How to Publicize your Book: Getting Started

ninaamir — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:53:34 -0800

Many would-be nonfiction authors make the mistake of not beginning to think about publicity for their book until after they have written it. In fact, they don’t even need to write the book until after it has been purchased by a publishing house, but they do need to begin working on publicity prior to ever submitting a proposal to an acquisitions editor. The proposal itself includes a section ...

Make $150,000 from Your Book Before It's Written

ninaamir — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:56:51 -0800

Many professionals choose to write books to help them achieve expert status, bring in more clients and, ultimately, build their businesses. This offers a viable strategy for many business people, especially those whose companies have a client base, such as consultants and coaches. With the ease and affordability of print-on-demand (POD) publishing, almost anyone wanting to utilize a book to ...

Media Coaching Tips: 5 Mistakes to avoid when promoting your book on radio or TV

ninaamir — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:06:29 -0800

Yesterday's WNFiN blog post discussed tips for building platform and becoming an expert by becoming a socially relevant writer so the media will seek you out often. However, many nonfiction writers find speaking to the media intimidating. In fact, speaking to the media -- radio and television show hosts, internet radio show hosts and journalists of all sorts -- takes a bit of getting used to for ...

8 Publicity Tips to Build Your Platform and Achieve Expert Status

ninaamir — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:08:42 -0800

Now that we are more than halfway through the month, it’s time to get really serious about platform building and promoting ourselves as writers. We must also take a hard look at how to promote our writing work. (That’s next…)Part of building platform involves becoming a socially relevant author/speaker and achieving expert status. This means removing yourself from the simply box that says ...

Self-Publishing: Timing Is Everything!

ninaamir — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:43:48 -0800

Have you ever considered self-publishing your work? Does the idea of being your own “publisher” sound enticing? Are you frustrated with the traditional publishing world? Do you want to make all the profit on your book—since you will have to do the work promoting it no matter who publishes it? If so, you might want to seriously think about using some method of self-publishing for your work.I ...

The eBook Revolution is Here! Is it Passing You By?

ninaamir — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:33:07 -0800

We're half way through the month of November. That means we are also half way through the Write Nonfiction in November challenge. (You should be half way finished with your nonfiction project!) If for some reason you haven’t already chosen a nonfiction project to work on this month, or if you’re working on a book manuscript and want to consider a different format, think about producing an ...

How Nonfiction Writers Can Find The Right Writers’ Conference

ninaamir — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 06:56:45 -0800

Writers’ conferences provide a wonderful resource for writers of all types. More and more conferences are providing great information not only getting published in general but also on nonfiction writing and building platform. Thus, they are becoming almost a necessity if you want to keep up to date on what’s going on in the industry and how to get your foot in the door of an agent’s or ...

Making the Perfect Nonfiction Pitch

ninaamir — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 04:42:46 -0800

Let’s backtrack for a day to the all-important topic of pitches and query letters. I just received an expert blog post from agent Katharine Sands, editor of Making the Perfect Pitch: How to Catch a Literary Agent's Eye, a collection of pitching wisdom from leading literary agents, and this one makes it well worth revisiting these topics one more time this month. Plus, not only does she ...

Editing IS Marketing: Boning Up on First Impressions

ninaamir — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:02:03 -0800

Since we are on the topic of editing (see yesterday’s post), I thought we should follow that line of thinking into another area: marketing. This gives us another way to look at what we do when we edit our work or have professional editors help us polish our writing.To do this, I’ve asked Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winningHowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers, ...

Ten Top Editing Errors to Avoid

ninaamir — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:57:12 -0800

Yesterday we discussed query letters and how to make them immaculate. However, all the writing nonfiction writers turn in to editors, agents or publishers must be immaculate. Therefore, they must learn to be great editors of their own work. That is not to say that all writers don’t need to have their work edited by professional editors—almost all do. However, most don’t have their query ...

Five Things to Avoid for a Pristine Query Letter

ninaamir — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:00:20 -0800

If you want to sell your nonfiction writing, at some point you'll have to write a query letter. This holds true whether you are writing a book, an article or an essay. If you remain uncertain about what writing a query letter entails, return to the origins of the word itself. The word "query" means "a question" or "an inquiry." A query letter asks an editor or an ...

Make Every Word Count When Pitching to Agents or Acquisition Editors

ninaamir — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:42:33 -0800

A writer wanting to obtain a literary agent most often has to send an agent a pitch or query letter before ever entering into a conversation about representation. Additionally, if aspiring authors decide to approach publishing houses without literary representation, they must take the same route: compose and send a pitch or query letter.Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you might have the opportunity ...

The Top Six Questions Memoir Writers Ask

ninaamir — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:42:57 -0800

It's Day #9 of the Write Nonfiction in November challenge! We've covered a lot of ground already, and I thought we'd take a break from the business side of nonfiction writing to talk a bit about actual writing—memoir writing to be exact.Memoir writing represents an area of nonfiction writing I know much less about, so I've asked my friend and Linda Joy Myers, president and founder of the ...

What Do Agents Look For? Great Writers, Great Professionals

ninaamir — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:57:04 -0800

Nonfiction writers looking for traditional book publishing contracts—wanting to sell their manuscripts to small, medium or large traditional publishing houses, need to find themselves literary representation. While finding an agent may not be necessary for many small publishing houses that accept unagented work, most mid-sized and large publishing houses, indeed, only accept agented book ...

10 Ways to Build Your Author Platform Online

ninaamir — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:07:01 -0800

As mentioned in yesterdays WNFiN post, when a publisher or acquisition editor examines a prospective author's nonfiction book proposal, he or she will look long and hard at a number of things that have little to do with that writer's writing. In particular, purchase of a manuscript depends to a great extent upon a proposal section called the "Author's Platform." If ...