Blog Archive
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Advice on Managing Pirate Sites
Mar 30, 2016
You have given such great advice in the past, I am hoping you have a pearl of wisdom again. [My Book] is doing well in publicity and posting great reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Book will be listed with Ingram spark by Monday as book retailers want to place orders through them. Between newsprint articles, […]
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#PubDay for the first in New York Times Bestselling author Paige Shelton’s Scottish Bookshop series.
Mar 29, 2016
The Cracked Spine releases today and we are so excited about this series. Wanted: A bold adventurer who wants to travel the world from a comfortable and safe spot behind a desk that has seen the likes of kings and queens, paupers and princes. A humble book and rare manuscript shop seeks a keenly intelligent […]
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Making the Most of Your Publishing Internship
Mar 29, 2016
The other day I had lunch with one of my former interns and was told a story I don’t think I have ever heard before. When Intern was still working at BookEnds we heard about a job opening at a major publisher. After Intern went ahead and sent her resume through traditional channels, I asked […]
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Reading Between the Lines in Queries
Mar 28, 2016
Agents reject books all the time and with each rejection we try to send some sort of helpful feedback on why the book wasn’t working or what we loved about the book. We also tend to give some feedback on what we liked about the book. While we hope this feedback is helpful, we also […]
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Why Responding to a Rejection with a Query is a Bad Idea
Mar 25, 2016
I’m pretty sure most of you can figure this out, but it’s amazing how often someone will respond to my rejection letter (usually on requested material) with a query for another book. The problem is that if I didn’t ask to see your next book you’ve now provided me with all of the reasons why […]
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Romantic Times Gives Gone with the Witch a Top Pick!
Mar 24, 2016
Congratulations to Heather Blake and the next book in the Wishhcraft Mystery series–Gone with the Witch for adding yet another wonderful review to the long list this series has received. Blake has another winner with this story. With disappearing pets, poisonings and hit-and-runs, this mystery has everything a reader could want. With lots of twists […]
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The Negative Side of #MSWL
Mar 24, 2016
We’ve been talking a lot about #MSWL (Manuscript Wish List) lately. Jessica Alvarez and I, in particular, have been hungry for fresh, new material and we’ve been Tweeting and writing blog posts about it. To our dismay, what we’ve discovered is that #MSWL seems to narrow the types of queries we are getting. I notice […]
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Happy #NationalPuppyDay
Mar 23, 2016
On this day of all days I feel obliged to share a “puppy” picture of our BookEnds puppy, Buford. Since he was adopted at around two years old, he doesn’t look like much of a puppy. Trust us though, he definitely acts like one.
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Readers Will Always Judge a Book by It’s Cover
Mar 23, 2016
Long ago I received a rejection that incensed the author, but gave me new perspectives on evaluating a book. The editor had liked the book enough to bring it up to her editorial board, but in the end one of the reasons they gave for rejection was because they couldn’t picture the cover. Whether we’ll […]
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Happy #PubDay to Shelly Bell!
Mar 22, 2016
Congratulations to Shelly Bell on her newest release, Black Listed! This is the latest in her Benediction series of erotic romances. She sacrificed everything to keep him safe… Five years ago, con artist Lisa Smith broke the first rule of hustling when she fell in love with—and married—her mark, billionaire Sawyer Hayes. The erotic […]
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The Importance of Those First Pages
Mar 22, 2016
I wrote a few weeks ago about the danger of editing and perfecting the first pages of your manuscript, but not following through with the rest of the book. Today I’m going to write about how important those first pages really are and how not perfecting them can be just as dangerous as making them […]
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Your Questions on Queries: When to Nudge a Literary Agent
Mar 21, 2016
I always appreciate questions from readers and am happy to do what I can to help answer them… If I’ve queried, say, my top ten ideal agents, then gotten a request for the full MS from one of them, should I let the other nine agents know that someone has requested it? Perhaps just the […]
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