Writers are readers

Last time I talked about the importance of reading widely. Now, my list of books read for last year looks pretty puny compared to some. But it’s a diverse list, so I’m OK with that. I once sat in a meeting with a potential client who was looking for a …

Collected resources for writers

I added a couple of new pages: you’ll find them under the “Resources” menu. The Freebies page is a collection of my downloads, including cheat sheets and the manuscript formatting guide. The Recommended Reading page will look familiar to anyone who’s taken one of my seminars. It’s a list of …

Invisible book sales

There’s a problem with “best seller lists” that people in the industry talk about amongst themselves, but I’m not sure whether the general public is aware of it. Vast numbers of book sales don’t get counted by the compilers of those lists, mainly because the books are published by those …

Q&A: What is an imprint?

Q: Yesterday you mentioned imprints at the Big Six publishers. What is an imprint? A: It’s a brand within a brand. Just like Proctor & Gamble makes Tide detergent for clothes and Cascade detergent for dishes, large publishers—especially the vast publishing conglomerates that make up the Big Six—form different brands …