The Hardest Part of Self-Publishing Your Book
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Since announcing our new publication assistance services, we’ve received more than the usual amount of questions about self-publishing, particularly: What is the hardest part of self-publishing your book and are there any easy parts?
We figured who better to pose these questions to than WriteByNight clients with real-world experience. Four helpful writers responded: Dana Frank, Assaf Raz, Dan Hays, and Marcia Drut-Davis.
We’ll tackle the “easy” part next week, but for this week we’re going to start with the hard stuff. read more
Here Comes 2019! And Why Do You Write?
2019 — and its attendant resolutions — is less than a month away.
That means you have four solid weeks to come up with your new writing goals.
If you partake of such things! Not all of us do. I go back and forth. Some years I set a vague goal such as “Get better!” or “Write more!” Some years, no goal at all. For 2018, according to this post where I, and some of you, shared our 2018 writing goals, I wanted to “complete a draft of the book I began writing in May.”
lol. read more
Congrats to WriteByNighters, Part 2!
While you’re heading back this weekend from your Thanksgiving travels, why not read up on some more recent success stories from your fellow WriteByNighters.
As you’ll recall, a few weeks ago we posted about some upcoming books from our talented clients, and asked if there were any others we should know about.
There are! And here are a few of them:
Caroline Bock‘s debut story collection, Carry Her Home, was selected by the Washington Writers’ Publishing House for its 2018 Fiction Award, which includes a cash prize and publication. The book was released in mid-October, with a book launch event at D.C.’s venerable bookstore Politics & Prose. (Which would be a great place to buy the book.) read more
Franzen Folderol
The other day LitHub published a piece titled “Jonathan Franzen’s 10 Rules for Novelists,” borrowed from Jonathan Franzen’s new essay collection.
It caused some hubbub.
Literary Twitter went nuts. Writers and readers piled on Franzen, calling his list pretentious, narrow-minded, and/or just plain ridiculous. Chuck Wendig, to the delight of many, went on a long rant.
Others argued that the piece is taken out of context and say that Franzen’s publicists were just trying to promote the book. Some even claimed the list is meant to be satire. (It may be. I’ve never read Franzen, so I’m not familiar enough to comment.)
Anyway, agree with the list (or parts of it) or not, there are two of them I want to dig into, especially here in mid-November, halfway through NaNoWriMo. read more
On NaNoWriMo, NaNoReMo, and Mo’
Show of hands: Who’s doing NaNoWriMo this year?
Before I got wise, I thought NaNoWriMo stood for National November Writing Month. Which doesn’t make a ton of sense.
But as most of you know, it’s really National Novel Writing Month, during which thousands of writers vow to write every day and have a first draft of a novel by November 30, a.k.a. my birthday, what should be a national holiday.
I won’t be NaNoWriMoing, but I will be NaShoStoWriMoing. My old accountability partner and I are restarting our thing, and my goal is to each week write a first draft of one new short story and revise one old story.
Roll call: Are you doing NaNoWriMo this year? Have you done it before? Did it work? Tell us about your approach and process in the comments. read more
Observations on Books & Reading in Ireland
Justine and I spent a week in Ireland in mid-October, half in Sligo on the northwest coast, half in Dublin. We visited about a dozen bookstores and libraries and took note as best we could of the literary culture. Here are a few (hopefully not lame) observations:
1. Two of the Dublin bookstores we stopped at mark their books up from the cover price. I don’t mean hard-to-find first editions–I mean trade or mass market paperbacks of new or recent books. These stores place their own price tag sticker over the price printed on the book.
One book whose cover price was 10 Euro was marked 15.50. That’s a $6 markup!
Your turn: Have you ever seen this anywhere in the States? Is it a turn-off, or do you not mind? Share with us your thoughts in the comments below.
2. Few new releases in Ireland (and the UK, since that’s where most of them are published) seem to come in hardcover. Most of them are trade paperbacks that are just a little taller than the standard trade. I like this. They’re also less expensive than the U.S.’s $25-30 per.
Your turn: Do you like hardcovers or do you wish U.S. new releases came in paperback? read more
Congrats to WriteByNighters!
Continuing our series on publication and our new publication assistance services, we have a few fun announcements to make, and some congratulations to dish out to a few hard-working WriterByNighters.
First, congratulations to Bridget Farr! Bridget’s middle grade novel, Pavi Sharma’s Guide to Going Home, has been sold to Little, Brown & Company. Pavi is a foster child who starts her own business helping other foster kids navigate the system; but when a fellow foster kid is placed with a family with whom Pavi had a terrible experience, Pavi must help her avoid the same fate. Pavi Sharma’s Gide to Going Home is set for publication in the fall of 2019.
Bridget worked with WriteByNight’s Resa Alboher in book coaching, and is currently working on a new novel in coaching with Jessamine Chan.
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