Includes tips about everything from agents to electronic publishing.

    Throughout, the emphasis is on promoting a plain English style. This little book can help you communicate more effectively by showing you how to enliven your sentences.

    Complete with self-critique questions to help you assess your work, these exercises challenge you to experiment with the diverse writing styles as you clarify your own.Make the most of Josip Novakovich's insightful, mind-expanding workshop and come away with a stronger voice, a broader perspective and better fiction.

    Too often missing from these conversations is the fact that writing is also a business. The reality is, those who want to make a full- or part-time job out of writing are going to have a more positive and productive career if they understand the basic business principles underlying the industry.The Business of Being a Writer offers the business education writers need but so rarely receive. It is meant for early-career writers looking to develop a realistic set of expectations about making money from their work or for working writers who want a better understanding of the industry. Writers will gain a comprehensive picture of how the publishing world works—from queries and agents to blogging and advertising—and will learn how they can best position themselves for success over the long term.

    As a result, writers will dig deep within and explore their own values and worldviews in order to create an effective story. Writers will come away with an extremely precise set of tools to work with--specific, useful techniques to make the audience care about their characters, and that make their characters grow in meaningful ways. They will construct a surprising plot that is unique to their particular concept, and they will learn how to express a moral vision that can genuinely move an audience.The foundations of story that Truby lays out are so fundamental they are applicable--and essential--to all writers, from novelists and short-story writers to journalists, memoirists, and writers of narrative non-fiction.

    Liberating and emboldening the beginning writer are the goals of Ted Kooser and Steve Cox in this spirited book of practical wisdom that brings to bear decades of invaluable experience in writing, teaching, editing, and publishing. Unlike “how to write” books that dwell on the angst and the agony of the trade, Writing Brave and Free is upbeat and accessible. The focus here is the work itself: how to get started and how to keep going, and never is heard a discouraging word such as “no,” “not,” or “never.” Because of the wealth of their experience, the authors can offer the sort of practical publishing advice that novices need and yet rarely find. Organized in brief, user-friendly chapters—on everything from sensory details to a work environment, from creating suspense to revising and taking criticism—the book allows aspiring (and practicing) writers to dip in anywhere and find something of value.

    Marketing it can be even harder.Marketing a book in 2021 can seem like a full-time job, what with the crazy number of things authors seem to be expected to do: social media, blog tours, advertising, price promotions, mailing lists, giveaways, you name it. But here’s a little secret: you don’t need to do all those things to successfully set your book on the path to success. What you need is a solid plan to find the one or two tactics that will work, and start to drive sales… in a minimum amount of time. And that’s exactly what you’ll find in this book.Instead of drowning you in information or inundating you with hundreds of different tactics and strategies that eventually prove fruitless, this book will guide you through a step-by-step framework to find the ones that actually work for you and your book, so that you can start marketing more efficiently.In particular, you’ll learn: • How to change your mindset and sell more books with less effort.; • How to write books that guarantee a lasting, profitable career; • How to get Amazon’s Kindle Store to market your book for you; • How to get thousands of readers into your mailing list before you even release the book; • How to propel your book to the top of the charts at launch; and • How to automate your marketing so that you can spend less time marketing and more time writing,After helping over 150,000 authors crack the marketing code through a popular weekly newsletter, Reedsy’s Co-founder Ricardo Fayet is sharing everything he’s learned over the past few years in this beginner-friendly, jargon-free guide to book marketing.

     Maybe you start, but can’t find the time to continue. Or you’re frustrated with the writing process. And when you seek advice, people tell you, “It’s all about discipline”, or they talk about what writing software to use. But that doesn’t help you actually write your book. So you never finish your book, the world never gets the benefit of your wisdom, and you never get the benefits of being an author. Isn’t there an easier way? Now there is. In The Book In A Box Method, Tucker Max and Zach Obront show you the exact steps you can follow to go from idea to finished manuscript, in an easy, quick way -- even if you’re not a writer. Using the same methods, processes, and templates that they use for their authors at their company, Tucker and Zach show you exactly how to: Crystallize your book idea Create your book outline Create all the content for your book Edit that content into a great manuscript With The Book In A Box Method, you’ll be able to write a better book - in less time - than you ever thought possible.

    Le Guin generously shares the accumulated wisdom of a lifetime's work.

    As the always clear and direct Stein explains here, This is not a book of theory. It is a book of usable solutions--how to fix writing that is flawed, how to improve writing that is good, how to create interesting writing in the first place. With examples from bestsellers as well as from students' drafts, Stein offers detailed sections on characterization, dialogue, pacing, flashbacks, trimming away flabby wording, the so-called triage method of revision, using the techniques of fiction to enliven nonfiction, and more.

    I have to talk myself into bravery with every sentence, agreed Cynthia Ozick, sometimes every syllable. E. B. White said he admired anyone who has the guts to write anything at all.An author who has taught writing for more than thirty years,In The Courage to Write, Ralph Keyes, an author who has taught writing for more than thirty years, assures us that anxiety is felt by writers at every level, especially when they dare to do their best. He describes the sequence of courage points through which all writers must pass, from the challenge of identifying a worthwhile project to the mixture of pride and panic they feel when examining a newly published book or article.Keyes also offers specifics on how to root out dread of public performance and of the judgment of family and friends, make the best use of writers' workshops and conferences, and handle criticism of works in progress. Throughout, he includes the comments of many accomplished writers -- Pat Conroy, Amy Tan, Rita Dove, Isabel Allende, and others -- on how they transcended their own fears to produce great works.

    But where did they come from? And should we be breaking them? Designed for bloggers of all levels of experience, this book takes a hard look at twenty-eight of the blogospheres golden rules and shows you when, why and how to break them. Illustrated with real-life Blogger Stories and examples plus Expert Comments from those whove learned the hard way, The Golden Rules of Blogging (and When to Break Them) will give you a fresh perspective on blogging. Out with the rules? You decide!

    More importantly, it must be a FUNCTIONAL tool that advances you forward towards your goals -- rather than holding you back due to endless tinkering and perfecting of your plan without taking action. Enter the 24 Hour Business Plan Template, your functional tool to get you there as efficiently as possible. This is a complete guide that includes a downloadable pre-formatted business plan template and cash flow spreadsheet to help you get started. In the book, I lay out the method I personally used to plan my own business - and in doing so, leave my full-time job and start my business on a full-time basis within seven months. My plan itself was constructed in under 24 hours on January 1, 2015 as my new years resolution; the remainder of the time spent was executing this plan over time. In the book you'll learn how to do the same, or close to it at the very least - and you'll begin to understand why this efficiency in the beginning is so important. To reiterate, it's important to get to the action-taking phase as soon as possible. This cannot be overstated enough. Successful entrepreneurs and authors like Eric Ries, Gabriel Weinberg, and Justin Mares tout this very principle in their books The Lean Startup and Traction -- the simple fact is, it's much easier to make progress by taking action and adapting over time vs. trying to get everything perfect the first time around. Too much time can be spent getting stuck in your head due to information paralysis or perfectionism, only to wake up one day realizing you've actually done nothing concrete at all to advance your goals. Don't be this person! Get up out of your chair and take action to make your goals happen. Realize that it may take several iterations of creating a business plan, or cycling through various ideas, before you feel confident in moving forward with one in particular. This is okay -- and in fact, it's the exact reason why you need to be efficient during the initial planning and evaluation stage. Much better to spent one or two weeks cycling through 5-10 ideas than an entire year getting nowhere. In this book, we'll cover the following topics: -The importance of validation, and how to validate your business idea. -The key elements of designing an amazing cover page for your business plan. -How to write an executive summary, and why it must be written last after everything else. -The proper elements that make up your Company Objectives section. -The right approach to laying out your Products & Services section. -How to setup a target customer profile including the right questions to ask. -Websites and tables that will greatly simplify your industry and competitor analyses. -Several possibilities for getting started with sales and marketing, and the difference between each. -The key elements that will comprise your operational plan and any business logistics. -What roles need to be defined in your Management section. -The preferred formats and metrics to use in your business capitalization (initial funding) section. -How to lay out your financial plan, both for your business and your personal finances. Please know fat was trimmed from every section of this book to ensure you can get through it and understand the key principles quickly and move on to actually creating your own plan. Only the critical elements were left in, with additional explanation added at key junctions to ensure comprehension. Whether you're venturing out for your first time as an entrepreneur, or you're a seasoned veteran looking for a no-nonsense way to manage the planning process for your next venture, 24 Hour Business Plan Template belongs on your tool belt.

    What's more, this revised and expanded edition contains updated reading lists and organizational references, as well as the latest information on word processing and illustrating with computers. There's also a new chapter on writing plays for children, and innovative suggestions for handling difficult contemporary issues such as AIDS. From character sketches to bound books, author/editor Barbara Seuling shows how to get involved and work toward success in today's world of children's literature.

    Rethinking the usage guide for the twenty-first century, Pinker doesn’t carp about the decline of language or recycle pet peeves from the rulebooks of a century ago. Instead, he applies insights from the sciences of language and mind to the challenge of crafting clear, coherent, and stylish prose. In this short, cheerful, and eminently practical book, Pinker shows how writing depends on imagination, empathy, coherence, grammatical knowhow, and an ability to savor and reverse engineer the good prose of others. He replaces dogma about usage with reason and evidence, allowing writers and editors to apply the guidelines judiciously, rather than robotically, being mindful of what they are designed to accomplish. Filled with examples of great and gruesome prose, Pinker shows us how the art of writing can be a form of pleasurable mastery and a fascinating intellectual topic in its own right.