Blog Archive
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My Thoughts on the Brave New World: Nonfiction
Jan 17, 2011
We talked a little last year about “the brave new world” of publishing and how authors can take advantage of self-epublishing, the pros and the cons. I’ve been thinking a lot about epublishing and what it means for the publishing business, and I have a lot of opinions (surprise, surprise) on the topic. Now, I’m […]
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Friday Thought for the Day
Jan 14, 2011
I’ve been requesting a lot of proposals, which means my reading list is growing, which means a greater workload, which means I’m looking for a reason to reject your query. Don’t give me that reason. Jessica
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Thankful for Social Networking
Jan 13, 2011
Over Thanksgiving weekend last year I had an email crash. In the grand scheme of crashes it wasn’t that bad. I only lost a week of email, nothing else. I do have Time Machine backup, which thankfully keeps everything backed up and me less fearful of crashes. Once my email was back up and running […]
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Digital Media Queries
Jan 12, 2011
A Twitter follower recently asked me if I would ever consider digital media submissions and sent a link to a YouTube video about her book. Honestly, I can’t see many agents embracing this type of query. For one reason, it takes way too long. Watching a video, or just getting to the part of a […]
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Multiple Personalities
Jan 11, 2011
I was checking my Twitter account recently and thinking about the multiple personalities of authors, those who write under two (or sometimes more) names, and wondering what that means for social networking. Obviously if you write under both Jane Doe and Janet Buck you’re going to need two different Facebook accounts and Twitter accounts so […]
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NANO and What’s Next
Jan 10, 2011
For those who have been living in a publishing bubble, November is otherwise known as NANO—National Novel Writing Month—in the writing world. Frankly, I never had much of an opinion of NANO, but I realize that a number of my publishing colleagues do, and for good reason. For the month of November thousands of people, […]
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Submission Update
Jan 07, 2011
Closing to queries for the month of December was really wonderful. It gave me time to catch up, clean out my inbox and actually do some reading that had little to nothing to do with work, although not nearly as much reading as I would have liked. Just to update you on where things stand. […]
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Unlikeable Characters
Jan 06, 2011
I did a blog post a while back in which I made the mistake of using what I thought at the time was an innocuous example of rejecting a work because the characters were unlikeable. These two words, “unlikeable characters,” set off a bit of a sh**storm, if you’ll excuse my language. What many of […]
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Finding an Editor
Jan 05, 2011
I read in one of your blog that the new writers should make sure that their submission should be polished and well-edited. What can I do to convince an editior to read my work? You’re correct. Before submitting anything you need to make sure you’ve done all your revisions and editing, but this doesn’t necessarily […]
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Fantasy Word Count
Jan 04, 2011
I have just finished a 145,000 word fantasy novel, but read in your post that fantasy should hover around 80,000. As this is my first novel should I be considering making it my first and second novels? I guess the question would be, if a first time author queried you with this massive length story, […]
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Happy New Year!
Jan 03, 2011
I had a wonderful time away and was able to get caught up on a lot of my to-do list. The smartest thing I did over the holidays? Close to queries. It allowed me to catch up on what I had in my in-box and refresh after a wonderful year. Now I can go into […]
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Happy Holidays to You!
Dec 17, 2010
Thank you so much to everyone who participated in our 12 Days of Bookmas Giveaway. It was fun for us and hopefully fun for you. Now to announce the final winner in this contest. Yesterday’s question, posted by Kim, was: What books will her son Nicky be getting for Christmas? And the answer is The […]
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