Jane Friedman's Blog: Jane Friedman, page 30

When You’re Able to Crowdsource Priceless Writing Advice

Photo by Yura Forrat

Today’s post is by author and wellness coach Nicole C. Foster (@nicolecfoster).

In the summer of 2022, I was a few months into writing the very first draft of my memoir along with a group of fellow writers in book inc’s Memoir Incubator. In these early days of writing my manuscript, the writing process often felt akin to throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. I remember literally throwing spaghetti on the ceiling as a child and watching it fall back down immediately. Between fits of giggles, I wondered, do adults really do this when they make pasta? My manuscript journey has felt the same—are “real” memoirists really just going to town on their first drafts and hoping for the best?

As I wrote, I would nestle up with a cup of tea in a mug that one of my PALS gifted me that said, “Keep Calm. It’s Just a First Draft.” While the sentiment was comforting, I craved external validation that I was on the right path. My memoir focuses on two of the most challenging times of my life—losing my dad in the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and, ten years later, being diagnosed with leukemia days before my fifteenth birthday. Since I’ve endured and survived these parts of my life, I’ve always felt the pull to write about them, and with that desire comes the reality of reliving the heaviness of it all. I often find myself telling people, in the most endearing way, that writing a memoir is equal parts catharsis and torture.

In search of external validation, I decided, on a whim, to write into Chelsea Handler’s podcast, “Ask Chelsea,” where she invites guests on and allows listeners to call or write in for advice. While Chelsea is known for her comedy, she’s also the author of seven books. Life Will Be the Death of Me (2019) explores her experience of unexpectedly losing her older brother Chet when she was nine years old and how the impact of this loss has followed her through adulthood. She magically infuses her well-known humor in a sobering story of grief.

Though our stories are very different, they share similar themes of grief, and I’ll always feel a kindred connection with any celebrity from the Garden State. In the email, I shared my writing struggles—how the topics felt so heavy and how I was overwhelmed by my haphazard approach of including too much information. I hit “send” on the email and, for the next few weeks, would eagerly check if I had a response but never did. Still, I listened to her podcast every Thursday release day, soaking in her conversations with well-known guests like Kate Hudson, Brooke Shields, and Esther Perel.

To my surprise, a year and a half later, I opened an email on a Friday morning with the subject line “How do I write my memoir?” The reply was coming from Chelsea’s producer, Catherine, who invited me to a pre-interview Zoom that very day. During our chat, she invited me on the podcast the following Monday and casually told me that the special guest would be Kristin Hannah, the bestselling author of The Women and The Nightingale, among other titles. By Monday afternoon, I felt equally nervous and excited as I rearranged my bedroom furniture to get the perfect Zoom background. When I was finally let into the room to chat with Chelsea, Kristin, and Catherine, I spit out a nervous “Hi!” as my face turned into an immediate smile, ready to soak up their wisdom.

In our conversation, they read my email, where I shared that I was working on my first draft, then they advised me on how to take on this initial phase of writing and overcome overwhelm. Kristin shared her approach to writing in chronological order and gave guidance in finding my groove by making writing a regular practice. Chelsea chimed in with her experience of writing about loss and grief and how feeling these emotions while we write—be it bawling our eyes out—actually makes our writing better. They agreed there’s no right or wrong way to start, and the key takeaway was writing and keeping writing.

This experience was priceless and granted me the permission to feel more at ease in my writing life. It also reminded me of the power of crowdsourcing writing advice. Connecting with fellow writers, like I have through book inc, is an amazing way to stay energized and eager to stay the course. I’ve found that getting close to the source is how I crowdsource the best writing advice, and I have a few ideas of how you can, too.

Write into advice-based podcasts—even if they’re not writing or book-related. Send an email or call to share your writing woes or ask for their opinion on your ideas. You never know who might answer!Join author Q&As—virtually or in person. Recently, I attended a virtual author Q&A with John Stamos about his new memoir, If You Would Have Told Me, hosted by the Library Speaker Consortium. While registering for the session, audience members could write in questions that the moderator used as a guide during the hour-long conversation. By subscribing to my local library newsletter, I can stay informed on upcoming authors’ series like this one.Connect with fellow writers on social media—Substack, X, and Instagram. These days, everyone has a platform and audience! I’ve been able to find all my favorite authors, writers, and editors online and revel in inside peeks into their daily lives. They’re often trying to create a community around their work and often will open up their DMs, offer exclusive chat channels on Substack, or host Instagram live sessions and field questions from followers. I’ve found this is the most accessible way to gain insider knowledge of the writing world and stay connected with the ins and outs of the industry.

If I’m being honest, the best part of the podcast happened when I left the Zoom call. Before taking the next caller for advice, Chelsea exclaimed in her unwavering way, “She seems like an author!” That comment alone made me feel like my spaghetti-throwing approach has not been for naught, and one day, I’ll have a hearty bowl of pasta to share with the world.

How an Independent Midwestern Publisher Not Only Survives, But Thrives

Book publishing is a New York–centric business, to a fault. All of the major US publishers are based there, as are many literary agents. You’ll find prestigious publications, nonprofits, and organizations for writers in NYC—such as The Authors Guild, Poets & Writers, The Center for Fiction, the Council for Literary Magazines and Small Presses, the National Book Award—need I go on?

For those who work in publishing but outside of this nexus, it’s exciting to find someone else who has decided to take up the challenging task of running a stand-alone, traditional publishing company somewhere else—without grants, university support, or venture capital.

When I visited Chicago this past June, I had the opportunity to meet Doug Seibold, the founder of Agate Publishing, established in 2002. Based in Evanston, Illinois, Agate publishes nonfiction across a range of categories, including Black literature, business, food and wine, and regional titles of interest to the Midwest.

Recently, Agate launched a publishing academy for people to learn the business at an affordable price, which caught my attention. After our in-person meeting, I sent Doug the following questions that he graciously agreed to answer.

Jane Friedman: As someone from the Midwest who started her publishing career in the Midwest, I feel like I can say: a well-established and stable publisher like Agate is not as common as I would like. The Midwestern publisher where I started out went bankrupt in 2019, and I’ve seen comparable companies close or get bought up by bigger houses. How or why does Agate survive?

Doug Seibold: Thanks for these kind words—Agate celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2022, and even for someone who white-knuckled it through our first three to four years, and has the very focused approach to business that sort of legacy endows, I too must acknowledge that we’ve become well-established and stable, even if it doesn’t feel that way every day.

First off—I doubt, at this point, I will ever sell, though this is always a never-say-never kind of proposition. One reason Agate has such a diverse range of imprints is because I used to imagine that one day I might want to sell one or more of these, and their relative disparity would make them more easily detachable. But I’ve since learned we’re probably too small for any part of Agate to interest someone in a meaningful way.

A few years ago, one Big Five house was kind of all over us. Their children’s arm became interested in Agate’s Bolden imprint, which had just produced a huge, award-winning book called Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut. And yet another imprint was interested in acquiring the backlist work of two authors who’d launched their award-winning careers at Agate Bolden.

It was a little overwhelming, and the negotiations were a little choppy. At one point, I said: Why not just take the Bolden imprint, if so many parts of your house are interested in Agate? After a few days, though, one of the head honchoes very nicely led me to understand that the whole imprint was too small potatoes for her, and her interest was limited solely to those particular backlist authors. It was instructive.

I’ve also learned we’re probably too oddly constructed, with too many unrelated parts, to interest anyone in buying the whole thing. The company grew around less my particular interests than my particular areas of expertise from earlier in my career—I started Agate at age 40. So I doubt anyone else will ever have that same idiosyncratic mix of capabilities and interests to want the whole thing.

At the same time, this odd construction has definitely been one of our key strengths. Diversifying can be dangerous for small presses, but in Agate’s case, it allowed me to pursue very different kinds of publishing in ways that ultimately strengthened the company by giving us a broader business portfolio. Sometimes certain kinds of books are up. Our two bestselling books ever were from otherwise modest parts of our program. So that’s played a big role in both our longevity and our stability. It’s also had the happy benefit of me continuing to feel fresh and challenged as the decades go by. I love what I do and I’m thankful every day I get to do it. I like to think my zeal for books, and for business, helps me do it better.

Do you consider your location important to what you publish and how you operate?

Yes and no. We have an imprint, Midway Books, devoted to Midwestern topics and authors, of the kind perennially overlooked on the coasts. There is opportunity there for a company our size. And I like to think that bull-headedly staying in Chicago, rather than pursuing a publishing career in New York, which happens to be where I grew up, helped me avoid the herd mentality that afflicts conglomerate publishing, and see my way to opportunities off the beaten path.

But being here also entails perpetual challenges with getting media attention. Chicago doesn’t understand itself as a publishing city in the same way it does as an architecture city and a theater city; the local print media pretty much ignores the local publishing scene, though it gives plenty of attention to local authors. And the national media finds Chicago publishers—or Agate, at least—easier to overlook than the excellent communities of publishers in smaller places like Minneapolis/St. Paul, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Boston.

While still in college, I landed a paid internship at the publishing company I ultimately spent 12 years at. I’m not sure I’d be conducting this interview with you today if that publishing house didn’t offer that internship program. In my opinion, it was one of the most important programs they ran. When did Agate’s internship program start and why do you do it?

We hosted our first intern in 2003 as a favor to one of our authors, whose friend had a son who’d just finished his English literature bachelor’s degree. Over the next seven years or so, while I was still working out of my basement, a steady supply of interns found their way to us, many from local schools like Northwestern. There were also many who’d gone away for school but wanted to return home to Chicago, and sought us out.

I developed a modest training program to help them be more productive at Agate, and also to help them pursue full-time jobs in any aspect of publishing. I saw it as an important part of what we had to offer them, though our internship was always focused at least as much on the benefits to interns as the benefits to Agate.

Beginning in 2010, when Agate had a major growth spurt, our program became more structured, and we also started hiring a bunch of our ex-interns. Over the years, we’ve had a notably diverse group of 130 interns, and ultimately we ourselves hired almost 40 of them at one point or another. I think right now about half our 20-person staff is made up of former interns from over the years, and many have since gone on to work for other publishers or start their own publishing-related businesses. This has been crucial to our growth. Because the publishing community here is so small, developing my own potential staff through this in-house program became an unexpected positive result of perpetuating it.

Along the way, the training got even more robust and detailed, and I began to find more personal reward in helping to elaborate the internship program and support our ex-interns’ careers. I didn’t have anything like that kind of support when I started out—I mostly learned from cautionary lessons. I have only gotten more interested in helping young people learn about this industry and how to flourish in it—which has led me to start Agate Publishing Academy, a new career development and training program for people interested in the field. In particular, we hope to better serve the kinds of aspirants who don’t historically find a lot of opportunity with the conglomerate presses—and who find costly master’s programs just another kind of obstacle.

When people without any background in book publishing come to me and say, “I want to start a publishing company from scratch, do you have advice for me?” my main reaction is: Don’t. Or: Are you sure you really want to do that? Are you trying to lose your savings quickly? What is your response?

I think we need more publishing companies, and more of them need to be started and run by people who aren’t old white guys like me. I’ve mentored a lot of publishers informally over the years, probably about fifteen, and I’ve recently started doing this more formally with a few younger colleagues.

Is starting your own press hard? Yes. Are the odds against anyone who tries to do it? Yes, just like with any other startup. But I hope I’ve learned a few things about how to make this easier for other people than it was for me, and my hope is to formalize some of this further with a startup incubator/training program that I’m going to offer through Agate Publishing Academy. This entrepreneurship course should launch in early 2025, and my aim is to give participants everything they need to get up and running as simply and quickly as possible.

I will say that one of the big issues for many people interested in doing this is lack of basic business know-how. I was a writer and editor before I started Agate and had to take an auto-didact approach to the business side. The fact that I failed repeatedly to launch Agate over a seven-year period gave me a lot of time to learn about business. But over the years—as with my training and career development work—I’ve gotten at least as interested in what helps a company become sustainable as I am in the writers we publish.

To go back to your first question—there are a lot of specific aspects to my background that ultimately benefited me when it came to running Agate. I worked in a bookstore for three years to pay my way through college, and that experience helped me understand that side of the industry. Later, while holding a day job, I helped edit small literary magazines, and also reviewed books for the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and other outlets. Those experiences helped me hone my judgment and acquaint myself with long hours of hard work, which (the hard work part) had eluded me to that point in my life.

I worked three years for a small press that failed; I spent a lot of time coming up with ideas about how it might perform better, trying to save my livelihood. And also, after leaving for college at 17, I was broke and deeply in debt with college loans for the next 15 years, which forced me to become very disciplined about spending money. I was very committed to making Agate work, but I was also very realistic about what that would require of me.

Some of the modules at the Agate Publishing Academy cost $100 each—a huge bargain. Publishing Basics is $1,000. Who is your primary target audience for this?

My aim is for Agate Publishing Academy to become a more focused, more affordable, and more accessible alternative to existing options for people interested in publishing. My primary target audience—for our entry-level “Publishing Basics” offering in particular—is people interested in learning more about this weirdly opaque yet utterly essential field, who don’t have the means or background to follow traditional paths in.

There are few obvious on-ramps to publishing careers. Everyone knows publishing has a diversity problem, but too many people seem flummoxed about how to address it. I hope the academy can help a wider variety of people find that first job, and then also maybe that next job, in terms of building their skills and advancing their career prospects. I am unsure higher education is interested in taking such a practical, career-oriented approach to this kind of learning—which is why I see an opportunity for independent presses like Agate to meet this challenge, and figure out a sustainable way forward. Independent publishing, unlike conglomerate publishing, is distributed across the country. I’m developing a network of small presses and publishing-adjacent companies to, I hope, support this work.

Beyond that, I think it can be of value to anyone trying to learn more about publishing—such as new and aspiring writers, who too often feel like publishing is designed specifically to repel them, rather than create opportunity for them. I feel that the more people understand how publishing works, the better it can be for writers, publishers, and readers alike.

It’s Not About the Research: How to Write for a General Audience When Academia Is All You Know

Photo by Elijah Hail on Unsplash

Today’s post is by author, book coach and historian Christina Larocco.

In “The Voyager Conspiracy,” a season six episode of the television show Star Trek: Voyager, Seven of Nine, a former Borg drone, connects her brain directly to the ship’s computer. All of a sudden, she has access to unimaginable amounts of information—but she can’t make sense of any of it.

Have you ever felt like this when you sit down to write after doing a ton of research on a subject? You have all of this information at your fingertips, yet you have no idea what it means, how it connects to your project, or even what your project is about anymore.

So you end up writing the only way you know how: stringing together block quotes and blah sources summaries, and describing each letter, diary entry, or organizational file without any connective tissue, interpretation, or forward momentum.

You end up with a draft that reads more like a log than anything else.

Your academic mentors let you get away with it because they know that’s what student work looks like. But to appeal to a general audience, you need to do more than present facts. You need to construct a compelling narrative.

To help you with this, I’m going to share the most important piece of writing advice I have:

The research is not the thing you are writing about.

It is a source of information for that thing.

This might sound bizarre, obvious, or both, but it can change your writing dramatically.

Let’s take letters as an example. Letters are fabulous sources of information, but they’re easy to use in a way that interrupts rather than adds to the narrative. Sitting down and writing a letter is static, not dynamic. It’s probably the least interesting part of a person’s day. And so if you are structuring your manuscript around the act of letter-writing—on March 3, she said X. On March 5, she said Y. Then on March 7, she said Z—your work will be similarly static.

Almost every manuscript looks like this at one point or another, and it is actually not that difficult to fix. The solution is to think about letters as sources of information that you will then incorporate into a narrative, rather than letting the letters themselves function as the narrative. Limit how frequently you refer in the main text to the letters themselves—keep this in the footnotes. Focus instead on conveying to the reader what happened and why it is interesting. These changes will make the narrative more interesting and make your writing seem more authoritative.

In fact, I often encourage writers to put away their research notes in their first pass at drafting a new section. Otherwise the temptation to transcribe, copy and paste, or otherwise regurgitate what your sources say, is too great. Otherwise you’re never forced to grapple with how you make sense of the information. And that’s what your reader comes to the book looking for.

Confession: I haven’t just read many drafts like this. I’ve written them, too. As an academic turned creative writer, it took me nearly a decade to learn another way to write about primary sources, as I revised the manuscript for my book Crosshatch: Martha Schofield, the Forgotten Feminist (1839–1916), releasing in February 2025.

As I was working on this article, I pulled out some of my early chapter drafts. The paragraphs were overly long info dumps that didn’t really have much to say or contribute to any sort of broader point. And that’s because I had given the sources all of the authority rather than claiming some of it for myself. As a result, the “writing” in these early drafts was really just stringing together a bunch of quotes and throwing them at the reader.

Over the course of several drafts and several years, I learned how to distill this information down to its essence, guiding readers toward an understanding of the events and their significance. I learned to direct the reader’s attention, selecting for them the important aspects of the info dump draft and making sense out of those materials in the context of a bigger narrative.

A caveat: You will probably have to relearn this lesson for every project. I do. The going-from-document-to-document stage is often necessary and always useful: You have gathered all of your information together and arranged it in an order that makes at least provisional sense. That’s huge!

I’ve come to think of this stage as an intermediate step between the outline and the first draft. Fiction writer Matt Bell even argues that the first draft of the book is not the book at all, but rather an outline of the book.

So, if you’re not writing about the documents, what are you writing about? You likely already know the answer to this question—it’s the larger story you are trying to tell, the question you are trying to answer, the argument you are making. The research only functions to serve this something bigger.

How Printing Innovations (and More) Created an Enduring Class Divide in Books

“The Rival Printers” by Catablogger is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 [image error][image error][image error].

Today’s post is excerpted from The Untold Story of Books: A Writer’s History of Book Publishing by Michael Castleman.

After Gutenberg invented the printing press, Europe’s kings and bishops feared (correctly) that printing might encourage sedition and heresy. They identified material fit for reproduction and offered favored printers the exclusive right to copy it— “copyright.” In exchange, the printers vowed not to reproduce anything the authorities found offensive.

But early copyrights were fantasies. Our concept of intellectual property was centuries in the future. Culture belonged to everyone. Who could assert ownership? Certainly not authors. They didn’t own their work. Printers did. Meanwhile, copyrights were enforceable only within single jurisdictions, while rampant smuggling and unauthorized reproduction spread books everywhere. Today, we call this book piracy, but back then it was like picking wildflowers in an open field.

Piracy ran rampant because it skirted censorship and reduced the cost of books—no licensing fees to copyright holders. From the first copyrights to the present day, piracy has been a thread woven through the tapestry of publishing.

Authors were powerless to stop piracy, but many decried it. In 1623, the preface to the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays denounced the “surreptitious copies” that had “maimed” his work.

Authors’ intellectual property rights were first recognized in 1710, when Parliament enacted the Copyright Act, or Statute of Anne (for Queen Anne). Its preamble stated: “Printers have of late reprinted work without the consent of authors … to their great detriment.” The law granted authors copyrights for 14 years.

Printers were appalled: Authors wrote, printers copied. The right to copy was theirs. Surprisingly, authors agreed. That era’s intelligentsia believed authors wrote for love, not money. They viewed writing for money as dishonorable.

To preserve authors’ precious honor, printers graciously offered to take copyrights off their hands. Authors felt fine about this: My name is on the cover. That’s what counts. So, despite the pro-author Statute of Anne, copyrights quickly shifted to printers. But after 14 years, copyrights evaporated and books entered the public domain. Anyone could copy them.

By 1650: printing in the Americas was rife with piracy.

By 1650, American printers were churning out advertising handbills and pamphlets galore, but few full-length books. Books were very expensive, today’s equivalent of $600 per copy. They would have cost even more had American printers paid English copyright holders for reprint rights. They didn’t. When ships from England docked at American ports, printers quickly pirated the books they carried.

Boston boasted the most printers. By the 1660s, they routinely condemned one another for releasing pirate editions of books they themselves had stolen. Eventually, they negotiated an agreement pledging not to reprint what others had released. But there was no honor among thieves, and printers outside Boston eagerly pirated books that came their way.

In 1673, the Massachusetts colonial legislature granted five-year copyrights to the first printers to publish books, including pirated English titles. But printers elsewhere continued to pirate freely, among them Ben Franklin. In 1740, he bootlegged the first novel in English, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson, the book that invented romance fiction and turned many women into avid readers.

Wealthy colonial book buyers raced to buy English titles, so American printers invested in pirating English books. But printers declined to risk capital on American authors. When homegrown writers sought publication, printers said, We’ll print your work—if you pay for it. All early American books were author- (or patron-) financed. In current parlance, they were self-published.

Why pay to publish? Like today’s authors, colonial writers loved to express themselves, and if they wanted to publish, they had only one option.

For early American authors, writing was a sideline.

Washington Irving was a lawyer. Nathaniel Hawthorne was a customs agent, Ralph Waldo Emerson a teacher, Oliver Wendell Holmes a doctor, Louisa May Alcott a governess. Like the vast majority of authors today, they wrote for love, and if they made some money, usually from speaking engagements, they considered it gravy.

By the second half of the 18th century, authors decided that maybe it was okay to earn money writing books, and decided that if they paid to publish, they should hold copyrights.

In 1770, the Boston choirmaster William Billings set Biblical verses to original music and hired a printer to publish his New-England Psalm-Singer, which was quickly pirated. Hoping to save the sequel from the same fate, Billings persuaded the Massachusetts legislature to grant its copyright to him. However, the colony’s English governor vetoed the bill, citing the English practice of printers holding them.

During the American Revolution, prominent writers agitated for author copyrights, among them the political firebrand Thomas Paine and especially Noah Webster. Today, we remember Webster for his dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806), or Webster’s. But for decades before that book, Webster ranked among the new nation’s top authors, thanks to his three-volume literacy text, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, which included a speller (1783), grammar (1784), and reader (1785).

Naturally, Webster’s books were pirated as quickly as printers could set type. As he traveled the country promoting literacy and selling his work, he found illicit copies of his books everywhere and advocated tough copyright laws to protect authors. He organized writers to petition the Continental Congress, proclaiming “that nothing is more properly a man’s own than the fruit of his study. The protection of literary property would greatly encourage genius and promote useful discoveries.” (At the time, “genius” meant creativity.)

But under the loose Articles of Confederation, the newly independent states were sovereign and Congress had little sway. Nonetheless, the delegates supported author copyright and passed a resolution urging the states to “secure to the authors … copyright for not less than 14 years from first publication.”

With Congressional resolution in hand, Webster returned home to Connecticut and, in 1783, engineered passage of the nation’s first copyright law. It granted the state’s authors “the sole liberty” of printing their books for 14 years, with one 14-year extension. It also created a book registration system and enacted severe penalties for piracy.

Webster hailed the law but objected to its time limit. He advocated perpetual copyright, arguing that his books should be his forever. But printers favored time-limited copyrights. As they expired and books entered the public domain, anyone could reprint them. Intellectuals also supported the time limit to encourage idea exchange. And the majority of the population, illiterate anti-intellectuals, saw no reason to protect authors at all, let alone grant perpetual ownership of anything as frivolous as words.

Meanwhile, Webster’s copyright law applied only in Connecticut. It was essentially meaningless. Books copyrighted there were immediately pirated elsewhere.

In 1789, when the states ratified the Constitution, Article 1, Section 8 specified: “The Congress shall have Power To … promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Writers and inventors are the only two occupations granted Constitutional protection.

Soon after, the first U.S. Congress enacted the Copyright Act of 1790. Taken almost verbatim from the Statute of Anne, it required registration of books with what eventually became the U.S. Copyright Office and granted a single term of 14 years.

The Copyright Act also flipped a post-revolutionary middle finger at England. It specifically protected American piracy of English books: “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to prohibit the … reprinting or publishing within the United States, of books printed, or published by any person not a citizen of the United States.”

Ironically, American authors greeted the Copyright Act with a collective shrug. During its first decade, Americans published some 13,000 pamphlets and books but copyrighted only 556. Why so few? Early authors assumed rampant piracy, so compared with today’s writers, they felt less ownership. Copyright violations could be remedied only through litigation, but very few books sold well enough to justify it. And if authors won verdicts in one state, printers elsewhere could still pirate them, so why bother?

Advances in US printing and publishing: type, press design, paper, glue, covers

By 1800, the U.S. population topped 5 million, 2 million of whom could read. America’s biggest book town was Boston, population 25,000, with 30 booksellers, mostly printers, but also stationery shops and dry goods stores (forerunners of department stores). The number two book town was Philadelphia, population 40,000, with 16 booksellers, followed by New York (60,000 and 13); Charleston, South Carolina (15,000 and three); and Baltimore (26,000 and one). The biggest sellers were Bibles, sermon collections, and almanacs.

But Americans showed increasing interest in books dealing with science, politics, medicine, and music—and women continued to adore novels, particularly romance fiction and multi-generation family sagas.

Growing demand for books spurred innovations that, like Gutenberg’s press, allowed fewer people to produce more copies of more titles faster and cheaper. One advance involved type. Until the 1720s, it had to be imported from England. The colonies had no foundries. Ben Franklin established the nation’s first, which cut printers’ costs. In recognition, in 1902, America’s typographers named a popular font after him, Franklin Gothic.

Another advance involved press design. From 1440 through the 18th century, wooden screw presses were state of the art. Franklin’s press looked much like Gutenberg’s. But wood parts wore out and limited the pressure that could be applied, compromising quality. In 1810, the first iron presses improved reproduction quality and quadrupled print speed to 500 sheets an hour. By the Civil War, subsequent innovations raised it to an astonishing 20,000 pages an hour. As press speeds increased, the cost of books fell.

Paper also evolved. Before Gutenberg, scribes wrote on parchment, livestock skins beaten into thin sheets. Parchment was very costly. Each book required a herd of animals. The printing press spurred a quest for cheaper alternatives. Europeans discovered that excellent paper could be produced inexpensively from hemp and flax, source of linen. The Pilgrims introduced both plants to North America, but the colonies had no paper mills, so every sheet had to be imported. The first American mill opened in 1690 in Philadelphia, eventually ending colonial dependence on English paper.

In 1794, Eli Whitney patented his cotton “gin,” short for “engine,” which pulled the seeds from cotton puffs so efficiently that the fiber quickly became the South’s leading export. Cotton, wool, and rags could be chopped and boiled into a slurry, then pressed into low-cost paper, which reduced printer-publishers’ costs.

By the Civil War, as presses became faster and more complicated, printing and bookbinding diverged. Printers presented loose folios to newly independent bookbinders, who sewed and glued them between leather covers, which became standard.

But glues were unreliable. Books often fell apart. In 1808, the Bostonian Elijah Upton introduced a cheap, dependable glue that solved the problem. In 1832, another Boston bookbinder popularized covers and spines of cloth-wrapped cardboard, much cheaper than leather. And a Philadelphia company developed a quick, inexpensive way to glue metal foil. Within a decade, most book covers and spines boasted shiny, eye-catching titles in metal leaf.

These advances further reduced book prices, transforming them from luxuries for the rich into upscale consumer items within reach of the small but growing upper middle class. Still, books remained expensive, typically costing three dollars (around $100 today).

Mathew Carey: book pioneer

By 1800, U.S. printers used American paper and type but still relied on imported ink. In 1803, the Philadelphia printer Mathew Carey organized fellow printers to offer a $50 prize ($1,500 today) for the best American-made ink. An amateur chemist won and launched a company. Printers soon used nothing else.

Carey’s group also offered a prize for the best paper made from a new material. The winner used sawdust from lumber mills. Almost overnight, wood pulp became the source of coarse but remarkably cheap paper. European printers quickly embraced pulp paper, and America, with its vast forests, gained a valuable export.

Finally, Carey introduced proofreading. Early American books were typeset by young, poorly schooled apprentices, who infuriated authors by introducing typos and misspellings. Starting around 1790, Carey printed test pages, “proofs,” and corrected them before final printing. Proofreading required extra paper, ink, and labor, raising costs, which led competing printers to cluck, Authors will never pay for it. But error-free books proved so popular that authors flocked to Carey, and proofreading became standard.

Colonial printers versus early booksellers

Bigger, faster printing presses using cheaper ink on cheaper paper allowed more copies of more books to be produced at lower cost per copy. The number of books rose and prices fell. This was a boon to book buyers, but it forced printer-publishers to invest more in equipment, which pinched their margins, driving some out of business. Periodic financial panics ruined others. And in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, where competition was most intense, some printers resorted to arson to destroy their rivals.

As the industry became more competitive, printer-publishers became increasingly concerned with book marketing and distribution. Printers clustered in the nation’s large towns, but 95 percent of Americans lived on farms often many days’ journey from the nearest print shop. Roads were poor. Shipping was costly and unreliable. How could printer-publishers sell books effectively outside their home regions?

In 1806, when Webster published his Dictionary, in addition to selling through his printer, he organized the nation’s first book sales force. At the time, an army of peddlers hiked the lanes of rural America selling household items, Bibles, almanacs, and sermon collections by prominent clergy. Webster sold distribution rights to select peddlers, granting each a territory. This launched a 50-year period when peddlers carried books far and wide, usually on foot with packs on their backs. But books were heavy. Selection was limited.

Back in the towns, printers displayed only the books they printed. To see all available titles, buyers had to trudge from shop to shop. Sensing an opportunity, a few entrepreneurs opened stores that offered all printers’ titles. As bookshops became fixtures in growing coastal towns, printers gradually exited retailing in favor of wholesaling to the new booksellers.

Early bookstores resembled today’s used bookshops: small, cramped, quirky, and off the beaten track where rent was low. They bought stock at 30-50 percent off the cover or “list” price. (Today’s typical wholesale discount is at least 50 percent off list.) Early booksellers also offered writing supplies: quill pens, paper, ink, and blank books for diaries, at that time very popular.

Printer-publishers loved booksellers in theory but in practice often found them exasperating. The few bookshops couldn’t collectively sell titles as quickly as printers produced them. Booksellers retorted that printer-publishers treated them less like allies than adversaries. Printers refused to ship on credit. They insisted on cash up front. And they didn’t accept returns on purchased inventory, which limited what booksellers could afford to stock. Booksellers also complained that printers shipped so haphazardly that many copies arrived too damaged to sell, a loss booksellers had to eat.

One printer critical of bookshops’ “failures” was the enterprising Mathew Carey. In 1802, he rented a banquet room at a popular New York City restaurant and invited printers throughout the Northeast to sell their books directly to consumers—America’s first book fair. Around the country, in schools, hotel ballrooms, and church social halls, book fairs quickly became popular multi-day events. Printers offered as many titles as they could ship. Smart buyers attended twice: early the first day for the greatest selection and late the final day to pick up leftovers cheap.

Book fairs enthralled everyone—except booksellers, who denounced them as business killers: You printers have no business in retailing. Printers retorted, You booksellers don’t move enough titles. If you can’t get the job done…

Pulp paper creates an enduring class divide in books

During the 18th century, women continued to inhale romance fiction, while increasingly literate Americans loved novels, gobbling up instant classics like Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Gulliver’s Travels (1726). In addition, hordes of men (and some women) read Memoir of a Woman of Pleasure, aka Fanny Hill (1748), the first pornographic novel in English. But for much of the population, one copy of a novel on cotton-linen paper between leather covers cost several months’ wages.

Then wood-pulp paper appeared. American printer-publishers were slow to adopt it, but their English counterparts saw money in the bank. They released cheap pulp paperbacks for the working class for just 10% of the price of leather-bound books. Laborers loved them and pulp paperbacks sold like crazy, which spurred American printer-publishers to follow suit. Meanwhile, affluent buyers of “quality” books derided the new format as “pulp fiction” and “penny dreadfuls,” snooty terms that marked the beginning of a lasting class division between highbrow, leather-bound literature and its bastard pulp cousin.

Pulp paper arrived as the industrial revolution began to turn agricultural peasants into urban factory workers. After the Civil War, American industrialization created great wealth for the few and social upheaval for everyone. The period from 1870 through the close of the 19th century became known as the Gilded Age, but the gilding was a thin veneer over orphaned children, child labor, criminal gangs, overcrowded tenements, sanitation nightmares, virulent epidemics, drug addiction, and Dickensian working conditions.

Out of this volatile stew, the upper class established, in the words of Yale professor Alan Trachtenberg, “a particular idea of culture as a privileged domain of refinement, aesthetic sensibility, and higher learning.” Culture was no longer the sum total of a people’s stories but just those that resonated for the elite, who viewed lower-class sensibilities as boorish.

The arbiters of Gilded Age gentility touted their vision of culture as an antidote to the ravages of industrialization, a way to civilize the proletariat. It’s no coincidence that this era marked the founding of many colleges, museums, orchestras, and opera and ballet companies. Nor is it an accident that upper-class moralists condemned cheap paperbacks for their vulgarity and pernicious influence on the laboring class.

Despite upper-crust hand-wringing, pulp titles proved wildly popular, and the book business changed again. As books became cheaper and coarser, they evolved into everyday consumer items. The grandeur evaporated. In the words of Michael Korda, former editor in chief of Simon & Schuster, “We sell books, other people sell shoes. What’s the difference?”

Then Irwin Beadle out-pulped the pulp publishers. The New York entrepreneur introduced hundred-page novellas on pulp paper for just ten cents ($3): detective and horror stories, lusty romances, action-packed adventure yarns, and shocking exposés of patrician villainy and plebian mayhem. “Books for the Millions!” Beadle’s advertising proclaimed. “A dollar book for a dime!!” His output became a sensation among the working class—and vastly outsold leather-bound books.

On both sides of the Atlantic, pulp fiction’s success galled the elite. Publishers Weekly declared that it “degraded literature.” Others railed that penny dreadfuls debased prose, corrupted youth, and caused crime.

Then Frank Munsey, owner of Argosy magazine, out-pulped Irwin Beadle. He used even coarser, cheaper paper to undersell everyone. He published full-length romance and action-adventure tales for just five cents ($1.50). Munsey’s books contained no illustrations, not even on their flimsy covers, and their bindings didn’t last long. But readers loved them, and other publishers rushed into the niche. Escapist stories remain popular today—in print and on every streaming service.

Pulp novels sold huge numbers—but not in bookshops. Booksellers identified with the gentry and served only the “carriage trade,” buyers who arrived not on foot or by bicycle or public transportation but in private carriages. Booksellers refused to stock anything but leather-bound titles. Meanwhile, owners of newsstands and candy and dry goods stores happily offered pulp books, which remained hugely popular until World War II, when government rationing of wood pulp destroyed the genre. After the war, pulp fiction yielded to its better-manufactured descendant, the mass-market paperback.

Literary novels and pulp fiction occupied oddly parallel universes. The former were reviewed, the latter not. Leather-bound books sold modestly but found their way into libraries, sermons, and school curricula. Pulp titles sold in vastly greater numbers but were considered at best ephemeral and at worst corrupting. Successful literary authors were staples of the lecture circuit, while most successful pulp authors remained anonymous. The few exceptions included Zane Grey, whose 90 action-packed westerns sold 40 million copies, and Louis L’Amour, whose 89 westerns sold 320 million.

Amazon • Bookshop

The class divide between high- and lowbrow literature remained central to the book business until the mid-1950s, when bookstores finally embraced paperbacks. But Gilded Age sensibilities linger. Educators continue to tout reading as the expressway to success, and many among the literary elite still scorn pulp’s descendants, today’s genre fiction: romance, mystery, thrillers, fantasy, westerns, true crime, sci-fi, action-adventure, and erotica.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out The Untold Story of Books: A Writer’s History of Book Publishing by Michael Castleman.

Why Your Revision Shouldn’t Start on Page One

Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash

Today’s post is by writer and book coach Monica Cox.

There is something invigorating about typing the words THE END on a rough draft. The story has unspooled from your fingers for weeks, months, maybe even years and, finally, you have reached the resolution.

You may feel relief, excitement, or even a renewed dedication to the story. You may even be motivated to dive right into revisions so you can share it with the world as soon as possible.

But rushing to edit can be the biggest mistake a writer makes.

Returning to page one with red pen in hand inevitably leads to reading on the line level. You start fiddling with individual words, phrases, and paragraphs. You are line editing when you haven’t even finished your first read-through. It keeps you focused on the trees and not the forest of your story where the big structural issues tend to hide. These structural issues are the problems in your manuscript you need to address first. No writer wants to realize a paragraph they spent an entire afternoon dissecting and making stellar needs to be deleted, along with the rest of the chapter that doesn’t fit the story anymore once you fixed a plot hole.

Killing your darlings is hard enough, so don’t make it worse by dressing them up for the red carpet first.

To revise most effectively

Step back and take in the 30,000-foot view. See the forest from up high where it’s much easier to spot obstacles, trails, and dreaded dead ends.

To gain some distance, it helps to put it away for a bit after you type THE END. If you can afford to give yourself several weeks off from your story, do it. Use that time to celebrate this beautiful thing you’ve done–you wrote an entire book! Do you know how many people say they want to write a book and don’t ever start, not to mention finish? (Spoiler alert: a lot!)

After you’ve given yourself some time to enjoy the champagne or chocolate, go for a walk, take a nap, or reintroduce yourself to the friends and family you’ve been ignoring while you spent hours on this draft, come back to the manuscript for a full read-through.

But DO NOT sit back down at your computer. Instead:

Change the font of your manuscript. Make the writing look physically different from how you drafted it.Read on another device than the one you created it on. Send your manuscript to your e-reader or a tablet. You can even print it out, but only if you promise not to write on it (yet).Read your manuscript where you’d read a book you didn’t write. Wrote at a desk? Read on the sofa.

These changes may seem superficial, but they help transition you from writer to reader. Adopting a reader’s mindset will allow you to see what is missing in a way the writer’s mindset (the god of the story who knows all the things) will not.

The key rule during this first read-through?

DO NOT MAKE EDITS! Remember, you are reading as a reader, not a writer. Read with a legal pad or notebook next to you so you can jot down only notes with page or chapter numbers where you notice problems. 

The problems you should be looking out for? Not word choice or paragraph order. Look for:

Point of view: What point of view is your story? Is it consistent throughout? Write down the page number of any place where you’ve inadvertently hopped into another character’s head.Character: Are your character’s wants and needs clear at the start of the story? Does the reader know what’s at stake if they don’t get what they want? Note any place where a character’s action or motivation doesn’t make sense. This might look like: “Why did she decide to make that phone call on page 27?”Obstacles: Are readers clear what is standing in the character’s way?Agency: Is your character making decisions? Do those decisions have consequences? Conversely, are things just happening TO your character?Trajectory: Look at transitions between chapters. Is there an action or decision driving your story forward into the next chapter? If not, make a note of the chapter or page.Pacing: Jot down where you lose interest, find yourself skimming, or are flat out bored. Yes, you are super familiar with your story, but if you’re glossing over it, chances are a reader will, too.

After this initial read-through, you should have notes indicating where your story went a little sideways, or the character spent three chapters simply reacting and not acting, or you noticed a little head hopping. Look for patterns and group your issues together by category.

Only once you’ve established your big-picture issues will you begin to revise. Pick a category and work your way through your manuscript fixing that issue before moving on to the next category. If weak story trajectory was a major issue in your rough draft, shore that up first in all the places it was a problem. Then move on to character motivation. Then work through point of view, etc.

Starting on page one attempting to fix all the big picture issues chapter by chapter will only put your brain back into a linear mindset. Don’t fall into the trap! Inevitably it will lead to you reading page by page making line edits and changes that aren’t necessary yet. Focus on those big picture issues one at a time.

Just like a home inspector needs to check the frame, plumbing, and wiring before the contractor walls them in, make sure your story structure is strong and set up for success before you dress up the writing. The style of sink or pendant light doesn’t make a bit of difference if the plumber didn’t put a pipe in the bathroom or the framers didn’t include the beams that will hold up the roof.

Fix your roof, plumbing and electrical first. Then add the walls—those emotional layers, descriptions, checking for realistic dialogue. Only then will it be time to paint and pick your fixtures, i.e., line edit. That’s your final polish and, trust me, it will be oh so much shinier with all the big things in their proper place first.

Be Yourself So Your Readers Can Find You

Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash

Today’s post is by author brand expert Andrea Guevara. Join us on July 3 for the online class How Authors Can Unlock Brand Recognition.

As an author brand strategist, I’m often fighting against the idea that a personal brand is just a cringey, commercialized outcropping of late-stage capitalism. And while there are plenty of examples of brands being used for that exact thing, branding itself can actually be a transformative tool to help authors take back more control of their careers.

Writing a book and then promoting it can make authors feel a lot like that dorky kid in high school trying to get a seat at the cool kids’ table. I was an odd kid, a bookworm, frizzy-haired, freckled, a painfully shy, precocious girl who just didn’t know where she belonged. Growing up as a Fundamentalist Christian in the liberal Sonoma County wine country, I also didn’t like sports, was too shy for parties, too awkward for the cool kids or boys, and too insecure to even know my own interests or potential.

For most of my life, even though I had friends, I usually felt like I didn’t truly belong anywhere. But after working with authors for nearly a decade, and entrepreneurial women for over two decades, I can tell you something you already know: this is a very common feeling.

Writing a book can feel vulnerable enough, but then you have to market and sell it. These are two different skill sets and zones of genius. For some, both come naturally, and there are those who are willing to compromise who they are for popularity.

For the rest of us, seeing our own value and then—and this next part is key—being able to communicate that and attract our people, doesn’t come so easily.

We are the weirdos, the nerds, the awkward, the amazing-yet-misunderstood, and whatever else we’d prefer to call ourselves. We aren’t necessarily immediately popular or viral. And if movies about high school have taught me anything, there are a whole lot more of us weirdos out there than we realize.

One of my super powers (we all have them) is that I am able to see the unique amazingness and untapped potential of each person I meet. This is a fortunate trait for a brand strategist, not so much for dating men. I eventually learned that distinction.

In 2016, after a lot of my own self-development work and a couple decades in business branding, marketing, and design, I launched my first author branding course. And in 2020, I made it my full-time business. Since then, I’ve seen hundreds of writers do the work to acknowledge the value they bring into the world and learn how to identify and attract their kind of people.

Sure, some have become bestselling authors—the equivalent of becoming popular kids—but the real win, in my opinion, is seeing them learn to own their own worth and be able to articulate it in ways that help them deeply connect with the people who most benefit from their work.

In an effort to get you started, here are a few tips.

Be honest with yourself.

One of the first things I have clients do is fill out a big questionnaire answering questions like:

What do you think sets you apart from similar authors?Why do you write?What do you really think of social media?What kinds of ways do you like to share your work?

… And a whole bunch of other questions. In part, this information gathering helps me understand them more. But these questions are just as much for them as they are for me.

The next thing I have them do is describe their ultimate vision of what success looks like for them. Not what they think they want, or what they’ve been told, but genuinely what they truly want their life to look like.

Taking the time to really check in with who you are, what you think, and what you want is something many people rarely do. This self-knowledge is key to beginning to unpack and understand the unique value you bring to the world as well as the parts of yourself that you want to keep just for yourself, or those close to you.

Put yourself in your reader’s shoes.

When I ask most authors who their readers are, they usually start describing a particular age group, income level, and interests—the usual. More often than not, they also add, “But really it’s for anybody.”

I love the optimism of this statement, and if you believe that about your work, awesome. It often takes people with big vision to accomplish the seemingly impossible.

But when it comes to branding, it behooves us to go the opposite direction and think as small as possible. When we focus our energy on who our IDEAL Reader is—the archetype of the one person who would most resonate with and champion your work—we begin to unlock the magic connection that exists between the unique value you bring and the people it’s meant for.

We must try to remove ourselves from the equation temporarily in order to be able to see our readers for who they are and what they need. Once we understand this, we’re able to better speak to them in the language they need to hear.

Articulate your value.

In the business world, it’s long been known that brands have exponential value, apart even from the company that creates them. Think for instance of a brand like Kleenex tissues. It’s so ubiquitous that we often just call tissues Kleenex. That brand is something that Kimberly-Clark could sell (or even license) on its own. It has its own value.

You, as an author, have your own value. Outside of the publisher. Outside of just your book. You, whether you like it or not, are a brand. Your book is also a brand.

In the biz world, we would call your author brand a “house of brands” because you are the creator who has a brand of their own but also creates sub-brands, AKA your books.

Circling back to the idea of brand value, when you do the work of understanding the value you bring, your niche, and your audience, you can begin to put together the pieces in a way that makes it easier for you to articulate this unique proposition to publishers and readers in more effective ways. In a practical sense, this can be evident in your book proposal, marketing plans, bio, website, social media—even in how you talk about your work with your publisher.

I have seen firsthand how this articulation can directly translate into bigger book deals, more marketing support, prioritization with publishers, larger budgets, more author input on things like cover design, more speaking opportunities, more sales, film and TV deals, and so much more.

The publishing industry is well known to be opaque, confusing, complex—and somewhat disappointing. In my years of working in the industry, I’ve seen the highs and lows, the dream scenarios and then the painfully disappointing lack of support that some authors get. 

Much like our late-stage capitalist system, we cannot rely on the powers that be to have our backs, and it can be easy to feel like we have no real power. But if we truly believe in our work, I think we owe it to ourselves to give it its best chance at success.

I believe that developing a personal author brand is one of the essential ways authors can take back more power. Because if we know the unique value of what we bring to the table, we understand deeply who we serve, and we can articulate that, we end up creating not just a table for our people, but our own banquet of fellow nerds, weirdos, whatever you want to call us. And that’s the kind of party publishers and others in power can’t afford to ignore.

We humans are hardwired to crave belonging and connection with something bigger than ourselves. In a society where we are lonelier than ever, people are indeed more vulnerable to marketing and advertising messages prompting them to buy our way out of the disconnection. But we writers provide something so much better, we know that reading/books are one of the most mind-expanding and deeply connective things we can do.

I believe that if we want our work to succeed we must learn the language and customs of the system so that we can use them for good. Brand strategy does just that, helping you understand and articulate your value in a world that desperately needs you to show up as who you truly are.

As readers, we know just how good it feels to read a line that just cuts to the quick of our own emotions or experiences. Who is out there waiting for that moment with your writing?

Be you. Please. People are waiting for you.

Join Andrea and Jane on July 3 for How Authors Can Unlock Brand Recognition.

Free Resources for Writers at the Public Library

Today’s post is by book coach, author and librarian Kate Stewart.

One of the best pieces of advice for writers is to read as widely as possible, especially in your genre. For centuries, public libraries have made that goal for writers not just possible, but affordable.

Beyond books, most public libraries offer additional services incredibly helpful to writers. Getting familiar with online and in-person library resources, free with your library card, can take your writing and research skills to the next level. Most large public library systems offer the following services. Even if you live in a small town or rural library with limited resources, you still may be able to take advantage of offerings from nearby large systems that participate in regional consortiums.

Research databases

Libraries subscribe to a wide array of research databases that can help you find background material for your nonfiction book or important facts and details for fiction, especially historical fiction. Most of these databases are behind paywalls that are prohibitively expensive for individuals to access. They can be the key to finding the answers to questions that aren’t easily Google-able. The following databases (and many more) may be available at your library, and you should be able to use them remotely via your library’s website and logging in with your library card.

Ancestry. You might have used Ancestry.com for tracing your own family history, but there are many historical resources on the site, including census records, military records, and the records of births, marriages, and deaths. For writers of history, biography, and memoir, or historical fiction based on real events, Ancestry is one of the most popular sources available.Newspaper databases like NewsBank and Newspapers.com can provide factual details to improve your storytelling for both nonfiction and historical fiction. Simply browsing newspapers for the time and place your characters live in can give you a feel for accurate language, food, clothing, culture, and social events. Some writers have also stumbled across old newspaper articles that gave them a brilliant idea for the plot of their next book. Much of the drama of everyday living was often reported in the newspaper—just check the front page for tales of murder, love affairs, political intrigue, and other stories stranger than fiction.NoveList is a database started more than 30 years ago to assist librarians in one of the most important services they offer to users: lists of what to read next when you’ve found a book you really like, also known as “readers’ advisory.” Librarians work for NoveList to both summarize and tag books listed in the database and to also think about how books in certain genres are related or similar. Amazon and other bookstore websites have “you may also like” lists on the website for each book, but they may not be quite right. NoveList is usually available to library users as well as librarians, and just like Ancestry and NewsBank.

If you have a particularly tough question you can’t find the answer to, you can always ask your local reference librarian at the library or by phone, email, or chat reference. One of librarians’ greatest skills is knowing how to dig deep into research databases or print sources—and they usually have access to networks of librarians and experts to go to when they can’t figure it out themselves. They are used to fielding all kinds of weird questions, and they love a good challenge!

In-person library programs

Library programming isn’t just story time for young children—librarians offer all kinds of in-person events for adults. Many of these include book groups and book talks, and some host writing groups for local writers or even have multiple groups for different genres. These groups might be led by a local librarian, a professional writer or writing teacher. My local library system, the Pima County Public Library, hosts a writer-in-residence who offers writing workshops and drop-in writing help.

Libraries also help non-profits, artists, writers, and other creatives with applying for grants and fellowships. They may have access to databases to search for grants and offer grant-writing workshops for the public. You may be surprised how many grants are available, some only for writers who live in a certain area or write in a specific genre. A librarian can help you search for these and also help you find books on grant writing.

Libraries also host book launch events or author talks by local writers. If there isn’t a local bookstore in your area (and some aren’t big enough to host events), working with a public library on a book event may be a great option. Libraries typically promote events on social media and spread the word in-person about your event to their patrons.

Parting thoughts

Using library services regularly and encouraging others to do so too is a terrific way to support your local library and can be just as important as making a donation. Libraries across the country have been under fire with book bans and threats to funding. Funding for libraries is driven by usage statistics, so each time you show up to a program or use a database, you’ll be counted in reports to library administrators, donors, and county and city officials.

If your library isn’t offering the services described above, go and ask. Librarians are happy when patrons show up to offer ideas and volunteer. Working with patrons on developing programs that are needed and wanted is a normal part of a librarian’s job, so don’t feel shy about making a request. Taking advantage of these services might not only improve your writing, they can also help you find new writing friends and build a local writing community.

How an Academic Editor Can Help a Scholar Write a Better Article

Photo by Andrew George on Unsplash

Today’s post is by writer, podcaster and editor Wayne Jones.

Scholars generally have two very different venues in which to publish their work, and hence two different audiences as well. The main one is the academic journal, where they are generally talking to and writing for other scholars in their discipline. The other is popular media like the magazines, blogs, podcasts, and many other places where they are talking to the general public. It’s common, for example, for a scholar to be a guest on a news show in order to provide informed background for whatever crisis, war, or calamity we humans have gotten ourselves into now. Or they might write an opinion piece for a well-known newspaper or news source, or be interviewed at length by a podcast host, or even have their own Substack site.

In these popular sources, the best scholars are well aware of the audience and know they have to “translate” into standard English the often arcane jargon that their peers would have no difficulty understanding. But they don’t all succeed. We saw lots of examples of that during the pandemic. Some would talk about viral shedding and leave the reader or listener a bit perplexed, but some would just call it a sneeze.

Part of an editor’s job for a popular venue is to keep the scholar on the vernacular track. That doesn’t mean they have to dumb down what they are writing. Quite the contrary, actually. Working with their editor, they have to make sure that the complexity of what they are talking about is intelligently and clearly conveyed. The editor’s work here doesn’t differ a lot from what it would be when editing any prose piece. Make it clear. Make sure it flows well. Use the right, precise words. And make sure the reader benefits from the writer’s expertise without being distracted by jargon, over-long sentences, and other things that might make them click on something else that appears more comprehensible.

In academic journals, though, scholars are in their natural habitat, and the editor’s challenge is more difficult. I do copy editing and proofreading of academic articles in subjects that I have varying degrees of knowledge in—a lot in some cases, little to none in others—but, in any case, where I am not even close to being an authority: theology, American history, queer studies, feminist literary criticism, cinema, criminal justice, and many more, depending on which issue of which journal I’ve been assigned by the university press. I’m not an interloper. The editors at the press know that they can’t expect their freelancers to be scholars or even experts. But what an academic editor does bring is a knowledge of words and tone and style—what we call writing.

Some of the terms a scholar uses may look deceptively and exactly like those same words in standard English, but they have very specific meanings in the particular discipline. Bad faith, for example, is something that most of us understand in general parlance, and even in collective bargaining, but if the article is about Sartrean existentialist philosophy, then it means a very specific thing. If you believe the article has had too many instances of bad faith, and perhaps dishonesty or insincerity might be worthy alternates, then you’d be making a bad mistake that the scholar would point out to you during one or other stage of the editing process. (As the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, for Sartre bad faith is “self-deception practised in order to avoid absolute responsibility for one’s own actions.”)

Perhaps writing style is an even more difficult aspect of academic writing for an editor to navigate and negotiate. I have read and edited some truly beautifully written articles on subjects I had little familiarity with but which I ended up learning a thing or two about. I’ve also edited articles that I found nearly impenetrable, where the combination of professional jargon, a sesquipedalian style, and a tendency to long, winding sentences compelled me to examine each sentence, read and re-read, until I finally gleaned what I thought was the meaning. Sometimes I had to query the author or do some additional research to figure out what they were talking about.

There are two aspects to this latter style. One is numerous very long sentences. Writers of popular nonfiction, and certainly writers of fiction, are routinely told about the importance of variation in the length of their sentences. It’s not just to follow some silly rule—longer or shorter sentences can not only passively affect the readability and the resultant pleasure that the reader derives, but the more clever writers are also keenly aware of the effects that varying sentence length can confer. Some scholars are not aware of this. So their tendency is often to pack as much of their thought as possible into a single sentence, with commas and semi-colons doing their damnedest to hold the thing together in some semblance of understandability. I often have to go back and confirm that I did, in fact, see a verb in there somewhere.

The second aspect is use of jargon and fancy words that are not discipline-specific. These not only interfere with comprehension, but they also lengthen sentences unnecessarily, and worst of all they have that stench of modern cliché about them. An issue is seen through the lens of something. A narrative is a diegesis. Different aspects of a topic are competing registers. And so on. However, these are not errors and are likely to be perfectly well understood by the other scholars with whom the writing scholar is communicating.

The academic editor has a delicate task here. The audience won’t, as it were, blink an eye at differences lenses. The registers won’t for a second be read in the retail sense, where perhaps the new cashier is trying their best to keep up with the seasoned veteran. If I am copy editing, I usually intervene or make a comment in a few situations. One is when the use of jargon is too frequent. They are easily eliminated or substituted with standard English. The other is when the jargon results in a mixed metaphor. For example: “While other scholars have noted the variety of Joyce’s symbolic imagery in this chapter, I see it through a more concrete lens which compacts the pictures into a single package.” That kind of thing.

Academic editors may also help with structural editing, which is rare in my experience, but I don’t hesitate to do it in some cases. The need is often obvious and the fix is often easy. For example, the flow of the article might make more intuitive sense and serve the reader better if, say, topic A were covered at the beginning because topic B later on depends on a knowledge of A.

Finally, academic editors help with documentation and citation. I can say categorically that I have never edited an academic piece in which I have not made one, and more often many, changes to the endnotes/footnotes and to the format of the works cited section or bibliography. I have empathy for the scholar here. It’s enough that they have to know everything about eschatology, and so I understand why they can usually only do their basic best in implementing the journal’s style guide and especially the often giant-sized style manual on which it is based. That’s an editor’s job and I’m okay with that.

The Pitfalls of Expert Advice

Photo by Joseph Corl on Unsplash

Today’s post is by writer, editor, and book coach Lauren Reynolds.

When I decided to change careers and write for a living, I researched and read everything I could. I attended seminars, writing workshops, and took several courses. I was hungry for information and, in my pursuit, grew so full that I was bursting at the seams—too overloaded to decipher good advice from bad.

One afternoon, while listening to an author discuss her technique of writing longhand, it dawned on me: What works for one writer may not work for another. There was no way I would write an article by hand, let alone an entire manuscript.

That may not sound like a revelation to most, but for me, it was big. I had been elevating expert wisdom above my intuition and, in the process, lost my confidence. Once a self-deprecating and humorous writer, I had become dull in an effort to sound serious. I lost my voice and, inevitably, lost my way.

As a book coach working with writers, I’ve discovered this phenomenon is not unique. Expert advice is valuable, but it’s how you assess it that makes it meaningful and useful. “Write what you know” doesn’t require killing someone if you want to write murder mysteries.

Don’t strain your neck looking to experts perched on a pedestal. It’s natural to place our role models on a pedestal—we all do it. We are blinded by stellar reviews, fortune, and fame. By consuming successful authors’ advice like gospel, writers hope that if they emulate their writing process or techniques, they, too, might achieve similar success.

However, when advice is taken out of context or not carefully evaluated, it can do more harm than good. So consider several factors first.

Advice is often generalized.

What works for Jodi Picoult probably won’t work for Judy Blume, as every writer has their particular methods.

For many writers, revising a first draft requires deleting copious material. For other writers, their first draft looks more like a detailed sketch, and they add more material as they revise.

Some writers swear by writing in the early morning hours, and other writers just plain swear. Some writers binge-write for a few months out of the year and finish a first draft within one season. Other writers write daily, and it takes them a year to complete a first draft.

We look to experts in the hope of unearthing some secret or trick, but unfortunately, there isn’t one.

People have varied resources.

The more successful a writer becomes, the more resources they have.

Stephen King recommends writing 2,000 words a day. Though he credits his wife for much of his success in his book, On Writing, most people don’t recognize this support system allowed him the time to reach that word count. If we all had a wife like Tabitha, perhaps we, too, could eke out 2,000 words per day.

Resources such as time, money, and support are invaluable. A writer who is a full-time parent or works outside the home will have fewer resources to write efficiently than a writer with fewer responsibilities or more significant support.

The final result isn’t the whole story.

While reading a published book, it’s easy to forget that it likely took several drafts to arrive at the polished version. We don’t get to see the frustration the author experienced, the sleepless nights, the manuscript thrown across the room. While some authors may require less effort than others, some struggle just as much as new writers.

Seasoned writers can experience just as many frustrations, doubts, and fears as the rest of us—no one has it all figured out. Sometimes, having one successful book creates a frozen response, in which the author can’t write a second book for fear of producing a less-than-stellar follow-up. Nothing is scarier than reaching the pinnacle of success only to slide down the other side.

Who is an expert?

In the era of TikTok influencers, it’s becoming harder to decipher who really has the experience or knowledge to know what they’re talking about and which people are actually misleading their audience.

Remember toy commercials in the 1980s, in which some advertisers would show toys flying through the air? After purchasing the toy and bringing it home, children were disappointed to learn their toy couldn’t actually fly. Children felt duped, and though they suffered, I imagine the parents suffered more. The whining, the tears, the waste of money, the trip back to the store—all of it contributed to consumer outrage. Eventually, there was enough pushback to change advertising altogether, making it illegal to mislead consumers.

Evaluating someone’s experience, knowledge, or personality serves you better than being seduced by the most tech-savvy, beautiful websites or online courses. While an MFA teacher may not have a shiny New York Times bestseller, they probably have worked with enough writers to provide helpful guidance.

Also, expertise does not always equate to time spent in the profession. Newer writers tend to be voracious readers and researchers. They may have a great understanding of market trends and be energized to help others new to the field. Meanwhile, seasoned writers with a wealth of experience may be jaded and tired. Or, they may possess great knowledge but be ineffective at translating that knowledge into helpful advice.

Avoid taking advice too literally.

Sometimes, it’s not about the advice dispensed but how it’s received. When finding your way in a new profession, it’s easy to take things too literally because there’s little foundational knowledge to help filter advice.

“Don’t use adverbs” and “Write what you know” are two common pieces of advice that new writers often apply too rigidly. A book without a single adverb would be a difficult one to write. And newer writers often interpret “Write what you know” to mean they should only write about places, characters, or emotions they have experienced firsthand. If this were the case, there wouldn’t be any books with science fiction, serial killers, or paranormal activity.

For most advice? It’s about trial and error.

Ultimately, you won’t know if expert advice is helpful unless you try it. It’s like watching videos about how to ride a bike. Until you get on a bike, you won’t truly understand the physics of balance and motion—it’s the same with developing a writing process.

You may discover that writing daily helps you stay connected to your characters, or you may need days off between writing scenes to daydream about your character’s interactions. You may read books in the genre you’re writing and unintentionally mimic the author’s voice. Or, you may find that reading books in your genre breathes life into your creative process.

Once you establish some techniques and processes that work for you, remain open to change. Each new project brings different demands requiring flexibility. Knowledge is a continuum, and remaining curious, patient, and malleable is helpful. If a technique isn’t working after diligent attempts, move on to something else.

With time, patience, and trial and error, you will learn to discern which advice is most beneficial for you.

Keep Your Novel Out of the Dreaded DNF—Did Not Finish—Book Club

Photo by George Milton

Today’s post is by author Amy L. Bernstein.

Admit it. You love to read novels. But every so often, you start a book you cannot bring yourself to finish. Perhaps you close it gently and with regret, maybe a tinge of guilt. Other times, perhaps you want to throw the book across the room in frustration.

Every reader has a DNF (did not finish) list. I will not share mine with you here, but trust me, it’s not short! And every book—no matter how popular—has its own legion of DNF readers.

Consider, for example, a well-known bestseller like Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. More than half a million reviews are posted on Goodreads alone. Over 20,000 of those are two-star reviews and more than 7,000 are one-star reviews. One disenchanted reader summed up the book this way: “SNOOZE!!!” Clearly, that reader is not alone.

As the 15th-century English monk and poet John Lydgate once wrote (italics mine), “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”

In literature, as in life, there is no accounting for taste and not every book is for every reader. But as an aspiring or published novelist, one thing is certain: You want to do everything in your power to keep your book out of the DNF Book Club. Your readers will have the last word, of course, but there’s no point in giving them reasons to hurl your precious creation into a blazing fireplace.

I did some digging to learn if the DNF issue could be quantified. According to the widely cited 2022 American Reading Habits Survey, more than half (52%) of 2,000 American adults surveyed reported they did not read a full book over the course of a year. And nearly 29% reported never finishing a book they started reading.

In 2023, the same research source reported that the average American adult citizen (the term is not defined) starts 12.6 books per year but only completes 5 of them.

And according to ThinkImpact, an educational research organization, the median number of books started and not necessarily completed per year among readers aged 15 to 65 or older, is four.

Assuming there’s at least a grain of truth in these statistics, the implications are fairly sobering. As an author, what steps can you take to write a book that the vast majority of readers will want to read all the way through?

I’m sharing a checklist that I think of as a set of avoidable (or unforced) errors. You can’t anticipate all the reasons a reader may not finish your book, but you can strive to avoid the biggest DNF red flags.

1. Make the character connection

Readers must find someone in your story—hero, anti-hero, or villain—to relate to, root for, or pin their hopes on either to succeed (in the hero’s case) or to fail (in the villain’s). That connection is usually forged through emotional empathy, which is quite “sticky” in terms of holding the reader’s interest, even if other elements are less well imagined. The deepest connections usually arise from complex, well-drawn characters and relationships where the story opens up not only who they are but how they cope. And the stickiness factor grows stronger when the reader lands on others to care about, such as a child in peril or an aged grandparent seeking a graceful death. Absent the character connection, the reader is apt to feel on the outside looking in, and that doesn’t bode well for reading to the end.

2. Maintain high stakes right until the end

Generally speaking, novels are bigger and bolder than real life. (Fredrik Backman may be an exception who proves the rule.) Readers crave life-and-death stakes; battles that rage across entire galaxies; love affairs where forces conspire against the lovers’ union. Give us big, emotionally potent stakes that raise questions readers demand to be answered by the end of the book (but not before!). Will Elizabeth Bennet ever wise up and see that the man of her dreams is right in front of her? Will astronaut Mark Watney live long enough to leave Mars and return to Earth? Will Ripley continue to get away with murder? The books that keep us reading raise high-stakes questions about all aspects of the human condition and then tantalize us with hints of a resolution—with or without some misdirection along the way. Keeping your readers guessing the outcome of a high-stakes plot is a surefire way to make them finish.

3. Deliver truth in advertising

A big DNF red flag is pulling a bait-and-switch on the reader. Your jacket copy promises, say, a juicy crime thriller featuring a feisty detective; the first 10 pages start off with a bang. And then…the story shifts in ways the reader could not anticipate and may struggle to follow, not because your writing is complex in a literary way, but because you’ve made a dramatic switch in character focus, tone, pacing, point of view, time period, or all of them nearly all at once. Suddenly, your detective vanishes from the page; we’ve left the 21st century for the 17th; pirates show up, and…well, I’m exaggerating to make a point, which is that you haven’t met the reader’s expectations based on the teaser and the book’s setup. Some readers will take this ride with you—but many will not. When your reader orders a red sweatshirt, they don’t expect to receive gray sweatpants instead. Make sure your book reads as advertised and don’t imagine you can capture a reader’s heart by promising to deliver an aspect of your story that is far from the real story you tell—or the way you promise to tell it.

4. Avoid the doldrums

The best literary fiction gives readers access to dense description, interior psychological states, and philosophical ruminations. God bless Henry James, A. S. Byatt, and everyone in between. Chances are your book isn’t purely literary and your readers prefer something a bit more lively and plot-forward. The greatest disservice you can render them, therefore, is to bore them. But that’s what you’ll do if you do not strike a fair balance between scenes that keep the story and characters moving and scenes that devolve into lengthy exposition and/or detailed backstory that turns into info-dumping, thus slowing your book to a crawl rather than deepening its mysteries and meanings. A little of all that goes a long way. Your readers may put up with a few of these detours, but if you insert too many, you’ll test their patience and surely lose many before the last page.

5. Hone your razorblade

There’s a good reason many agents and publishers these days rarely take chances on long books (say, over 100,000 words) from debut or lesser-known authors: Readers don’t want to read them and/or don’t have time to do so. Have you ever found your heart sinking when you notice on your Kindle that you’re only 8 percent of the way through an ebook that’s already making you weary? Not a good sign. Your job is to prune your manuscript ruthlessly; cut the fat; keep excitement and purpose on every page; and don’t overwrite, state the obvious, or include redundancies. Credit your reader’s intelligence and make them lean into the story.

6. Honor your genre

Nothing kills a reader’s interest faster than a broken (or irretrievably violated) trope within a beloved genre. If you’re writing a thriller, horror, fantasy, romance, cozy mystery, or other clearly delineated fiction genre, your North Star is to satisfy the reader’s need for, and expectation of, familiar plot progressions, genre-compatible protagonists, and satisfying (and somewhat expected) resolutions. Go ahead and introduce twists and surprises; bend conventions a bit; have fun with expectations; but give readers what they crave in the end. This is one bargain with your readers you cannot afford to toy with, or they may indeed toss your book across the room.

Don’t bite the hand that feeds

Writers often set out to write the kind of book they would like to read. You know what writers don’t do? They don’t set out to write a book they themselves would abandon as readers because it’s dull or plotless or the characters are too shallow to care about.

As you write, ask yourself if you’re giving your future reader easy reasons to stop reading. To be sure, you’re not a mind reader and readers can be fickle. But that’s all the more reason to do all you can to reel them in and keep them happy right up until THE END.