,000 and 100,000 words for general fiction. Look up specifics for your genre to make sure your manuscript fits with the standard conventions. 

Comp titles are also helpful for the publisher or agent to clearly understand the concept of your work. You can use popular books, movies, or even TV series, just make sure your comps are current and reflect today’s reader. For example, if you’ve written a dark coming of age thriller set after the apocalypse, you could describe your work as the Gillian Flynn version of The Last of Us meets Stranger Things. The agent or publisher will understand common themes (such as coming of age, power, friendship, and courage) but can expect a darker twist. 

Give or take a little more 

Once you’ve finished your manuscript, you’ll want to create a 1–2 sentence logline for your pitch. Your logline gives all the information needed for your book so the agent or publisher can identify the main character, the conflict, and the stakes. Who is your character, what is their big problem or conflict, and what happens if they don’t succeed? 

Some writers fear that they will give away too much plot or that the agent or publisher won’t read it if they know all the details at once, but the reality is, you need to have a clear understanding of your work to be able to sell it later (more on that in the next point). Here are some quick examples of short but effective taglines: 

• A young FBI cadet must confide in a manipulative convicted killer to receive his help on catching another serial killer who skins his victims. (Silence of the Lambs)

• A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where a sinister presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from both past and future. (The Shining)

Try writing a few for your work and see which one works the best. 

Place it on the shelf

Along with knowing comp titles, understanding the market for your genre is often one of the best ways to sell your work. Agents and publishers want to know that you understand the market, the conventions of your specific genre, and the clear vision you have for your work. 

Not only does it show that you’ve done your homework, it shows that you can sell your work within the current market, which is a much-needed skill when it comes to publication. Although writing a novel is hard, a lot more work goes into book promotion. Once a book is accepted for publication, it will typically have a release date that’s 1–2 years away. Publishers need time to plan marketing, distribution, awards, etc. that might work best for your book, so comp titles and market knowledge are essential for planning a successful launch. If you already have a vision for your work, publishers are often able to use similar campaigns or networking strategies to your comp titles. 

Pinpoint your readers 

Another effective way to sell your story is to have a good understanding of your readers. You should know why your story is important and why readers would buy your book. Look at the demographics of your comp titles, including age, sex, occupation, interests/hobbies, etc. If you have a strong selling point with an eager audience, it helps agents and publishers see the incentive of releasing your book. 

Identifying your audience also helps publishers see how they can effectively market your book. They might consider partnerships or nonprofit campaigns that will connect you with your ideal reader. The more concise you are about your audience and how to reach them, the more likely a publisher will be to release your work. 

Leverage your communities

We’ve all heard that it takes a village, but networking is essential to your book’s success. You might need to include the organizations and networks that you’re a part of so you can leverage existing relationships. This also gives your publisher to see any connections that you may have missed when it comes to marketing your book. 

Although writers often don’t want to consider social media as important to their work, it can be an important part of getting your work to a wider audience. Focus on genuine connections with friends and followers and don’t be afraid to partner up with other writers and creatives to make meaningful relationships in the larger community. 

Do your research

You may also consider doing a bit of research. Watch interviews and read wish lists for agents and publishers. Reference their preferences to let them know that they are really important to you and aren’t just on an endless list of contacts you’re mindlessly submitting to. Personal connections let the agent or publisher know that you’re a real person who truly cares about your work and the place you're submitting it. 

You may also research market trends, including current events, changes in genre trends, and new reader data. Understanding the market shows that you’re invested in the success of your novel and that you can see an opportunity for your work in the future. This creates a sense of urgency for the agent or publisher and increases the likelihood of getting new eyes on your work. 

Invest in YOU! 

The most important part of pitching your book is the time and effort you give to the success of your book. You’ve worked so hard on your novel that you don’t want to sell yourself short or waste your time with strategies that don’t work. Remember, you are the only one who can write your story, but you are also the only one who can have the vision and the drive to make it a success. 

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Aimee Hardy is a writer in Birmingham, Alabama. Aimee is the author of Pocket Full of Teeth (2024) and has various short stories published with Running Wild Press, Stonecoast Review, and other literary collections. She received a Pushcart nomination in 2019 for her short story "Paper" and is dedicated to telling stories in unique ways. Aimee is married with two kids and loves to get lost in nature or disappear into a good book with a warm cup of tea.

When the Words Won’t Come

By Lois Winston

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This is not an article about writer’s block. That’s a topic for another day. Today, I’d like to discuss Brain Block, that deer-in-the-headlights moment when you suddenly find yourself at a loss for words, no matter how well-prepared you thought you were. Or how unprepared because you never thought you’d need to prepare.

There are those people who always seem to pull a snappy rejoinder from their gray matter whenever the situation presents itself. Not me. I’m the person who thinks of the perfect response hours or days later. Sentences may flow from my fingertips onto my computer screen, but rarely do they trip off my tongue in the same pithy manner.

Back in my school days, no matter how well-prepared I was, I morphed into a complete failure during oral book reports, once even forgetting the name of the main characters, even though one was the title of the book! Then there were the dreaded oral exams. I could easily fill several blue books with my knowledge on a topic, but stand me up in a one-on-one with the teacher who held my GPA in his hand, and Brain Block took hold of me.

As writers, we’re told to craft an elevator pitch, that concise short paragraph that will catch the attention of an agent or editor who might turn to you while waiting for the elevator at a conference and say, “Tell me about your book.” Memorization has never been my strong suit. If I couldn’t whip out my index card and read my pitch, Brain Block would take over. 

I’m also the person who never remembers the punchline to any joke. Heck, I never even remember any part of the joke! Which makes it quite ironic that for nearly two decades, I’ve spent my days writing humorous amateur sleuth novels.

I started my writing career penning emotional, angst-driven romance and romantic suspense, but my heroines always relied on a sense of humor to help them cope with their problems. Laugh and the world laughs with you; weep and you weep alone. It’s good advice when crafting characters. No one wants to read about a woe-is-me heroine for 400 pages. 

I suppose that’s why my agent called one day to suggest I write a chick lit novel. However, coming up with a little humorous dialogue now and then is quite different from writing a humorous novel. Since none of my romances or romantic suspense novels had yet sold, I agreed to try my hand at chick lit. That’s when I discovered somewhere in the deep recesses of my DNA lurked an untapped humor gene.

I may not be able to tell a joke in real life, but on the page I’m the Dutchess of Double-Entendres, the Baroness of Bon Mots, the Princess of Puns. My characters routinely engage in witty dialogue. And they always come up with that perfect rejoinder, no matter the situation. My foray into chick lit eventually resulted in Talk Gertie to Me, my first published novel.

Harnessing my latent humor gene changed the trajectory of my writing career. After one of my romance novels finally sold, my agent called one day to tell me I should write a humorous amateur sleuth mystery series with a crafting theme. She knew an editor looking for one, and she thought I’d be the perfect person to write it. 

It’s one thing to write chick lit or to employ a bit of humor to break up the tension in a romance or a romantic suspense, but humorous murder mysteries? Most people find nothing humorous about murder. Or if they do, you might want to steer clear of them. However, an amateur sleuth mystery by its very definition is a fish-out-of-water story, and the fish-out-of-water trope lends itself to situational humor. So I gave it a try. The result was Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series.

I have not been kind to Anastasia. I’ve saddled her with debt greater than the GNP of a Third World nation. I not only saddled her with a nasty diehard communist mother-in-law, but her mother claims descent from Russian nobility and is also a member of the DAR. I then forced the two women to share a bedroom in Anastasia’s home. I’ve also added two teenage sons, a Shakespeare-quoting parrot, and a possible government operative. 

And of course, there are the dead bodies, a pre-requisite of murder mysteries. Every time Anastasia makes some headway whittling down her debt, I throw another corpse in her path. Although she sometimes feels tempted to climb into bed and pull the quilt over her head, she copes with all the mayhem I’ve heaped on her by harnessing her quirky self-deprecating and observational Jersey Girl sense of humor.

However, humor is very subjective. I always hold my breath, fingers crossed, that my readers will get the humor in my books. Some do; some don’t. That’s the nature of humor. All I can do is hope more readers laugh than don’t. Besides, one of the first lessons you learn as a published author is that no author is ever going to please every reader, so don’t even try.

This brings me back to the title of this article and the recent Killer Nashville conference. This year A Crafty Collage of Crime, the 12th book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series, won the Silver Falchion Award for Best Comedy. Here was a golden opportunity to tell a captive audience of several hundred people about Anastasia and the thirteen books and three novellas I’ve so far written about her, especially since this book features her on a trip to Middle Tennessee.

I should have jotted down an acceptance speech to read, but I didn’t because I never expected to win. With a few rare exceptions from back in my romance writing days, I have a long track record of always being the bridesmaid, never the bride. But hey, it’s still an honor to be nominated.

So when my name was called, Brain Block accompanied me to the front of the room, and I wound up giving what can only be described as the shortest acceptance speech in the history of awards ceremonies. I doubt if it even qualified as a “speech.” As I walked away from the mic, Clay Stafford commented that I was “a woman of few words.”

Well, at least I didn’t bore anyone with a too-long, rambling monologue where I thanked everyone in my life, going all the way back to my kindergarten teacher and my pet goldfish!

Later that night, as I was drifting off to sleep, I came up with a perfect acceptance speech—pithy, witty, and including a few bon mots. Too bad no one was around to hear it.

Moral of the story: Even if you think you have no chance of winning, always, always prepare an acceptance speech. AND WRITE IT DOWN!

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USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston has taken part on many writing panels, taught dozens of writing workshops, and given quite a few solo talks over the years, but she always relies on her notes, never her memory. She writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry. Her most recent release is Sorry, Knot Sorry, the thirteenth book in her humorous Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series. Learn more about Lois and her books at www.loiswinston.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter and follow her on various social media sites.

Why Book Signings Aren’t What They Used To Be

By Steven Womack

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Buckle up, Buttercup: it’s story time!

Today, I’m putting on my Professor Peabody hat and inviting you to join me in The Wayback Machine, where we’ll journey back thirty years or so, to a time when being a working novelist was a whole different gig that it is now.

I started my first novel when I was eighteen, which was entirely too young for anyone to think they had anything to say about anything. Still, the combination of youth and arrogance knows no bounds, so I pressed on, determined to be the great writer I knew I was somewhere inside. Now if I could only convince the rest of the world…

Then life took over. And in one of the great ironies of my life (and the older I get, the more convinced I am that irony is one of life’s more primordial forces), after starting my first novel at the age of eighteen, it would take me precisely eighteen more years to sell one.

Even after the sale, it took a couple of years to get the book out. Then, as now, the wheels of traditional publishing grind very slowly.

So in 1990, I became a published novelist. Not only that, my first novel was a hardback published by one of the great publishing houses of New York, St. Martin’s Press. And like all newly published novelists, my first concern was when can I start doing book signings!

I loved going to book signings, loved meeting authors who’d written real books. Bookstores were my happy place and now my dream of getting to go to my happy place from the other side of the signing table was coming true. My hometown, Nashville, was a wonderful book town then. There were lots of independent bookstores around, as well as the big chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble.

One of the local independent chains was Mills Bookstores (chain? well, there were three of them), so I reached out to them, and they very kindly offered me a signing at their flagship store in Hillsboro Village. I met a fellow there—Michael Sims—who had moved to Nashville a few years earlier and would later go on to a spectacular writing career himself. He and I have been friends ever since.

Even then, publishers didn’t put a whole lot of marketing or promotion into most debut novels. So I took it upon myself to publicize and promote my first book signing. I worked up a database of a couple hundred of my closest friends and family, then merged the database with a Word document and sent out personalized letters inviting them to my very first book signing, which took place on a warm Sunday afternoon.

And it was astonishingly successful. In an incredible leap of faith, Mills had ordered around 130 copies of a book no one had ever heard of, by a writer no one had ever heard of. The store was packed, the event went on for—if memory serves me—at least three hours. I spoke for a bit, read an excerpt from the book, then signed literally every copy in the store. By the end of the afternoon, Michael was pulling display copies out of the front window to sell.

At the end of the day, I thought I got this…

Now, over thirty years later, I still haven’t had a book signing that successful. Most of my book signings have been like one I did with Sharyn McCrumb at a Little Professor Bookstore in Birmingham, where someone walked up to our signing table (and right up to it, since there was no line) and asked if I knew what the lunch special was today.

Book signings were events back then. They still are for some writers, if you’re a star. Stephen King can draw a crowd wherever he goes. If you’re a genre writer and have developed a huge following in your field, then you’re good to go. Celebrity book signings still work, and locally famous true crime books or other spectacle-type gigs still work.

But if you’re just a working stiff writer, on a self-financed book tour in a town where nobody knows you (yep, I’ve done plenty of those), book signings aren’t worth what they used to be. There aren’t as many bookstores today, so your options are more limited. The two great independent chains that were in Nashville back in the day—Mills Bookstores and Davis-Kidd Booksellers—are long gone. As a result, writers sometimes have to compete for limited signing slots at the few bookstores left. One bookstore I know has an application on their website you fill out if you want to sign at their store, and I know a number of writers they’ve turned down. And some independent bookstores, when they schedule a signing for a well-known author, actually charge admission to people who want to go hear their favorite writer drone on.

If you’re an indie-pubbed writer, then it’s even more disheartening. Bookstores, like everyone else, still have some old-school, ingrained prejudices against “self-published” writers (see last months column).

Even David Gaughran, an Irish writer who’s been a pioneer and an expert in the indie pubbing movement, wrote in his latest blog that getting out there to press the flesh—book readings and book fairs—are “F Tier” marketing strategies for authors today.

“F Tier” means a waste of money and time.

The days when books were primarily hand-sold, person-to-person in brick-and-mortar bookstores are long gone. You might sell a few books here and there, but it’s not going to move the needle on your actual numbers or your Amazon Sales Rank—and sad to say, that’s what counts these days.

So if you want to do a book signing, then do it for the right reasons: you want to hang with friends, family, fans and fellow book lovers for a pleasant afternoon or evening. Have a good time, boost your ego, have a glass of wine.

Then get up the next morning and go back to work. That paper’s not gonna sling itself.

Why I Hate Self-Publishing

By Steven Womack

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Some time ago, I gave a talk at the monthly meeting of the Middle Tennessee Chapter of Sisters-In-Crime. A week or so before that, I’d read an installment of Clay Stafford’s writing blog that put forth the proposition that writers should not give their work away. A writer’s work has meaning, Clay wrote. It has value and to give it away for free sends the wrong message to readers and to the world in general.

I’ve known Clay Stafford a good couple of decades now and have always regarded him as a wise and successful friend. When he speaks, I listen—and usually take notes.

This time, however, I had to disagree.

It’s not that I disagree with his notion that a writer’s work has value. It does, even if sometimes it’s only to the writer him/herself. All writers put an enormous amount of work and heart in to getting those words onto a page. But that doesn’t always automatically translate into value, especially value measured in sales/dollars. When there are roughly 2.2 million new books published every year (according to UNESCO), the competition is pretty rough out there and it’s hard to convince an audience that your book has value; in other words, it’s worth reading.

So I put forth the notion—based on my own experience—that the best way to get attention for your book was to give it away. In February, I had my first BookBub Featured Deal and in a four-day period gave away 24,897 eBook copies of the latest installment in my Music City Murders Harry James Denton series, Fade Up From Black. Through the rest of the month, that resulted in over 200,000 page reads. And since Amazon’s policy is to pay page reads on book giveaways if the book’s enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, I made money giving stuff away.

Enough to pay for the BookBub Featured Deal, anyway.

While I’ve given up predicting the future, I feel confident that at least a few of the people who downloaded those nearly 25,000 copies will like the book well enough to actually go out and buy the other installments.

It’s a whole new world out there, marketing-wise. Marketing in the internet age has a  very long tail, and to riff on my old pal Larry Beinhart, sometimes the tail wags the dog.

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After my talk, Clay wrote me a very complimentary note and asked if I’d be interested in writing a monthly column for Killer Nashville Magazine on self-publishing. I was very flattered, but the first obstacle to overcome was my loathing of the term self-publishing. Loathing? Seems kind of harsh. Why would anyone loathe a term like self-publishing, especially since some of the greatest writers in history published their own work? 

Disgusted with his usual publisher, Mark Twain formed a publishing company to publish The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Charles Dickens’s regular publisher showed little interest in A Christmas Carol, so Dickens hired artists and editors and paid for the printing himself. Beatrix Potter literally couldn’t interest anyone in publishing The Tale of Peter Rabbit, so she borrowed the money to print 250 copies. At latest count, there are some 45 million copies of THE TALE OF PETER RABBIT in print. Walt Whitman self-published Leaves of Grass. The rest, as they say, is history.

In our lifetimes, the stories of self-published books that sold gazillions are apocryphal. Amanda Hocking, Andy Weir, Margaret Atwood, John Grisham, Scott Adams… all have, at some point in their careers, published their own work. And let’s not forget that whole Fifty Shades of Grey thing.

So why such distaste for the term?

I confess here that I’m an old guy. I began seriously writing in 1970, fresh out of boarding school and working on my first novel. There was no Internet then, no such thing as an eBook, and everything was old school; no respectable publisher would consider an unrepresented book, so you queried one agent at a time and if they took six months or a year to get back to you, tough noogies. They were the gatekeepers and they made the rules.

Then, like now, it seemed that every sumbitch who knew how to type thought they could be an arthur (a term coined by the wonderful Molly Ivins, when someone introduced me to her as a mystery writer—Great to meet you, we arthurs gotta stick together…)

Then, as now, there were dozens of predators out there preying on the hopes and dreams of aspiring writers. Self-publishing then was a synonym for vanity publishing, and the vanity presses were raking it in from the naïve rubes. Vantage Press, Pageant Press, and Exposition were three leading vanity presses that were, by the 1950s, “publishing” over 100 titles a year each. 

Even I got roped in myself when I paid $400 to have the legendary Scott Meredith Agency read a novel of mine. Meredith, being one smart cookie, had created a whole separate company to sucker in aspiring writers like moi. I got notes back from some office drone, supposedly signed by Meredith, who needless to say, didn’t take me on as a client.

Not one of those books published by a vanity press had a chance of being reviewed by anybody, let alone a respectable press like the New York Times. No bookstore would carry them.

Writers have always been easy pickings for predators. The most egregious case in history was The Famous Writer’s School, founded in 1961 by Bennett Cerf, a Random House editor and regular panelist on the TV show What’s My Line? There isn’t enough space here to go into that con job, but it made millions by paying writers as diverse as Mignon Eberhart, Rod Serling, Bruce Catton, and Faith Baldwin to join their “faculty.” The suckers thought their stuff was being read and critiqued by Rod Serling, when in reality the work was being done by unknown copy editors. There’s not room enough here to really relate the history of this scam, but Google it. It’s an object lesson for us all.

If not self-publishing, then what?

The world of publishing today bears no resemblance to the publishing world I came of age in, and that’s a good thing. I’m already over my word allotment that Clay gave me for this column, so over the next few months (or however long this little adventure goes on), I’m going to talk about these changes and how my own experience in This Crazy Writing Life have shaped me and my career. To me, it’s not self-publishing. Self-publishing means your stuff’s so bad, you’re the only who’ll touch it.

I prefer the term independent publishing. Going forward, I’m going to talk about how we, as writers, can take control of our work and careers, take back the power from the gatekeepers, and become the kinds of writers we want to be, with the kinds of careers and lives we want to have.

This’ll be a journey we’ll share. After all, as Molly Ivins once said: We arthurs gotta stick together…

The Writer’s Playbook: Michael Jordan, Me, and a Poster

By Steven Harms

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To all aspiring authors, this one’s for you.

I’m fortunate to have two published books with a third taking shape on my computer, but aspiring I am. To be sure, my journey has had its share of bumps and bruises. For new and aspiring authors, the headwinds of the publishing industry are not only real but magnified. One big hurdle is securing a literary agent if you’re inclined to go the traditional route. That’s followed by the excruciating rollercoaster ride of landing a publisher, which comes with a healthy dose of rejection. Or, you can go self-published, but then you must manage the entire process and the burden that presents with perhaps a steeper climb to the top. There’s no right or wrong method. The point here is the odds of becoming a best-selling author are not favorable.

For as many authors that have “broken through” and reached a level of success, there are immeasurable others that haven’t, despite pulling all the right levers. With two books out, I’m decidedly in the second camp.

The reality is that there’s an ocean of books out there, and it can be daunting to wade into those waters. Establishing your brand, marketing your book, growing your sales, getting exposure, building a following, and then, ultimately, hopefully, expectantly, and with a measure of luck or timing or both, you catch a wave and ride it to the bestseller list.

I have an amazing agent and a supportive publisher, and I’m grateful for her. Killer Nashville Magazine also taking me on as a contributing writer has been a fantastic blessing as well. Yet, like so many others, I’m still in the trenches looking up and trying to break through.

In most any endeavor, realizing one’s dream includes a dose of luck and timing. They are uncontrollable variables, and they are real. Ask any athlete, actor, model, artist, singer, or musician. If you reach the elite echelon of one’s chosen pursuit, there was some degree of those two elements somewhere in the process.

With all that as the backdrop, my career in the sports business affords me an interesting take on the journey to author success. The parallels are weirdly similar.

At this juncture, you may be asking, where does Michael Jordan come into the conversation? Well, I had a unique experience that sort of captures my points here. Let’s jump back to February 7, 1988, inside the old Chicago Stadium, former home of the Chicago Bulls, and to the NBA Slam Dunk contest going on as part of the NBA All-Star Weekend. Specifically, let’s move ourselves down onto the court. And to the Slam Dunk staging area courtside by the Gatorade table near mid-court. That’s where I was stationed.

I was there at the request of the NBA to help manage the event. At that time, I was with the Milwaukee Bucks as head of ticket sales and the NBA had gotten to know me. They pulled in three team executives they knew they could rely on to help. Besides me, Don Johnson from the Denver Nuggets and Brad Ewing from the Houston Rockets were part of the team. We became a three-headed event manager, taking lead from the NBA’s VP, Paula Hanson. Thus, the headsets. We were to ensure that the participating players were seated in line as instructed on the team bench, and that we had the next player to compete informed and sent to that mid-court table to wait their turn for the competition. That’s where I was stationed, while Don and Brad were on the sideline managing the media and player positioning. I was there to keep the player in place and tell him when he should go.

I relay all this for a reason. 

That Slam Dunk contest is now part of the annals of NBA lore. It was, to some extent, Michael Jordan’s coming out party that cemented his reign over the NBA for years to come. He beat out Dominique Wilkins to win the slam dunk title, and in the process, executed a dunk where he sped the full length of the court and leaped at the free throw line to slam home the basketball. In mid-air, he looked like he was flying with his left arm slightly back, his legs like wings, the ball held high, and his elevation almost inhuman. A photographer captured that moment, and the photo went on to be a best-selling poster every fan wanted. Smart phones and personal devices with cameras weren’t around back then. Images of celebrities were monetized through posters sold at retail locations (no internet either!).

Look up that moment online and you’ll see two well-dressed guys on headsets squatting on the sideline, each sporting a mustache. That’s Don and Brad. On the poster. Forever. To the right, the Gatorade table where yours truly was squatting is cropped out. Forever. 

The three of us were equals. We each were young executives doing the same job for our respective teams, having got to that point because of our talent and capabilities. The NBA noticed us. We did all the right things to achieve our position. We worked hard, put in the hours, learned our craft, and improved ourselves by networking and just being in the business. But at that moment, on the floor of the Chicago Stadium, something unexpected happened to my two colleagues. They caught a break in that they’re visually and permanently part of a historic moment. And for the record, I have zero consternation that I was cropped out. I’m genuinely elated for them both. 

I tell this story because it speaks to our ambitions of finding success. As aspiring authors, we’re all the same in many ways. We have talent. We can write compelling stories. We network and learn and improve. We pour ourselves into our dream and spend countless hours writing, editing, rewriting, marketing, and sweating over the details. But sometimes, it simply comes down to luck and timing. 

And maybe I should’ve added Thomas Jefferson to the title of this article, because he said something that should give all aspiring writers some solace we’re doing all the right things to succeed. Jefferson is quoted as saying, “I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." The newer version of that is “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

So, keep writing and keep working hard. A dose of luck is an element to success in most any field. Stay the course and know that the road we’re on isn’t necessarily paved, rather that it’s a bumpy ride with potholes and hills to climb. But keep driving. Luck and timing seem to find their way to those that persevere.

When “The End” is Just the Beginning

By Judy Penz Sheluk

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Ten years ago, when I sat down to write my first novel, the thought of self-publishing never crossed my mind. To be fair, times were different then. There was a greater stigma to self-publishing, and vanity presses had (deservedly) earned their reputation as the bottom feeders of the book publishing industry.

As an established freelance journalist and magazine editor, I was also no stranger to seeing my name in print, with bylines in dozens of North American newspapers and magazines. I assumed—wrongly, as it turned out—that my good reputation would help pave the way to a traditional publishing deal. 

It didn’t, and in July 2014, after several (mostly nice) rejections and one offer from a New York City agent to ghost write a book in exchange for a small share of any royalties earned (I turned her down), I signed a contract for The Hanged Man’s Noose, the first book in my Glass Dolphin mystery series. 

I vetted the publisher, an independent press based in Oregon, as well as anyone can prior to submitting. I checked online reviews and ratings of the books in their catalogue, read a handful of titles to ensure they were well edited, then contacted three of their authors who, like me, belonged to Sisters in Crime. Feedback about the publisher was overwhelmingly positive. Quality editing, proofreading, and cover art were all handled in a collaborative manner with the author. Royalties were reported monthly and paid promptly. I was further assured by the publisher’s Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers approved standings.

Despite all that, when it came time to find a home for the first book in my Marketville mystery series, I decided to query elsewhere to make sure all my eggs weren’t in one basket. I’d heard too many tales of authors whose series had been “orphaned” (an industry term meaning the premature cancellation of a contract due to the publisher shuttering its doors or discontinuing the genre). That wasn’t going to happen to me.

Except, it did. Twice. It turned out having multiple baskets didn’t offer the security I thought it might. 

It didn’t come as a huge shock; traditional print media had been declining for years, and my years in the magazine world taught me to read the signs of impending closure. One publisher had systematically begun to release every one of their authors from their contracts. The other had all but stopped communicating, including royalty reports and updates on books-in-progress. By July 2018, both of my series were officially orphaned. 

Few “orphaned” authors find a new home for their existing series, even after months, sometimes years, of trying. Some start over. Some give up. I did neither. Both failed publishers had given me knowledge of the industry. I understood what loomed on my horizon, and a few months prior to being officially orphaned, I’d set up my own imprint, Superior Shores Press. I was ready to take my destiny into my own hands.

I’ve learned a lot since 2018, made a few miscalculations along the way, overcomplicated some things, underestimated others. I’ve also guided a couple of traditionally published authors through their own indie journeys and, at the request of my then-local library, developed a presentation titled Finding Your Path to Publication, which led to a second presentation, Self-Publishing: The Ins & Outs of Going Indie.

Both of those presentations led me to research and write two step-by-step publishing guides in 2023. Finding Your Path to Publication released in May, followed by The Ins & Outs of Going Indie in December. I don’t kid myself. These sorts of niche publications are unlikely to earn me what I like to call “Stephen King money,” but it is my sincere hope that they will help other authors—whether orphaned, published and looking for a change, or still at the querying/getting rejected stage—a place to explore options and opportunities. 

Because authors should help authors. And because sometimes the end is just the beginning. 

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A former journalist and magazine editor, Judy Penz Sheluk is the bestselling author of Finding Your Path to Publication: A Step-by-Step Guide, as well as two mystery series: the Glass Dolphin Mysteries and Marketville Mysteries, both of which have been published in multiple languages. Her short crime fiction appears in several collections, including the Superior Shores Anthologies, which she also edited. Judy has a passion for understanding the ins and outs of all aspects of publishing, and is the founder and owner of Superior Shores Press, which she established in February 2018.

Judy is a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and Crime Writers of Canada, where she served on the Board of Directors for five years, the final two as Chair. She lives in Northern Ontario. Find her at www.judypenzsheluk.com.

Timing is Your Time’s Best Friend: Calendar Management for the Soon-To-Be-Published Author

By Roger Johns and Kim Conrey

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If you’ve been through the book publication process, you know the demands of publication and promotion can be ferocious time eaters. If you’re a soon-to-be-published author, about to go through this process for the first time, the magnitude of these time demands can be difficult to anticipate. So, it’s important to know what this process will look like, ahead of time, so you can manage your time and your calendar more effectively. The last thing you want is for the joyous occasion of your book’s upcoming emergence into the world to be plagued by stress and anxiety because you’ve gotten stuck in the mire of constantly playing catchup, or because things aren’t happening at the pace you expected them to.

An important set of tactics to keep this from happening is to make it a priority to acquire advance knowledge of: (1) the demands the book production process will place upon you, (2) the opportunities publication will make available to you, (3) how to properly plan for what’s coming so you can stay ahead of the game, and (4) when you should begin the various tasks that contribute to your book’s success.

As with all complex endeavors that are not completely under your control, the schedules and demands of others will have to be considered and, to some extent, catered to. This means you will need to know who and what you will encounter on the road ahead, what their role is, and how they view your role in the process. Experience tells us that what you do, and when you do it—especially during the busy months preceding launch—can have an outsized impact on the success of your promotional efforts in the critical months immediately following publication. So, it pays to understand the timeframes during which certain undertakings need to be started, because when you begin can be as or more important than what you begin. In this context, timing is your time’s best friend.

Demands of the Book Production Process

If you have just signed your first contract to become a traditionally published author, you should expect your manuscript to undergo a fairly rigorous, multi-part editing process—a process in which you will play a significant part. Depending on your publisher, the condition of your manuscript, and your editor’s inclinations, this can include story edits, copy edits, and proofing edits. All of these must be done with care, and completed and returned on time. So, ask your publishing house editor what’s coming and how much time you’ll have to complete and return your responses. If your editor wants a lot of story edits, this can take quite a while to do properly because changes to one part of a manuscript often require changes to other parts. And, obviously, the longer your book, the longer all phases of the editing process can take. Knowing, ahead of time, what’s expected of you, will allow you to plan these tasks into your personal and professional life.

In addition to the editing process, you will need to provide input on cover images, gather blurbs from other authors, produce some of what’s known as front matter and back matter (i.e., dedication and acknowledgements), and provide an adequate headshot, and you may be asked to weigh in on (or craft entirely) the jacket/flap copy. All of these tasks can be loads of fun, but they all take time, and they all come with deadlines, so they need to be planned for. Missing an editing or production deadline is not a recipe for success in the publishing world. And starting late in the process of soliciting blurbs from other authors can leave you with less than you had hoped for, in terms of quality and quantity. Authors who agree to furnish a blurb will need a copy early enough to do a good job for you. This is especially true if you are self-publishing your book. Publishing houses have established timelines for prompting authors to solicit blurbs. If you’re self-publishing, you’ll need to initiate this process yourself.

If you have just made the decision to self-publish, you’ll need to plan other activities even further ahead, as well. The fantastic editor you’ve hired who took only weeks to get edits back before, may be playing catch up when your manuscript hits their inbox, and the same goes for your cover designer. A mantra for any author, especially the self-published author, is, everything takes longer than you think it will. If this is your first attempt at self-publishing, you may be shocked to find that it can take Ingram Book Company, the largest book wholesale distributor in the world, several weeks to load your book’s meta data onto Amazon and other retailers. So, if your goal was to get as many print preorders as possible, you’ll need to have your book ready to go months before your official publication date. Take it from droves of authors who’ve checked book retailer websites every morning for weeks looking for their book’s cover only to find the dreaded “No Image Available” icon. This can be heartbreaking for an author who was planning a huge preorder push, and there will be nothing you can do but wait for the data to load. No amount of begging customer service will help. You are one of thousands of authors waiting on the same thing. If eBook sales are your only goal, you will have more time, but if you do not have your eBook loaded in time for preorders to be delivered, Amazon can suspend you from selling an eBook on their site for a solid year. It is crucial to plan for the unexpected. Whatever you think your timeline is, double it at the very least.

And…while all this is going on—whichever way you choose to publish—you’ll need to do your part in the increasingly challenging process of book promotion. It’s tempting to think that, if you’ve signed with a traditional publisher, especially a big one, that all of that “promo stuff” will be taken care of by the sales and marketing and publicity folks at your publishing house. Sorry, unless you’re one of the biggest of the bigtime authors, things are unlikely to work out that way. Regardless of whether you’re about to be traditionally- or self-published, you’re going to have to do your part. And, unless you’re a celebrity author, with high brand recognition, “doing your part” means building demand for your book before it becomes available for purchase, by: (1) establishing a social media presence, (2) lining up appearances at bookstores, local author-oriented events, conferences, conventions, book clubs, and other venues, (3) developing or joining a blog or a podcast, (4) creating posts for blogs hosted by others, and (5) becoming involved in professional organizations dedicated to the type of book you’ve written. 

And…while all this is going on, you’ll need to be writing your next book.

Opportunities Publication Will Make Available to You

Being a published author is a big deal. It’s true that millions of books are published in this country every year, but it’s also true that hundreds of millions of people live here. By publishing a book you have accomplished an amazingly rare feat. And a fascinating one, as well. The reading public shows a strong interest in knowing about the writers of the books they read. Because of this, there are dozens of regularly scheduled (and undoubtedly thousands of individually arranged) events around the country, every year, at which authors and their readers gather for the purposes of getting to know each other and finding new authors to read. This means published authors will have opportunities to get in front of the reading public in ways that are generally unavailable to others—including appearances at conventions, conferences, bookstores, local author events, blogs, podcasts, libraries, and book clubs.

Availing yourself of these opportunities takes time, research, and determination and can require special knowledge. For instance, if you’re interested in lining up bookstore or local author event appearances on, or shortly after, your launch date, you’ll need to know how far in advance their schedule is booked, and approach them early enough to be considered for a spot. The most desirable venues often have crowded event calendars that are fully booked long into the future, so you’ll need to give them plenty of lead time. The same goes for blogs and podcasts hosted by others. And conferences, conventions, and book and literary fairs and festivals have specified registration periods that must be adhered to. And because not all venues will be receptive to your pitch, it’s possible you’ll need to over-develop your list of target opportunities, and make contact with enough of them early on to have a useful understanding of what’s going to work out and what’s not.

If you intend to create your own blog or podcast, you will need to start long before launch day, so you can establish your presence and build a readership or listenership. These activities can be difficult and time-consuming, and the more tech-challenged you are, the more difficult and time-consuming they become. However, there are lots of good books and web resources that can advise you on how to set these projects in motion.

Planning (to Stay Ahead of the Game), and Knowing When to Begin

It bears repeating that all of these tasks take time—sometimes lots of it. Many of them will need to be in process or fully in place well before launch day, so that a steady stream of promotional efforts is bearing fruit in the critical weeks and months immediately following publication. To make this work, it’s helpful to view your publication day as the midpoint on a timeline that begins the day you either sign your publication contract or decide to self-publish and continues for several months after your book becomes available.

The critical take-away is to develop a list of the obligations you will need to fulfill and the dates by which you will need to fulfill them, as well as a list of the opportunities you wish to pursue, along with the dates you’d like to avail yourself of them, and then place all of these on a timeline so you can literally see what the future will look like.

So you can have a clear understanding of when to begin each of the obligations and opportunities on your timeline, think of them in terms of lead time—the period between when you begin a process and when its purpose is achieved, and mark the start dates on your timeline as well. Then develop checklists for the specific tasks associated with each item on your calendar, indicating what needs to be done, by when, and by whom. This will allow you to measure your progress and to avoid getting blindsided by matters you should have or could have known about. In other words, give your book and your writing career every chance for success by creating a detailed map of the road ahead, so you can handle things like a pro.

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ROGER JOHNS is the author of Dark River Rising and River of Secrets, from St. Martin’s Press, as well as numerous short stories published by, among others, Saturday Evening Post, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly Magazine, and Black Beacon Books. He is the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year for mystery, and a two-time finalist for the Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award. Since 2016, Roger has made over 140 live appearances across the country, at conferences, conventions, bookstores, libraries, book clubs, corporate events, writing clubs, continuing education classes and other writing-oriented venues, as well as on podcasts, web radio, and broadcast radio. He has also made, and continues to make, frequent invited presentations on writing and career management for new authors, and his articles and essays on these topics have appeared in, among other publications, Southern Writers Magazine, Career Authors, and Southern Literary Review. 

KIM CONREY is the Georgia Author of the Year recipient in the romance category for Stealing Ares, traditionally published by Black Rose Writing and Losing Ares, the follow up. Her urban fantasy Nicholas Eternal was published in June 2023, and her memoir You’re Not a Murderer: You Just Have Harm OCD, which she co-wrote with her adult child, was released in October of 2023. Her work has also been published by numerous magazines and literary journals and received awards. She serves as VP of Operations for the Atlanta Writers Club and podcasts about writing with the Wild Women Who Write. She gives book marketing talks and speaks on various topics relating to writing at local and regional writing conferences and literary festivals.

TOGETHER, Kim and Roger co-author “If You Only Have An Hour: Time-Saving Tips & Tricks For Managing Your Writing Career” the quarterly advice column in "Page Turner", the magazine of the Georgia Writers Museum and the Atlanta Writers Club.

Punctuation is Power - Part 5: Are you in business or in hobby?

By Angela K Durden

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Across the board in creative endeavors something interesting is happening. Folks are getting to be about 55 or so, thinking of or are retiring, and getting back into the thing they loved before the kids came along and the bills piled up and their time was not their own in that thing we call Life. 

Whether it is music, writing, sculpture, painting, pottery, dance, and more, you will find many “of an age” mingling with young folks just getting into that creative endeavor. For some, writing a book or two is just a hobby. They don’t really intend to make it a business. Thinking about the bygone golden years of publishing when authors became stars. They dream of their book being:

• rep’d by an agent, 

• sold to one of the Big 4, 

• making the best seller lists, 

• selling like crazy domestically, 

• translated into multiple languages and selling internationally to wild acclaim, 

• made into a movie or two or three. 

Bring on the mailbox money! From your mouth to God’s ears, right?

Well, firstly, the business was never exactly like that. As we learned from the recent Hemingway documentary, his lavish lifestyle was mostly due to having a series of rich wives. Secondly, the old saying “make hay while the sun is shining” applies in this business. Much marketing of personalities went into the making of the myths. Hemingway used his marketing myth to get money for product endorsements. Nothing much has changed there.  

Still, much hard work by many people went into the writing, editing, printing, marketing, distribution, tracking of inventory, and sales of most books. Starting in the late 1980s, though, the book business began to change. Tired of being shut out and stolen from, the age of the Indie Author and Indie Publisher began and has not abated. Technology has made the publishing of a work easy; distribution via print-on-demand methods has made it within the affordable reach of millions. (Marketing of a book is a whole other subject. It is a bugaboo, a thorn in our paws, a never-ending challenge.)

Unfortunately, too many authors, having written a work, tire out and don’t do the necessary boring work of thorough and multiple edits and rewrites. Not only that, they are also unwilling to pay for it, too. Many will not take any advice when it comes to punctuation, sentence structure, flow of the material, etcetera. They see any question as an assault on their baby. 

I want to scream when I hear “Well, I [or my spouse, significant other, best friend, or sibling] have a degree in English and have already edited the book.” Or “My wife edited my book. She has a degree in English. She’ll get her feelings hurt if I let anybody else edit it.” 

Then these authors are not in business. They are in hobby. True, there are some creative outputs that are simply for making the creator happy. Enjoy the process! It is wonderful to have a hobby one enjoys. 

The business of book publishing, though, requires another mindset. Sorry to say, but one may still not see a profit from all that hard work. All business endeavors are a crapshoot. 

I have always had an allegiance to words in whatever form they take. I hate advertising language that reeks of the weasel. Since it has always been a moving target, I detest rigid rules of punctuation for rules’ sake. [See Part 1 of this series]. 

As a writer in many categories (business, children, non-fiction, memoir, humor, and fiction), my goal is to teach and/or entertain but always challenge the reader and tell it well.

As an editor my goal is to make a book the best it can be. One that, when a grandchild finds it on a shelf and reads Grandma’s or Grandpa’s book they will be proud of how good it is, not embarrassed about it. 

As a small publisher it is to bring to life high-quality books the Big 4 will not touch. Blue Room Books has published history, music business memoir, fiction, and more, some not easily categorized. We may or may not make a profit on these, but damn it all, when they go into the world they will be equal to or better than offerings from the big houses. 

So, as asked in Part 4, I ask again: 

Why do you write? 

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Author, editor, publisher, and more: learn about Angela K. Durden here and here and here.