These are lessons that I learned during my debut as a novelist that I wish had been in a book somewhere. Please bear in mind that many of these lessons are more than a decade old from when I was a debut author. The publishing landscape may not look the same now.
There will come a moment in your career when you will meet your writing idol. This may happen more than once, but at least once, you will meet someone for whom it is impossible to deny the urge to be a fan. A giant squeeing fan. But you also want to be professional. Here are […]
Debut Author Lesson: How to be a professional when you want to fangirl Read More »
One of the hardest things for a new author, either with short stories or novels, is to learn how to gracefully self-promote their work during the various award seasons. Here are a few tricks for handling that task.
Debut Author Lessons: How to deal with self-promotion and award season Read More »
Among the things I didn’t think about when entering into the writing business was the sheer amount of travel that I’d be doing. Now, it is possible to be a writer without going to a bajillion conventions, but if you are going to travel do yourself a favor and sign up for a frequent flyer
Debut Author Lessons: Frequent Flyer miles Read More »
Tour can really count as conventions or book tours. The thing is that as an author you will probably wind up traveling a lot. It can be exhausting, even when everything goes right. Back in the day, I spent five years touring for a living as a puppeteer. I found that the same tricks I
Debut Author Lessons: Surviving on tour Read More »
I’ve been attending readings at conventions and booktours for years now. So when I started doing my own readings I followed more or less the model that I’d seen others do. First I’d read, then I’d ask if there were any questions. I got pretty much the same response that I saw most other authors
Debut Author Lessons: The Q & A Read More »
I had not planned to get a P.O. box. Truly, I just hadn’t thought about how I wanted to handle folks who wanted to have things signed. My plan, if I had one, was that if someone needed to mail me things that I would just give them my home address. Since I’m not comfortable
Debut Author Lessons: Mail and P.O. Boxes Read More »
One of the ways that an author connects to the reader is by signing books. Here are some of the things that I’ve learned about signing things — not having a signing event, but the actual act of autographing. Pick a pen color other than black. Collectors and book sellers tell me that when a
Debut Author Lessons: 10 things about signing books Read More »
People have already been asking when the sequel to Shades of Milk and Honey is coming out. I have an answer for you. Glamour in Glass is going to come out in early 2012. The reason that the release has been pushed back is that there aren’t as many copies of Shades of Milk and Honey out as we
Debut Author Lessons: The importance of Brick and Mortar stores Read More »
I spent much of today tromping around Manhattan and heading into bookstores to sign copies of Shades of Milk and Honey. Interesting thing about selling a book: your job doesn’t stop there. The reason I trekked over the city is that signing books at a store does a number of things: It makes it easy
Debut Author lessons: Signing stock for bookstores Read More »