Tag: books
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Common Questions about Comp Titles
You’ve heard that you need to include comp titles in your query or book proposal, and you have questions. After a decade of polishing my comp-title skills as a publishing professional, I have answers.
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How Do You Know if Your Fiction Book Idea is Good?
How do you know you can turn your novel idea into a book that people will want to read, or that publishers will want to buy? To answer that, you need to consider your audience’s needs, the conventions of your genre, and the preoccupations of society today.
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How Do You Know if Your Nonfiction Book Idea is Good?
If you’re wondering if your nonfiction book idea is good, you are probably really asking these questions: Is my nonfiction book idea marketable? Can I make a whole book out of it? Is it worth my time to write it? This post will help you answer those questions before you commit yourself to writing.
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How Not to Hate Marketing Your Book
Marketing, done right, creates a happy union between you and the people who truly want to read your book. In this post, we’re going to re-train your brain so that you can enjoy the act of connecting your book with its readership.
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Writing Interesting Secondary Characters who Move Your Story Forward
Do your secondary characters fall flat? Or are they threatening to steal the story from your protagonist? Both are common problems that can be addressed by asking yourself this question: How do my secondary characters relate to my protagonist?
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The Author’s Guide to Pre-Press Procedures
“Pre-Press” describes the processes a book undergoes before it goes “on press,” that is, before the printer starts printing it. It can include all non-printing activities, including editing and design; however, in book publishing you’re most likely to hear it in the context of operations that are done to get the finalized file ready for…
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Uncommon Tips for Self-Editing Your Book
In this post I’m sharing specialized skills for polishing your manuscript that most people won’t learn unless they train to be a copyeditor. Even when you are going to be working with a professional editor, self-editing is an important step so that your work is as clean as you can make it, leaving the editor…
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How to get an ISBN in the United States
Every format of a published book needs an individual ISBN. Although you can acquire one for free through sources like Amazon KDP, there are benefits to purchasing your own.
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How to get an ISBN in Canada
Every format of a published book needs an individual ISBN. Although you can acquire one through sources like Amazon KDP, there are benefits to applying for your own (plus, in Canada, it’s free!).
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What A Literary Agent Wants Writers to Know
I asked a literary agent to sit down for an interview—an anonymous one, so they could speak with full frankness: How do you impress a literary agent? What are they really looking for in a query? In a manuscript? What factors make them decide to take an author on? What red flags scream “unprofessional”?
Erin Alladin 