According to author and acquisitions editor W. Terry Whalin, this approach is backwards. About 80% to 90% of nonfiction books are sold from a book proposal. This mysterious document called a proposal contains many elements that will never appear in a manuscript―yet these details are critical to publishing executives who make the decision about publishing or rejecting an author’s project. In Book Proposals That Sell, Terry reveals 21 secrets to creating a book proposal that every author needs in order to create one that sells.

    Filled with practical, straightforward advice and insider tips, Get a Literary Agent is a one-stop resource for writers of both fiction and nonfiction. You'll learn how to:Research agents and target the best ones for your workNavigate the submission process--from best practices to possible pitfallsCraft a polished query letter and pitch your work effectivelyAssemble a book proposal like a proForm a lasting partnership with your agentYou'll also gain the advice of more than 100 literary agents who share their secrets for securing representation. If you've ever wondered what a literary agent can do for you--and why you need one--this invaluable guide provides the answers.

    Anderson, M.J. Rose, Heather Graham, J.A. Konrath, Gayle Lynds, Alexandra Sokoloff, Jonathan Maberry, and more. How to develop your craft, improve your writing, get an agent, promote your work, embrace the digital age, and prepare yourself for the coming changes in the publishing industry. Edited by Scott Nicholson.

    How? By taking the fear and mystery out of dictation. By providing exercises designed to nurture and connect parts of the brain used during dictation. By offering specific tips to remove the discomfort that causes most writers to abandon dictation. Fool Proof Dictation is the only ebook of its kind, focusing primarily on the mental process of dictation. It’s a self-paced training system that streamlines the dictation process. There are warm-ups, practical exercises, and an easy to follow routine for dictating your scenes.Fool Proof Dictation serves both absolute beginners and writers who’ve tried dictation but grew discouraged, eventually giving it up. This system offers an ease-of-use that will surprise everyone with how effective and gratifying dictation can be!This ebook details the method I use when I dictate fiction. It also explains all the exercises I’ve used over time to train my brain for effective dictation. On top of that, it includes enough prompts to keep those exercises working for months!

    Elizabeth is forced to become estranged from her father and struggles alone to create hope and meaning for her life while serving her mother like a slave. This book is a true account of a daughter's struggle to survive a mother with paranoia, schizophrenia, and manic depression.

    I spent time looking for a book which would show me how a "raw" story was developed through drafts, with comments received and the changes made. Struggling to find such a work, I decided to create my own, being transparent and honest in the details. Using the story that gained me an offer of a place on a Master's in Creative Writing, SHORT STORY will take you through three drafts of the work.The book details not only the major revisions, feedback given by a professional novelist and an academic, but also has a bunch of tips from my writers toolbox condensed between the drafts. I hope that the process provides something useful for you, be it a tip from the writing toolbox, a look at the editing process, or motivation in knowing that you can do better than I did!

    As a child, he had to take a remedial reading and writing class because he could barely write a full sentence. One editor told him his book would never be published.And yet Bryan is now a bestselling author whose books have been read by over 100,000 people and the book the editor said would never be published has been praised publicly by the foremost experts in the field.All writers doubt their ability. But Bryan's story shows doubt doesn't have to define your writing future.

    How do you make your readers believe your characters are falling in love? How do you show that sizzle of attraction? How do you write a good kissing scene? How do you bring in the much-needed tension but still have your characters flirting and getting closer? In this book I take one of my romance novels (Acting Married) and I go through the entire novel with you, basically interrupting myself to tell you what I was thinking as I was writing the novel. It's like watching a movie with commentary. I pull back the curtain so you can see why I started it the way I did, why I decided to put certain scenes in, and what pushes the romance forward in the book. I preface all this with what I consider the essentials of a good romance novel, and I end with my list of well-loved romance tropes that you can draw from in order to write your own bestselling romance novel.

    From her long experience working with successful writers and discovering new voices, Lerner looks at different writer personality types and addresses the concerns of writers just getting started as well as those stalled mid-career.

    Written by literary agents and other industry professionals, 40 contributions discuss such topics as identifying selling points, conveying enthusiasm, and targeting the pitch to the right agents. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

    Richard Skinner believes it is your duty as a novelist to bring your whole self to the page; to find your story, not force it; to meet your reader in a spirit of openness. In Writing a Novel he offers up frameworks, strategies and stimuli to help you meet that duty, drawingon his deep experience as one of the UK's leading creative writing teachers. He covers the essentials - narrators, character, setting - with charm and rigour. But Writing a Novel is not a set of instructions: it is a way of thinking, a conversation, a relationship in itself.

    Have you ever opened a Kindle book to find that the font started out way too small or way too large? Have you tried to change to a different font while reading and discovered you couldn't? Have you jumped to a new chapter in a Kindle book and seen that the chapter heading lost its formatting? Has a Kindle completely ignored formatting you knew was in the book? According to Amazon, the simplest way to publish your Kindle book is to upload an HTML file you've saved from Microsoft Word or another app. By itself, that method can bring you maybe 80% of the way to a well-formatted, trouble-free ebook. But what about the other 20%? In this follow-up to his bestselling -From Word to Kindle, - Aaron Shepard takes your saved HTML as a starting point and tells how to quickly tweak and tune it to avoid common problems. Assuming no knowledge of HTML, he introduces the basics of the language, then reveals how to use find-and-replace and macros to touch up an entire book in seconds! If you're serious about Kindle publishing and you're technically inclined -- but not a full-fledged geek -- Aaron provides the tips you need to bring your Kindle book to the next level, making it something truly to be proud of. ///////////////////////////////////////////////// Aaron Shepard is a foremost proponent of the new business of profitable self publishing, which he has practiced and helped develop since 1998. He is the author of -Aiming at Amazon, - -POD for Profit, - -Perfect Pages, - and Amazon's #1 and #2 bestselling paid books on Kindle formatting, -From Word to Kindle- and -Pictures on Kindle.- ///////////////////////////////////////////////// CONTENTS Getting Started 1 WORKING WITH HTML HTML and Kindle HTML Export HTML Editing HTML Processing HTML Basics HTML Checking HTML Cleanup HTML Testing 2 HTML FIXES Fixes for Fonts Fixes for Paragraphs Fixes for Headings Fixes for Line Breaking Fixes for Pictures Fixes for Navigation ///////////////////////////////////////////////// SAMPLE Here are some of the things you can accomplish through changes in HTML. * Adjust bookmarks so headings retain proper formatting when jumped to. * Remove settings that stop the user from choosing their own. * Keep fonts from appearing much too small or much too large when the book is opened. * Make sure indents and other spacing stays relative to larger and smaller font sizes. * Avoid line breaks that leave short words dangling at the ends of lines or paragraphs. * Make up for features lost in translation from your word processor, like nonbreaking hyphens. * Stop -ghost hyphens- from appearing in the middle of words. * Keep pages of text from disappearing for some users. * Prevent the Kindle from applying its own defaults in place of your settings.

    Pricing Strategies is about making the most from your work by understanding what your genre will support. It’s not hard, but you have to have a plan. Over the course of a year, you might change your book’s price five or ten times. That’s perfectly fine, when done for the right reasons as part of an overall marketing strategy. What is one reader worth to you as an entry point into your author world? What is that reader worth if they stay on board?Pricing Strategies explains why and how you would vary price points, whether you are exclusive to Amazon or distribute on multiple platforms. Book pricing is about getting the most money from your book or box set, not just one time but for the long term. It is how you can be a successful indie author. Without buyers for your books, self-publishing is just a hobby. Look at your words as your profession and earn your just desserts by pricing your books appropriately and intentionally to improve your bottom line.That’s what Pricing Strategies is all about. Understand the why and let the money flow. Pricing Strategies. The book you need.

     There’s a better way. In How to Write Fast, Platt and Silver show you how to shift your approach to writing to dramatically increase your natural speed, while tapping into your inner storyteller and unleashing more of the stories you were born to tell. You will discover: * How to immediately improve your writing speed. * Why writing fast will result in better writing. * How to redesign your writing strategy to promote going faster. * The five simple hacks Platt, Silver and the entire story studio have used to repeatedly best themselves and move many of them to producing more than a million words a year. * Mental tricks to bypass your inner editor (and why using them will retrain your brain to write faster, while also creating the cleanest copy you’ve ever created). Isn't it time you did more than just write fast? Now you can. Start writing better words faster today!