I share a certain trait with the character of Angela in my debut, The Art of Falling —a propensity for celebration. Maybe you caught on to that when I announced my book deal here a year-and-a-half ago.  The countdown to its publication is now complete, and I recently celebrated with more than a hundred writing friends at my hometown launch at the Doylestown (PA) Bookshop, and at an after-party at the historic, newly renovated Doylestown Inn. Like that first joyous entry, I’m going to let pictures tell the bulk of the story, while tying in some of the topics I’ve visited in this series. Some of my Wegman's writing group While writing is a solo sport, in my first post I suggested that you join hands  with other writers. Here I am pictured with several of the writing friends I meet with once a week at a local grocery store, laptops side by side, all of us working on our various projects. Because we should spend all our time writing, shouldn’t we? Not fritter away tim...

Promotion is a black hole. It has no boundaries, no end in sight. The dark is so complete you can lose your aim within it, shooting expensive ammunition at imagined targets. This black hole may or may not lead to a universe of measurable results—and if it does, the sale of books may not be the best indicator of those results. Marketing, likewise, only the stakes are higher, because that black hole will be sucking money from your hand. Yet this we must do, because if no one knows of our books, they can’t purchase them. So when deciding on events and products for my launch later this month, I found it best to ask: Does this promotion fit within my budget of time and money? What do I hope to gain? 1. Launch party. Budget: Many will say a launch party is never worth the money (you’d have to sell one book for each dollar spent). But for me investing in such milestone celebrations makes life sweeter, and with donations and discounts, I believe we’ll have a night to remembe...

In today's world, credentials are king, marketability (your ability to make people believe in your product) comes a close second, and publication completes the trifecta. With less than two months to go until The Art of Falling releases, I am in the throes of answering interview questions for my blog tour. Now that I have a book coming out, it’s as if I’ve tripped over a line of wisdom, and people want to know what I have to say. But advance degrees and marketing savvy are artificial qualifications as concerns gaining wisdom. Wisdom comes from the school of hard knocks, when life pushes you up against a wall and says, "this is NOT working!" Since this is the place we send our characters to see what they are made of, quotes arise from our stories as our characters fight towards hard-won wisdom. People love such quotes, that they can print out and paste on their wall. Just look at the number of “highlighters” that litter the pages of your Kindle. Here’s one from Rol...

You only have one opportunity to create “buzz” about your book, and you don’t want to squander it. The hope is to create enough excitement about your release so that it explodes from the gate. My gate opens—hopefully with a bang—less than three months from now, on January 28. Pre-sales As you can see by the number “14” applied to this monthly post, I’ve already been creating buzz for The Art of Falling for some time now. So much so that every now and then—when people say, “Didn’t that already come out?”—I have to remind them that the bees haven’t already fled the hive! Once you get fully invested readers to pre-order, however, you can stop worrying about that. Now that pre-orders are live and the final copyedits complete, my evolving author website devotes two pages to my novel.  The first  shows the cover, a brief synopsis, trade review praise and blurbs, and—for the first time—debuts the opening chapter. If the reader is favorably impressed, she need d...

Once editorial interaction draws to its conclusion, the author’s main contact at a traditional publishing company will be with the marketing department. This new relationship will not grow organically over drinks and tapas. Your publicist will want to come up to speed quickly by learning anything about you and your book that will help you do business together—and to get that ball rolling, Sourcebooks (like other major publishers) asks its authors to fill out a 65-part form. This Author Interview Questionnaire took me four full, long days to complete, even though I was more prepared than many to take this step. Thanks to an agent who requested a marketing analysis with my submission a few years ago, I’d already done most of this work. Judging from reactions I heard, my guess is that this agent’s request for a marketing analysis weeds out unwanted submissions from writers not yet ready to think beyond artistic concerns to business concerns. I recall others saying, “I’d ...

Traditional publishers often create a small print run of Advance Reader Copies , or ARCs, in advance of the version it will print for commercial distribution. This edition is clearly marked as an uncorrected copy so that it won’t be confused with the final product. The print above my name:  "Uncorrected Advance Copy • Not for  Sale" But it feels so much like a book—and mine have arrived! Oh, to hold this book in my hand. ARCs are typically made available 3-6 months before publication, often on the longer side for a debut author. The Art of Falling is still seven months out, but Sourcebooks wanted to have copies ready for Book Expo America (BEA) last weekend, since it’s the largest industry trade show in North America. For today’s self-publishers, who are able to finish a manuscript one week, format it the next, and have it for sale online soon thereafter, creating an ARC may simply seem like a way to add considerable time and expense to the book launch process. ...

This past month I arrived at the narrow end of the editing funnel, where we examined all of the final finicky details. Copyedits Thankfully, considering I’m an editor, I received a pretty light copyedit. Comments from two copyeditors dotted my manuscript. Even though I recommend that my clients spell out all numerals, I had applied my own advice inconsistently. I had to decide when God was the almighty or the god of casual “oh my—” usage. My “blonde” was changed to “blond.” I surrendered a few commas, they traded a few back. One editor pointed out the possible unintentional humor in the sentence, “By the time we got to the butt-blaster, Angela looked pooped.” I had two weeks to address these edits and make any other final changes. Template review My first glimpse at the interior design and all its elements! Everything looked great. Because my book quotes "articles" written by a character who is a dance critic, and in one place contains a formal invitation, we had a lit...

During the twelve years I’ve been preparing to publish my fiction, I have not spent every waking hour mooning over what publication may hold in my future. Instead, around the theme of writing, I created a rich, fulfilling life that has fed me in so many ways. Too many ways, it would seem, to fit my current circumstance. I have arrived at the threshold of my dream; all is about to unfold. photo credit:  DavidTurnbull  via  photopin   cc And I can’t find the time to write. Oops. Now that I finally have a book deal, I haven’t been able to maintain focus on my work-in-progress for more than a day or two at a time for months now. Editing jobs I've promised in two weeks are stretching to three+. I’m not keeping up. I live in fear of letting someone—especially myself—down. Here were the components of my life pre-book deal. All are still in full swing, in demand, and not ready to release their grip on my life: writing developmental editing for c...

For eight years I wrote, submitted, and improved upon what will in January 2014 be my debut novel, The Art of Falling. When I was offered representation in December 2011, Katie Shea ( Donald Maass Literary Agency ) suggested another two rounds of developmental edits. When it was sold to Sourcebooks in September 2012, I received notes for a further developmental edit. People have asked me if I’m just changing words around at this point to suit the taste of others. Is it really possible, after all these years, that I am making it better? My answer is yes, it is still getting better. The project is maturing in ways that my vision, unaided, may not have supported. Here are three late-in-the-game changes that substantially improved the manuscript: • Cutting. At the request of my agent (and with the editorial help of Janice Gable Bashman ), I brought the word count down from 98,000 to Katie’s suggested 85,000 words. This length was more saleable for a debut women’s fiction title,...

One year ago I sat writing at my computer when Publisher’s Lunch Deluxe popped into my inbox. Under the heading “People, etc.” I saw that a new agent, Katie Shea, had moved from the Johnson Literary Agency to Donald Maass Literary Agency. Her interests included my main areas: women’s fiction, commercial-scale literary fiction, memoir, and young adult. She had listed several of her favorite titles and, of the ones I had read, I liked them all. Because I had pitched to an editor from Penguin at the 2010 Philadelphia Writers’ Conference (where I was also a board member), and because she had requested my first three chapters, and liked them enough to then request the full manuscript, I was able to add a tantalizing line to my query that my full manuscript was currently under consideration at a Big Six publisher. Further, I was at the time revising the manuscript yet again per ideas gleaned from Donald Maass’s workshop at the 2011 Write Stuff conference. Within five minutes of this anno...

This just in from Sourcebooks: I have a title and pub date! My novel, The Art of Falling, will be released in January, 2014. During the decade I pitched my novels at conferences and queried over the transom, the publishing world changed in significant ways. A growing number of fellow writers who started down the path to traditional publication beside me decided instead to pursue self-publishing alternatives. That can work for nonfiction authors who sell their books at talks they give, or for novelists who benefit from a ready-made genre audience. My writing, however, seemed to sit pretty squarely in a genre that would come to be known as “upmarket women’s fiction,” also known as “literary fiction with commercial appeal” or “book club fiction.” Problem is, the majority of novel purchasers are women. In time, and with considerable thought, I was only able to narrow my target audience down to “most people who read and buy books.” The feedback I received from the 113 agents I cont...