Marketing a book starts long before the book itself is more than a gleam in the author’s eye. For me as a writer, the toughest part of the marketing package is one that comes early on: the pitch . This is the teaser that will hook an agent or an editor to read the manuscript. Or, if you're publishing your work yourself, the pitch is what goes on the back of the cover, or in the description on the e-book websites to hook readers. A pitch isn't a summary, but it does need to give a sense of the writing and the story. It also needs to explain why the book matters. And it should be short: certainly less than a page. What works for me in writing a good pitch is to step back–way back–and focus on the essentials: why the book matters and what makes it unique. The pitch below is the draft I wrote on a recent weekend for my memoir, Bless the Birds . Let me know what you think! Bless the Birds is part of a national conversation that is happening quietly and privately, but nee...

When Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto started its rise to bestseller, an interesting thing happened in bookstores: you’d find not only Bel Canto prominently placed, but beside it, her previous four novels. This front-of-store placement, purchased by her publisher, worked like a dream for Patchett—her breakout novel significantly back-sold her previous titles. Authors of series know this phenomenon: a reader hops on board in the middle and then goes back to begin the series from the beginning. But it also boosts sales for authors like Patchett, whose stand-alones feature different characters and premises. Could this bona fide book sales technique work for you? Only if you have a body of published work to stack on that table! Very early in our pre-signing discussion, my agent-to-be asked that all-important question, “Do you have any more works in progress?” Me: “Sure!” [Here’s where a hidden webcam would have found me scraping through a decade of files seeking any jot...

In the first installment on Wednesday we ended the post with the following question and comment: What does a writer do who doesn’t want to hustle – just write? It’s a growing worry for many authors, and it will get worse. Now let’s fast forward to the year 2015. Let’s imagine self-publishing has matured. It’s accepted and respected in the publishing world. A lot of successful self-publishers have begun to ask themselves: what do I really want to do with the rest of my life? Become another J. A. Konrath and work 18/24 to boost my Kindle ratings? Or hype myself perpetually at Facebook, Google+ and Twitter? Or mount a thousand blog tours? Again, do I write or hustle? What happened to my dream of being an author, a person who writes fiction, not advertisements?  Maybe they thumb through that list of literary agents, long scorned. They decide that the traditional publishing route might have some merits after all. Goodbye to hard labour. Let the publisher do the hustlin...