Authors have a lot to watch out for when reading a publishing contract, but one of the most common dangers is actually invisible: the protections typically missing from short-form contracts. Standard publishing contracts run 10-30 pages, in little type, with wording that ranges from “difficult” to “possibly penned in Hieroglyphs.” Most authors don’t know how to approach the dense legalese,…
Category: Blog
Getting Your Priorities Straight
“We all have the same number of hours in the day.”
I don’t know about you, but when somebody says this, I generally want to kick them in the shins or slap them with a large, dead fish.
It always seems to get said with a self righteous air, as if the person uttering the words has everything in their life perfectly under control. They are never late for work. Never miss a deadline. Never find themselves scrambling to fulfill an obligation at the very last second.
Should We Write About What We Know?: Experience versus Research … by Mariko Tatsumoto Layton
How often have you heard that you should write about what you know? At the same time, you might hear that we can write about anything we want, we just need to research the subject matter. This debate of personal experience versus research is like nature versus nurture. I write middle-grade multicultural novels with Japanese…
Hook Your Book at the Colorado Gold Conference
Writing a good book summary for a cover, online bookstore, or query letter is both challenging and frustrating. After all, summarizing your book in 150-200 words seems like an impossible feat. We all spend countless hours perfecting our book summaries because first impressions count, and you can easily lose a reader or agent in just…
Tips and Tricks to Surprise and Delight … by Suzanne Young
Do you ever sit down to a blank page and hope an idea will flow from your brain to your fingertips like magic? Then do you simply stare at all that white space as your mind shuts down? I am currently working on the sixth book of my Edna Davies mystery series (Murder by Decay)…