The Tao of Book Publicity: A Beginner's Guide to Book Promotion

I've been busy the past few months putting together a book for authors called The Tao of Book Publicity: A Beginner's Guide to Book Promotion.  

In The Tao of Book Publicity, I outline the basics of book promotion and explain how the business of publicizing a book works. Designed for beginning authors but also useful for those with some experience in book publishing, The Tao of Book Publicity provides information on the importance of writing a good book and the need for developing a platform, as well as how-to explanations for developing publicity material, including front and back cover text, press releases, Q&As, media and blog tour queries, and newsletter and media lists. 

The Tao of Book Publicity also covers social media, book pricing and sales, book tours and media interviews, and author websites. In addition to explaining how book publicity works, this valuable handbook explores practical topics such as publicity costs, timing, and considerations when hiring a publicist. 

Simple, straightforward, and informative, The Tao of Book Publicity includes expert advice on all aspects of book promotion and is a go-to reference guide for beginning and experienced authors alike.

You can purchase a copy by clicking on the title here: The Tao of Book Publicity.

I hope you find it useful, and will share your thoughts about it on Goodreads and Amazon.com. Happy reading!

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I struggled a little with this blog post today, not because I haven’t written one in a while (which is true, I’ve been delinquent), but mainly because this is not a subject I’m happy about.

My topic today is those agents, editors, publicists, and publishers, who use their social media sites to publicly belittle the writers who have queried them or inquired about their services. I’m talking about the folks who post sneering comments on their Facebook or Twitter pages about manuscripts and query letters they’ve received from authors. These are the comments about bad grammar, overblown plot lines/characters/dialogue, angry responses to rejections, or even deals that go down in inappropriate places (I recently saw a tweet from an agent who crowed that she had made a book deal while she was in the bathroom at her local gym).

In rare cases, there may be a legitimate reason to gripe (I’m thinking about a recent blog post by another agent who received a number of expletive-laden emails from an individual she had rejected), but that griping, in my view, should never take place in a public forum. If a professional has to vent, there are more appropriate venues (i.e., private conversations with coworkers, spouses, or friends) for sharing frustration about submissions, clients, or colleagues. But publicly humiliating authors who submit work, no matter how bad that work might be, is just not acceptable.

A writing professional has to believe that the manuscripts and letters she receives have been sent with the best intentions. Yes, many of these submissions are error-ridden and a great number of the manuscripts are not likely candidates for publication. But there is never a time when it's okay for a literary professional to poke public fun at an author who is making an honest attempt to submit a written work.

Maybe it’s because I’m an author myself, but I cringe when I read giddy Facebook posts ridiculing author submissions. Not only is it unprofessional to do so, it is extremely unkind. In my view, a client submission is a private document and one to be considered with the utmost courtesy. My policy is to never publicly discuss any type of inquiry sent to me, no matter how bad the writing (and I do receive some gems, on occasion) or how mismanaged the cover letter or email message. To me, every writer, along with his work, deserves consideration and a professional, private response from me, whether I agree to represent him or not. And every author deserves some amount of common courtesy and respect for at least having taken the time to produce a written work.

I don’t understand why authors continue to submit to literary professionals who openly belittle them in public forums. To me, a person who bashes potential clients in public is either unprofessional or unkind (or both), and hardly a good candidate for a business relationship.

To writers who are submitting work: I urge you to check out the public forums used by the professionals you plan to query before you submit. You may reconsider after visiting there.

And to my literary colleagues who have indulged in this type of behavior, I beg you to remember: public humiliation, in any form, is unprofessional. If that statement sounds too chastising, I submit this thought instead: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

The 10 Best Books on Writing

Whenever I find myself in one of those middle-of-the-novel writing funks, I turn to the experts, whose books on how to maneuver through the alternately frustrating and fulfilling maze of fiction-writing line the shelves in my office. Although I’ve read dozens of them over the years, a select few have made their way to a place of honor on the shelf reserved for books I refuse to give away. I know that many writers will have other worthy contenders on their lists; these are mine, in reverse order:

10) Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
I had trouble picking a tenth book, because there are so many others that deserve to be on this list and aren’t (I considered Burroway’s Writing Fiction, Forster’s Aspects of the Novel, Olen-Butler’s From Where You Dream, DeMarco-Barrett’s Pen on Fire, etc.). But this one made the list because it has remained on my shelf for over a decade and its short and simple chapters, aimed mostly at beginning writers, speak truth. From “Beginner’s Mind” to “Rereading and Rewriting,” each pithy and instructive section reminds us what we already know. We read Natalie Goldberg and, no matter where we are on our respective writing journeys, we learn.

9) 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them by Ronald B. Tobias
I have returned to this book countless times to remind myself a) that writers have been telling stories for centuries and b) that the best stories have form. The form of a novel can be as simple as a beginning, middle, and end, or it can follow the patterns of quest, revenge, pursuit, maturation, sacrifice, and discovery. Tobias reminds us that though there are hundreds of plot variations out there, a few of those structures have become classics, loved by readers everywhere. It is to those that we aspire.

8) The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them) by Jack M. Bickham
I loved this book from the moment I opened its cover. There’s nothing fancy in Bickham’s style – he grabs us by the neck and instructs us in each direct and wonderful chapter on what we should and shouldn’t do when writing. The chapter “Don’t Warm Up Your Engines” provides one of the best explanations I’ve read on where a story should start. When Bickham speaks, it behooves us to listen.

7) Zen and the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
I heard Ray Bradbury speak one year at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference, and I’ll never forget the amazing zeal and spunkiness of this fiction-writing legend. Bradbury brings the same energy and outspokenness to Zen and the Art of Writing as he does to his own classic tales. He describes his early years trying to eke out a living as a young writer with a family and then urges writers to stick to it and to do it with love. “Let the world burn through you,” he says. In the Zen world of fiction-writing, Bradbury is a warrior-king.

6) Writing Begins with the Breath: Embodying Your Authentic Voice by Laraine Herring
This is one of my most recent acquisitions, but it quickly found a home on my shelf of favorites. I took it with me on a writing residency and only allowed myself to read one chapter a day, doling them out one-by-one so I could immerse myself in each section’s quiet relevance. The book is divided into three parts: “Focusing the Mind,” “The Deep Writing Process,” and “Embracing What and Where You Are.” Writing Begins with the Breath both illuminates and gently instructs, and the imaginative exercises called “Touchstones” at the end of each chapter make us pause, reflect, and return to this book again and again.

5) Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on the Writing Life by Anne Lamott
What hasn’t been said about this book? It’s a classic, and Anne Lamott has become a well-deserved fixture on the writing circuit and in composition classrooms all over the world because of this gifted text. As she says in the opening, good writing is about telling the truth and she has done that, taking us from “shitty first drafts” to publication and deftly addressing everything in-between. Honest, inspirational, and very real, Anne Lamott illuminates the writing process in a way that is both accessible and revealing, telling the truth about writing so vividly that reading her words is like coming home.

4) On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
Who would have thought that a memoir by one of the world’s bestselling authors could so expertly define the practical facets of the writing process? In On Writing, Stephen King not only openly describes his own experiences as a professional writer struggling with personal demons, but he also shares his passion and knowledge about what makes writing good. My favorite section has to do with revision; in it, King tells the story about a piece of fiction he wrote in high school and submitted to a magazine editor. The editor wrote back: “Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%. Good luck.” King says that this piece of advice changed the way he rewrote his fiction “once and forever.” Thanks to Stephen King, it has changed ours, too.

3) How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey
I lent this book to a member of my writing group, and one of his dogs got to it and chewed through half of the front cover. I have to laugh every time I lift it off the shelf (it gives a whole new meaning to the term “dog-eared”!). But I love this book for its intensity and no-nonsense focus on what makes a novel good. Frey gives the best advice I know on how to create unforgettable characters, infuse a plot with conflict, and write dialogue that sings. I come back to this book often for the solid, no-nonsense advice that fills its pages.

2) The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers by Elizabeth Benedict
I don’t know how this became my #2 all-time favorite, but perhaps it’s because I (ahem) have trouble writing about sex. I use my Catholic upbringing as my excuse; for some reason, I imagine the nuns at my elementary and high schools peering over my shoulder every time I write a love scene. But whether it’s my own modesty, or the fear that the intimacy my characters display on the page will reveal more about me than it does them, writing sex scenes – good sex scenes – is really difficult. All of that changed, however, after I found Benedict’s book, which provides insight and advice on how to not only make sex scenes convincing, but also how to use them to reveal character and create and/or resolve conflict. Benedict uses wonderful examples from some of the most respected writers to illustrate the dramatic impact of a well-written sex scene. And she addresses it all – married sex, adulterous sex, illicit sex – in a way that is fresh, revealing, and inspiring. So, whenever those nuns appear, I reach for this book and let this classic guide remind me that it’s okay for sex to be part of the story.

And, drum roll please…..

1) Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maas
My husband bought me this book for Christmas the first year I started writing fiction and it has become my all-time favorite writing guide. I’ve turned to it so often that the pages are covered with sticky notes, highlighted passages, fingerprints, and coffee stains. The book is designed for mid-list authors looking for a way to move ahead in the industry, but the advice packed within its pages is useful for beginners, as well. For a book to be a breakout success, Maas says, it must have the following: an original premise, high stakes, a strong sense of time and place, and larger-than-life characters. And Maas, a literary agent and author of seventeen novels, knows whereof he speaks. I was fortunate enough to attend one of his seminars, where we used some of the draft exercises that became part of his Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. Both the original book and the workbook are essential instruments in any writer’s toolkit, but if I was going to be sent to a desert island and could only take one book on writing with me, Writing the Breakout Novel is the one I would pack in my suitcase.