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Why It’s Better to Write About Money, Not for Money

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Today’s post is by author Catherine Baab-Muguira (@CatBaabMuguira).

My neighbor and I were slouched on my couch, watching The Holiday and eating under-baked brownies from the pan, when the email came that changed my life.

For seven years, on and off, I’d been pitching national publications, hoping they would accept my essays and journalism. Local publications gave me no trouble. I enjoyed great relationships with my small city’s newspapers, websites and magazines, but I never could get the far-flung big guys to take a pitch. Instead, the fancy editors always ignored my emails. I couldn’t even get rejected.

Understanding the problem did not help. There’s an ancient catch-22 that says: You can’t write for large, popular, national publications until you’ve written for large, popular, national publications. It’s like when you’re applying for your first job. You need the job to get experience, but can’t get the job without experience.

I could see no way out of the bind, so I just kept on pitching into the void, growing more disappointed and bitter by the week. If only I’d gone to an Ivy League school, or had the cash to move to New York after college! If only I’d had well-connected alcoholic socialites for parents! I was sure my writing life would be different. Easier. Cooler. The opposite of desperate and doomed.

And then, in 2015, seven years into my pitching efforts, I dashed off an essay for a tiny personal-finance website about, of all things, my mortgage payment. My husband and I had recently bought a modest house in our hometown, and the monthly payments were low, running to just $624, or 58 percent less than what was then the median U.S. mortgage payment of $1,477.

My essay’s title was simple, classic clickbait: “Tradeoff: The True Story of My $624 Mortgage Payment.”

The day it came out, Yahoo! picked up and ran the story, too, which I learned when coworkers began forwarding me the link. And that night, while my neighbor and I were complaining about Kate Winslet getting stuck with Jack Black, my inbox pinged. A senior editor at New York Magazine had emailed me. She’d seen the mortgage piece.

“Pitch me,” she said.

Wordlessly, I handed over my phone so my friend could read the email, and the next moment, we were flying off the couch, stomping and whooping like football players doing an endzone dance.

The next morning, I shot the editor a pitch—for another internet-friendly essay about money because, by this point, I’d gotten religion. She accepted the idea, and about a month later, I got my first big byline. Then I used that byline to get my next byline, to get my next byline, until I had enough bylines that I was able to sell my first book to a Big Five publisher. And to think it all started with an essay about my mortgage. Oh, the glamour of it all.

The internet has changed since 2015, but the great human interests have not.

What allures people, what do they want to read about? Money, sex and death, but especially money. So when you write about money, you put the odds of a breakout on your side. It was true centuries ago and it’s still true now.

To mention just a few examples:

The very first line of Pride & Prejudice concerns a “large fortune.”Anna Karenina opens with a scene of a married couple fighting over money for their children’s coats.Madame Bovary is littered with itemized bills for Emma’s dresses, stockings, ribbons, et al.In one of the most magical moments of the Great Gatsby, we’re told Daisy Buchanan’s voice is “full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it.”

No one has ever written more beautifully about money than Fitzgerald, yet we could keep naming examples all day: Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians. Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, or any of the innumerable memoirs that delve into experiences of extreme poverty. Also, any of the gazillion romance novels with “billionaire” in the title. Any of Poe’s many stories about extreme wealth. All of George Orwell’s early work. Etc, etc.

Money makes a story extra sticky, and this principle applies to fiction and nonfiction, great literature and clickbait.

Nowadays I evangelize to fellow writers: Write about money.

And even more specifically—if you want to get an email opened, a pitch accepted, or your book picked off the shelf, try using a highly specific number in the subject line or the title. Try referencing money somehow. Detail your characters’ economic circumstances, or detail your own. It could help you get noticed. It could lead to the breakout you’ve been hoping for.

Of course there’s a big old bummer lurking just beneath this rule. Writing about money is a great strategy. Writing for money isn’t, and not because of some 20th-century preoccupation with “selling out.”

Genuine creative writing—the kind that’s done to fulfill some deeply personal vision—rarely turns out to be a high-earning proposition. It’s much more likely to cause financial problems than solve them. All those conferences, classes and editing services don’t come cheap. It can take a long time to get published, and there’s no guarantee you’ll ever get there. To call this a tough business is understatement.

There are vivid exceptions: So-and-so’s airport thriller, movie deal, indie publishing career, or MacArthur genius grant. But they just prove the rule. If creative writing offered reliable payouts, even more people would be doing it.

Even for those who do get published, rates tend to skew low. Freelance writing is notoriously badly paid, and only in rare instances do first-time authors receive six-figure book advances. I once calculated that writing my book earned me just $6.86 per hour—less than minimum wage. I could’ve earned more folding burritos or handing out Kohl’s Cash.

Honestly, though, it’s fine. Writing’s rewards lie elsewhere.

For many of us, to become a writer is to realize a childhood dream, actualizing at last our nerdiest, most-earnest selves. It’s to keep a promise to a child, an earlier version of you who was tiny and vulnerable, stranded in a harsh world, utterly baffled, hungry, thirsty, lost, needing to pee but unable to speak the language—and who, in a very real way, still exists inside you. (Or is it just me?)

In the same way, writing can give you a sense of identity. It can provide a way of being who you are now and a way of becoming who you are becoming, and I don’t care how woo that sounds because it’s true. Writing can also be a first-class ticket to flow state, helping you reap intense psychological benefits that lift you out of depression and anxiety, while deep absorption in a subject can help you transcend your humdrum, dirty-laundry circumstances. The work is a kind of relief, and how often can you say that?

Finally, though writing can be a lonely pursuit, when you make friends with other writers, you may discover a deep core of mutual understanding and, even better, shared gallows humor: friends who understand you, friends whom you understand. People to go to happy hour with and to complain with. There’s nothing better.

Money? It may never come. It probably won’t. But considering everything else we get from writing, it’s worthwhile—a pursuit worth pursuing.

You Have a Great Idea for a Story. Where Do You Start?

Photo by cottonbro

Today’s post is excerpted from Good Naked: How to Write More, Write Better, and Be Happier by Joni B. Cole (@JoniBCole).

You have a Great Idea for a story. You are so infatuated with this Great Idea that you gush to your friends and fellow writers, “I’m going to write a book about [insert your Great Idea here]!” Your Great Idea takes up residence in your psyche. It settles in, as entitled and undisciplined as lesser royalty. Weeks pass, then months, but nothing gets written. Your Great Idea begins to pace the shag carpet of your mind.

“What’s the holdup, hon?” your Great Idea asks. “These shoes are killing me.”

“I just need a little more time,” you tell your Great Idea. “I’m not sure how to get started.”

Life continues, crowding the inside of your head with more experiences, more people, more memories, more distractions: Ticks! When’s the last time I checked myself for ticks? Still, even with so much going on in your world, you keep revisiting your Great Idea in your mind. By now, its shoes are off. Its feet rest on the coffee table of your consciousness, next to a highball sweating on the once burnished cherry tabletop. You think, Why can’t it use a coaster?

“I thought you loved me,” your Great Idea nags. “I thought you were all, like, I want to spend time with you. You mean so much to me. I want us to have a future together.”

And your Great Idea is right. You did want that. You still want that. You loved your Great Idea then and you love it now, only now it is starting to feel more like a love-hate relationship because you cannot think about your Great Idea without feeling guilty. I’m just too busy to sit down and write, you tell yourself, citing your dependents, the crumbs in your bread drawer, your commitment to world peace.

Deep down, however, you know it is not family, or work, or even your ideal of planetary nonviolence that is keeping you away from your desk. This editorial paralysis is all about your fear of making a wrong first move. This is the real reason you cannot commit to your Great Idea.

Where to start? Where to start?

If this scenario sounds at all familiar, you do indeed have a problem. Only it is not the problem you think you have. When launching a novel or memoir—or any creative work for that matter—the issue isn’t that you don’t have a clue where your story should start; the issue is that you think you should have a clue, even before you start writing.

If you are like most writers, and by most writers I mean all but four, the perfect opening for your story will never manifest in your mind. Yes, there is always that one author we have all encountered at a book signing or writing conference who points to his receding hairline and explains to his rapt audience, “I write it all up here, and then just put it down on the page.”

We can admire this author and wish we were like him, perhaps with more hair, but know that this fellow is the exception to the rule, and perhaps not to be completely trusted. Typically, the creative process needs more than a head to sort itself out. Thus, thinking you need to figure out chapter one (or even more distressing, first figure out your preface, then your introduction, and then chapter one) before you start typing away will only succeed in eating up a lot of time, and will make you feel constipated and grouchy.

The good news, however, is that these bad feelings are also what push a lot of people past their reluctance to join a writing workshop, which is at least one productive thing that can come from such misguided thinking. I know my classes certainly attract people struggling with this issue, including Lynne, a professional feature writer who knows her way around a page. Regardless, when Lynne got an idea for a mystery novel about a woman whose teenaged son goes missing after soccer practice, she spent months feeling stuck because she didn’t know where to begin her narrative.

“I have a sense of what I want to happen, but I just can’t figure out the first scene,” Lynne told our group.

“So forget about the first scene,” I advised. “Write any scene you feel fairly certain belongs somewhere in the story. Even better, write the rescue scene where the missing son is discovered alive and well!” I offered this last suggestion because I have little tolerance for authors who kill off children or pets, even if these plot points are in service to the story. Having worked with so many aspiring authors like Lynne—who have gone on to complete powerful stories by following this same advice to start anywhere—I knew this was excellent counsel, from my perspective a no-brainer. But maybe because it is a no-brainer, literally, in that we need to temporarily disengage our brains from its insistence on first things first, this concept is often met with foot stomping.

But I can’t just start anywhere. It feels so loosey-goosey!

I will assume you are thinking this because most people respond to this advice in a similar fashion, at least until they try it. As writers, we may be described as creative types, but that does not mean we don’t like feeling in control, or crave the comfort of structure and predictability as much as the next guy. Human nature does not step easily into the unknown, especially if we think it will cause us more work.

But my book needs a proper beginning!

What book? At the moment, all you have is a feral pig. Perhaps that last comment was unnecessarily harsh, but so many writers tend to try to reduce the creative process to a linear equation because they think that is the proper way to proceed. Listen Great Idea, you are not leaving this head until you tell me where to start! Would that you and your Great Idea could cuddle up in your consciousness together, figure it all out, and then step out onto the page accompanied by a herald of Hallelujahs. No rings on the tabletop. No mess. But messes, you might want to remind yourself, can be fun. They can be the stuff of inspiration. And the reality is, even if the “perfect” opening for your Great Idea does present itself in your mind, it is just as likely to be a false start. By this, I mean that, more often than not, where you think you should start your narrative will actually end up being better suited as backstory embedded in a later chapter. Just sayin’.

Where to start? Where to start?

Shush. Of course, in the end, your narrative needs to open with exactly the right scene, and by exactly the right scene I mean exactly the right scene. For that matter, all the scenes, from the first to the last, must contribute to a flow that establishes not just a chronology but a causality that drives the plot forward and makes readers curious, if not frantic, to know what happens next. Still, none of that needs to be figured out at the front end of writing. And the future structure of your manuscript will not suffer one iota by not writing it from the beginning to the end. In fact, quite the opposite. Starting the creative process anywhere allows you to jump right into a scene, any scene, that demands your attention.

But I don’t want to waste time writing a jumble of scenes without any sense of order.

I imagine this is yet another concern on your mind, which I will counter by asking you this question: How much time have you already wasted not getting any of your Great Idea down on paper? If your answer is, say, six minutes or longer, then I would argue that writing something that might fall somewhere, anywhere, in your story is better than not writing your beginning, which may not even end up being your beginning.

But, but, but …

Shush! I’m sorry to keep shushing you because I know from personal experience how annoying that can be, but you need to quiet your mind and listen to the following good news. I have come up with the perfect writing exercise for people in your predicament! In fact, if you use this prompt to begin your work, I am certain that you will launch your story in the best way possible, and your relationship with your Great Idea will be restored to what it was before both of you did things that you would rather forget.

Amazon / Bookshop

But …

How do I know this is the perfect exercise to launch your particular Great Idea? I know because it is the same for every writer who has ever felt stuck before even getting started. When it comes to beginnings, saying goodbye is as good a way as any to send us off on our merry way.

“Goodbye. I’ll miss you.” There you go. That is the perfect writing prompt for you, guaranteed. “Goodbye, I’ll miss you.” Just put those words on the page, then keep writing, capturing whatever flows through your fingertips to your keyboard or pen. Write without judgment, or second-guessing, or thinking. Write without worrying about beginnings, middles, or endings. Write now. Right now.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out the revised and expanded edition of Joni B. Cole’s book for writers, Good Naked.

The Key Elements of Eye-Catching Book Cover Design

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

Today’s post is an excerpt from the book Can You Make the Title Bigga?: The Chemistry of Book Cover Design by Jessica Bell (@IamJessicaBell).

The very first thing I’d like to mention is…

S p a c e

Not the book cover cluttered with galaxies of planets, stars and moons, but the one where you can walk into a room and not trip over the dog. A book cover with space allows the imagery and text to breathe. Utilizing space wisely draws attention to the elements that you want potential readers to focus on.

Here is a nonfiction example.

Here is an example of fiction.

And here is an example of poetry in which I’ve taken an extreme perspective. Be sure to take a close look!

As you can see in the first two examples, there is ample space for the text to breathe, and the imagery is clear and telling. You know exactly what you’re going to get with these books, and your eye is not wandering. The space on the poetry cover, however, is used as reader bait. It’s saying, “Hey, can you read the title from there? Probably not. You’d better zoom in and check this out.” It creates a little bit of mystery and intrigue.

Avoid clutter

As I’m sure you’ve noticed in the previous examples, it’s important not to clutter a cover. If there are too many elements fighting for attention, there is no focal point, and therefore nothing to attract the eye.

However, if you have a talented cover designer, it’s possible that strategic cluttering can work. Have a look at this as an example. I’m very proud of this one.

Here, I’ve pretty much filled in all available space with either text or illustration. But it’s still easy to read and understand what’s going on. This is due to the use of color. The various colors allow us to distinguish between the elements, so I’ve been able to get away with this kind of “clutter.”

But please don’t try to fit all your story elements in, like in this example. Not mine!

Color

Too many different colors on a cover can be confusing for the eye or cause a cluttering effect. This is because colors help separate the elements on the cover, and draw attention to specific elements on a cover. I typically try not to exceed three main colors and two accent colors. In the following three covers, I’ve kept to very few for maximum effect.

Of course, this strategy doesn’t work for every genre or idea (especially when using photography), but it’s good to keep in mind that too many colors may push readers away.

The following color chart shows combinations that are a good place to start if you’re trying to decide on a color scheme for your cover. If you want to make more advanced selections, check out Adobe’s color wheel online.

Similarly, color plays a huge role in how a cover affects us emotionally. I find that I gravitate toward purple and turquoise for their sense of calm, blues/greens with yellows/oranges/reds for their air of confidence and reliability, and contrasty color combos like red, black and yellow/white, which not only draw the eye, but really do scream, “Hey, I know what I’m talkin’ about!”

Take a look at the following chart for a list of common colors and their meanings.

Amazon • Bookshop

If you’re familiar with advertising tactics, you’ll know that color is used strategically in product packaging and business logos. For a more robust list with deeper explanations, just search online for “color symbolism” and the color you are looking for.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out Can You Make the Title Bigga?: The Chemistry of Book Cover Design by Jessica Bell.

When Should Writers Stand Their Ground Versus Defer to an Editor?

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto

Welcome to the very first installment of a new column at this site, Ask the Editor!

Ask the Editor is a column for your questions about the editing process and editors themselves. It’s a place to bring your conundrums and dilemmas and mixed feelings, no matter how big or small. Want to be considered? Learn more and submit your question.

This month’s Ask the Editor is sponsored by 805 Writers Conference. The 805 Writers Conference delivers the information you need to succeed in publishing—all of the tools, skills, and resources—available virtually and in person—November 5 & 6. Conference sessions, specialty workshops, and a book expo featuring 50+ authors. Join us at the beach!

Question

I write dark fantasy stories for adults that explore survival after sexual trauma and war. My work focuses on the aftermath of sexual violence and the way my protagonists stubbornly live well after the unthinkable. There are no on-page depictions of SA in my work. Naturally, edits are a must and I am very receptive to feedback (I’m in journalism, so tough deletions and red pens are familiar friends of mine).

As a debut writer who was previously represented by a literary agent, I made structural, style, and developmental edits to my manuscript on the guidance of my agent. I wanted to ask how an agent’s edits differ from those of a publishing house’s editor?

Since I work as a newspaper editor, I often have strong opinions about what accessible writing looks like. Should I stand my ground with regard to edits (professionally, of course) or is it best for unpublished authors to trust the expertise of their agents and editors? Especially when it comes to issues such as sexual violence, racism, or war, I am very firm that my work shouldn’t be edited purely for the sake of “good taste” or “finding the book a home” in the commercial market. How can a debut writer navigate this challenge?

—Writer Who Writes Entire War Scenes But Is Afraid to Even Politely Disagree

Dear Polite War-Scene Writer:

These are three great, intertwining questions, and the answers to all of them depend on a fourth: Do you want to traditionally publish?

For authors who self-publish, there are no gatekeepers and no intermediaries between their vision and the audience’s eyeballs. There’s also no one to save us from ourselves when we’re so wedded to our vision that we can’t see the red flags waving.

But questioning agent-editor-author relationships sounds like you do want to traditionally publish. Part of that process is finding an agent you trust and believe in, who trusts and believes in you, who will then negotiate a publishing deal that will support your vision while getting your book to as many eyeballs as possible.

A “good” agent—one who is the right partner to help you make your best book and sell it—may or may not be an editorial agent (that is, an agent who will also edit your work). The best publisher to support and distribute your book may ask for hundreds of revisions, or none. In both cases, sometimes the first round of revision requests come from the agent or editor’s assistant, to fix larger challenges before the agent or editor wades in for a last pass. What’s important is that you, the author, believe this partnership will help you. Perhaps you’ve admired books from this press or agency. Perhaps they said something profound in an interview. Or you loved their ideas on the pre-signing phone call. But whatever it was, you’re on board the We Can Do This Together Express, destination Bookshelves.

You should, of course, fundamentally agree with your partners’ advice, even if you want to quibble on the details. If your agent or publisher’s idea of “good taste” doesn’t line up with yours, they aren’t the right partners. Yes, there will be suggested edits where you say, “I really think it needs to be this way.” Very often, the problem the agent or publisher has identified isn’t actually at that exact place in the text. Sometimes the real issue is that a scene or a moment hasn’t been set up well, and the fix is adding or changing information in the pages before.

Writing about trauma survivors in itself brings trauma to the reader, who will feel personal trauma more or less depending on their own history. As the author, your writing must implicitly both warn and reassure the reader from page one: This is going to be well-written and worth reading. I’m going to show you some violence, but it won’t be gratuitous, and you can trust me that those scenes will be emotionally powerful rather than titillating.

Which brings us to “finding the book a home [in the commercial market].” If you don’t want to make your artistic product appeal to readers and be purchased by them, traditional publishing may not be for you. A major part of an agent’s job is to sell our books. It is the only way they are paid for their services. Taking an agent’s creative advice and making our manuscript something they are thrilled to share with publishers, confident that someone will recognize our greatness with cash, is the way we recompense them.

Right now, it sounds like your compelling belief—despite the red-pen love—is that your work is already finished and as good as you can make it. Or perhaps you haven’t yet had the editorial advice that rings the tiny bell in your heart of, “Yeah, I kinda knew that wasn’t working…” But the best partners to bring your book into the world aren’t coming to squash your dreams—they’re rolling up their sleeves to help your vision be as beautiful to the reader as it is to the writer.

May your red pen flow smoothly!

—Allison K Williams

This month’s Ask the Editor is sponsored by 805 Writers Conference. The 805 Writers Conference delivers the information you need to succeed in publishing—all of the tools, skills, and resources—available virtually and in person—November 5 & 6. Conference sessions, specialty workshops, and a book expo featuring 50+ authors. Join us at the beach!

Motivation Doesn’t Finish Books

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Today’s post is by Allison K Williams (@GuerillaMemoir). Join her for the three-part webinar series Memoir Bootcamp, Oct. 19–Nov. 2, 2022.

A writer I work with asked, Should I take another class? Or should I just get down to business and crank out the rest of my memoir?

She certainly could get down to business—she’s smart, thoughtful, and a solid writer who’s taken plenty of workshops and gotten plenty of peer feedback. But will she?

I’ve heard the same questions from other writers, and I’ve asked them of myself. We think we’re asking about yet another class, “Do I need to learn more?” (Yes, forever.) But the real question is “Do I need an external structure to write?”

Finishing your book isn’t actually about motivation. Sure, you can want to spend the time writing, you can type with intensity, you can burn with the need to tell your story. But motivation isn’t enough.

Beyond the desire to write a book, we’re subject to our calendars—work, volunteering, fitness, housework, gardening, caring for spouses, parents, children and/or pets. Many of us want—or even schedule—time to write, but we shove the planned hour aside when something urgent (or “urgent”) arises. I am the number-one poster child for I Was Going to Work on My Book, But Then a Client Needed Me Syndrome.

Paying for a class or workshop, or even just being accountable to a regular writing group, knowing others are waiting for you, feels like a firm commitment in a way that’s very hard to honor with motivation alone. Our families and friends are more likely to treat an outside commitment with respect, too. “I’m sorry, I can’t, I have class,” is easier to accept—and easier to deliver—than “I’m sorry, I can’t, I’m planning to sit at my desk and maybe accomplish some writing but last time I got stuck on Facebook so who knows?”

Here are the obstacles most writers face that motivation may not fix.

A sense of overwhelm

Sitting down to a blank page, or even a multi-page outline, can feel like standing outside the forbidden castle, looking for the door in. My ideas are beautiful! My story is powerful and compelling! So…um…where do I start?

The right class can help you identify those doors—and teach you to build your own habits, writing practices and exercises to get the words flowing when you’re stuck outside the wall.

You can’t picture the finish line

Where does the story end? Does addiction resolve with recovery, or with restitution and restoration? Grief famously never ends—so where’s the last page of the memoir? What if the main antagonist reformed before you got to the last chapter, and now the relationship with that character is completely different than the one already written?

Sharing ideas and brainstorming with fellow writers and your teachers brings solutions to story problems. Particularly with memoir, some of my greatest writing breakthroughs have come from a workshop leader or participant saying, “But it seems like this story is really about X, right?” A trusted outside eye can show me gaps I’ve overlooked in the dramatic arc, how I’m not treating a character fairly, or where my words just aren’t clear, and those tiny breakthroughs bring more words to the page, much more quickly.

Your audience is fuzzy

Who needs your words, and where are they? Can you reach them through public speaking, or publishing essays, or being present on social media? Will you need a platform at all, or will the story and writing be enough?

Many writers have a vague idea they’d like to be traditionally published for the prestige, or they’d rather self-publish because it’s faster, but making the right choice demands a clear sense of who you’re writing for. A writing workshop is a great place to find out what happens on each of those paths—and think through whether you’re the right person to take those steps.

Difficulty finishing a manuscript is common. It’s common to attribute our trouble to procrastination, time-wasting, or just plain laziness. But it’s not a personal failing to feel obligations to the people you care about, your career, and your life. It’s not a character fault to have a hard time seeing the goal or be stuck in uncertainty about how to get there.

Can you get down to business and finish your book all by yourself?

Sure! Many writers do. But even more of them have support systems, deadlines, teachers, exercises, instructions and help. If a workshop is out of your budget, grab a couple of other writers and start a regular meeting, with deadlines and goals. Consider a publishing or writing craft question every meeting, each researching and discussing what you find. Develop a rubric to critique each other’s work as professionally as possible. It’s not the teacher’s prestige that will finish your book—it’s creating a structure for showing up.

You might think to yourself that—surely, as a motivated, list-making, hardworking person—I don’t need other people to help me finish, and I don’t need to blow money on another class! Yet every time I sign up to show up with others, I write more. I write faster. And I write better. Assignments, deadlines and yes, the desire to show off, make me work regardless of my immediate level of motivation. (I think of my drive to avoid embarrassment by completing writing as “shame-couragement.”)

If your book is ticking along, great! Keep doing what you’re doing. But if you’re stuck, chances are it’s not lack of motivation holding you back. Instead of shoving your chair back and feeling discouragement reverberate through your body, identify the problem: lack of scheduled time, difficulty seeing the next step, or problems envisioning the finish line. Then get to class.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, join us Oct. 19–Nov. 2, 2022 for the three-part webinar series Memoir Bootcamp.

Write Small for a Bigger Impact

Photo by Nubia Navarro on Pexels

Today’s post is by editor and author Joe Ponepinto (@JoePonepinto).

Writers have to recognize and accept an essential artistic paradox that the more specific and individual things become, the more universal they feel.

That’s from an essay written by Richard Russo a couple of decades ago. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately as I read stories in the submission queue, especially those by newer writers. I can tell they want to say something profound in their fiction. Why not? If you can write something that makes readers take notice, that makes them sit up from their reading and say, “Wow, that’s so true,” it could mean publishing success is not far off.

But many writers go about it the wrong way. Since they want to say something big and universal, they tend to write their stories in the universal. They create settings and characters that adopt the traits of universal subjects, which is to say they become flat and generalized, homogenized into composites. Sometimes the characters in such stories seem written to represent a particular side in a philosophical or social discussion. In reality, though, those “big” topics are so complex and nuanced that they can’t be described efficiently and adequately enough in a short story. The result then is a narrative filled with characters and scenes that don’t connect with readers, and a message that sounds artificial and predictable.

So how can writing about something small illustrate the great truth you have in mind?

First, stop worrying about conveying “great truths.” If there is a truth in your story it will become apparent in a subtle way, allowing the reader to discover it instead of being lectured about it. Better to concern yourself with the smaller truths about human nature, which are just as universal, and often far more satisfying to readers because they are easier to identify with. Let’s create an example.

Imagine a reader in New York City, reading about a character in a rural setting. Their lifestyles, interests, economics are vastly different. But could there be some common ground? That rural guy feels the same way about his relationships and problems as the reader in New York does, whatever the nature of the relationships and problems may be. Describing the specific details of his existence brings those feelings to the surface, provided they are described in such a way as to connect the details to character desire and motivation.

Here’s an example from Breece Pancake’s “In the Dry”:

The front yard’s shade is crowded with cars, and yells and giggles drift out to him from the back. A sociable, he knows, the Gerlock whoop-dee-doo, but a strangeness stops him. Something is different. In the field beside the yard, a sin crop grows—half an acre of tobacco standing head-high, ready to strip. So George Gerlock’s notions have changed and have turned to the bright yellow leaves that bring top dollar. Ottie grins, takes out a Pall Mall, lets the warm smoke settle him, and minces a string of loose burley between his teeth. A clang of horseshoes comes from out back. He weaves his way through all the cars, big eight-grand jobs, and walks up mossy sandstone steps to the door.

Inside smells of ages and chicken fried in deep fat and he smiles to think of all his truckstop pie and coffee. In the kitchen, Sheila and her mother work at the stove, but they stop of a sudden. They look at him, and he stands still.

I can’t begin to tell you how foreign every detail of that passage sounds at first. I’ve never been to that part of the country, never seen a field of tobacco in person, never attended a whoop-dee-doo. (I did, however, play horseshoes with my grandfather when I was a kid.) And yet I’m right there with Ottie as he takes it in. These things are as natural and important to him as my neighborhood progressive dinners are to me, and that’s a shared experience I can identify with and learn from. Notice the vernacular: a sociable, sin crop, eight-grand jobs. Each of those terms isn’t so much a description as a way of thinking about the object—the gathering is a “sociable,” tobacco is a “sin crop”—and from that we develop an understanding of Ottie’s and his relatives’ values. I’ve never been to this place, but I can see it, and see myself in it, even though Pancake used far fewer words than most emerging writers would have.

And there’s the magic—by expressing the world in specific terms that are natural to the character, the writer creates a sense of identity not with what the character sees, but with what it means, and the fact that we all have a similar need to find value in our ways of living begins to bridge the divides of place and status and race and sexual orientation and our other differences. Offering those details in generalized terms that are disconnected from character doesn’t do that. That’s the real great truth of fiction—it has the potential to connect us in a way that modern media, social and otherwise, doesn’t, because it speaks to the heart of what matters, not the exterior.

When Is It Smart to Submit Your Work to a University Press? (You’d Be Surprised!)

Today’s post is by author Joni B. Cole (@JoniBCole).

How did a collection of essays by a Vermont author (me) end up being acquired by the University of New Mexico Press? Especially given I’ve never set foot in New Mexico and—while I like to think my writing is literary—my forthcoming collection isn’t what you would call standard academic fare.

In some ways, the process was fairly typical of finding any publisher. I sent the press a query letter, a proposal, and a writing sample. Then I waited (for months) and was beyond thrilled when I eventually heard, “Yes.” Despite the fact this will be my third book coming out from a university press, I still can’t discern exactly how university presses pick and choose the titles they publish, or how they compare with other traditional publishers.

Recently, I decided to shed my ignorance about university presses by posing the following questions to two very generous and patient souls at UNM Press: senior acquisitions editor Elise McHugh and director Stephen Hull. Their responses below provided quite the education.

JONI B. COLE: Who should pitch to a university press?

ELISE MCHUGH & STEPHEN HULL: Anyone who has written a book that they feel has an audience but suspects that the large traditional publishers in New York would feel the story is too regional or the audience too small to be published. The large trade houses (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster) and their many imprints look at projects they feel will sell in the multi-thousands from the start, and they’ll pass on books they don’t believe will hit that mark in the first year of sales.

Not all university presses publish trade projects, but those that do are a natural home for books with regional settings or topics, or books with national appeal that don’t fit the mold of a traditional big house. And when we talk about trade books we’re talking about books written for a general audience, books you’d commonly find in bookstores, public libraries, and online vendors (versus scholarly or academic books whose topics and writing style focus on classroom adoption, university libraries, and researcher use).

What are the biggest myths writers need to know about university presses?

There are a number of misconceptions out there. One of the most common we hear is that university presses don’t do anything to publicize books, such as sending books out for book reviews, entering books into post-publication book awards, or helping authors set up book signings and other events. We do, though how much of that a university press can do is really based on how large its marketing department is. University press marketing and sales departments operate in the same way as any other traditional publisher, including the Big Five. Like any other press, we want to sell books and support our authors, and we’ll do as much as we are able to in that regard.

Another myth is that books will be priced much higher than books from other presses. It’s true university presses can’t offer the same price points as the Big Five, like $14.95 for a long paperback. Most of UNM Press’s paperbacks, including our poetry titles, range from $17.95 to $19.95, with a few priced $21.95 or $24.95, if they are extremely long. This is due to economics: The more books printed at one time, the less each book costs to produce. But while the Big Five print multi-thousands of books at one time, university presses are much more conservative, sometimes printing as few as 400 to 1,000 at a time.

If all of the copies of a particular book don’t sell within three years of being printed, the press loses money. It’s kind of like new car sales—the car starts depreciating in value as soon as it leaves the lot. So university presses print more conservatively and then watch sales closely and reprint a book whenever its stock gets low so there are always books on hand. Essentially, each copy of a book costs more to produce, but in the long run the press (hopefully) will save money while earning money for itself and its authors.

A third myth is that a university press will publish only books by people who live in a particular state or if the book is about a particular state. Most university presses will publish a number of titles that focus on a particular state or region as they know how to market to the area around them. However, university presses publish authors from all over the world. What is more important than location is whether a book is a good fit at a particular press.

For example, if an author has written a manuscript about nature and they’re looking at a particular press, does that press publish books about nature? If it does, are all of the books focused on the state or the region, or does the press seem to publish books about nature from all over the United States or in the world? If they have a manuscript about wildflowers in New Mexico, it’s a good bet UNM Press would be a potential fit because we publish nature books about the Southwest. But if the manuscript focuses on wildflowers in Georgia, we wouldn’t be a good fit.

Conversely, UNM Press is well-known for books by, about, and for people of the Latinx and Chicanx communities. So if an author has a book of short stories by Latinx individuals that live all over the country (not just New Mexico or the Southwest), that would be an excellent fit. A potential author should research the presses they are interested in to see what kind of books each publisher specializes in to try and see if there’s a potential match (more about this below).

How is the acquisition process similar or different than at traditional presses?

In many respects the acquisitions process is the same. Most presses will have some guidelines for prospective authors telling them what the press publishes and what it wants to see when initially contacted. (FYI, very few presses actually want an author to send their full manuscript in at first contact unless they’re operating a book contest.)

On the homepage of UNM Press’s website, there is a tab that reads For Authors. It’s a drop-down menu to select Contracted Authors or Prospective Authors. On that Prospective Authors page we detail exactly what we want to see (query letter and proposal), what subjects we specialize in, and what acquisition editor a person should contact for a particular subject (for instance, among many other subjects Elise McHugh handles writing guides and poetry while Stephen Hull handles music and film titles). If a publisher doesn’t list a specific contact, Dear Editor or Dear University of ______ Press as the query letter salutation is completely acceptable. If an acquisitions editor likes the sound of the project, they will either ask for a sample or the full manuscript to review.

What is the review process at a university press?

This is where university presses differ from other publishers. Most university presses will send projects under consideration to one or two peer reviewers. These would be other writers known for work in the same category as the author. For instance, if we’re considering a novel, we will send the novel to two peer reviewers we feel have a similar writing style and ask them to return a report to us about whether they feel the manuscript is ready for publication and if they have any revision suggestions to offer. This can add some time to the process, but not as much as people fear.

We ask for the reviews back within two to six weeks, which frankly often is the same length of time editors at other presses would take. Some people are put off by the prospect of having their work read in this way, but for us it is a way to offer the authors outside feedback to catch things they might not otherwise catch. And we don’t require revisions to be accepted carte blanche. UNM Press editors read the manuscript as well and talk with the authors about the reviews and what revisions we believe would make the project stronger. In the end, this process has been designed to make the project as strong as it can possibly be because we want the author and their work to shine.

The other piece that is different and often causes a lot of anxiety is that university presses have advisory committees made up of faculty or administrators from their home institutions. Our committee is the University Press Committee, and it’s comprised of twelve faculty members from various departments whose subjects we commonly publish (such as English, Chicano studies, art, anthropology, etc.). Some of these committees vote on whether or not to accept a project for publication. At UNM Press, we take all projects we’ve had reviewed to the UPC for approval. The committee sees a memo from the acquisitions editor, the peer reviews, the author’s response to those reviews, and a sample of the manuscript. We meet once a month.

To authors not familiar with the university press process, this can appear like an arbitrary decision—why put in all this work and time if a committee can reject a project even if the acquisitions editor and peer reviewers like it? But the fact is, that rarely happens (and on most of the occasions it does, it’s scholarly manuscripts the committee has issues with due to the research). Between the two of us, we have been attending meetings like these for over fifteen years, and we can count on our fingers the number of times a project that has editor support and positive peer reviews has been rejected by a committee. The committee relies on the editor and those reviews.

Basically, what the committee is there to do is uphold a high standard of publication for the press. They aren’t there to reject things—they are there to support the press and its authors to make the books, the authors, and the press stand out. Of course it’s still nerve-wracking, but maybe it will seem less so if readers of this column keep in mind that at other presses, especially the Big Five and their imprints, acquisition editors have to present each project to staff, such as marketing and sales and business, and argue for why a certain manuscript should be published.

The fact is every editor has people they have to convince because every publisher receives far more manuscripts in a year than it can publish. UNM Press publishes 50 new books each year, about half of those trade and half scholarly. But because university presses are generally a department within an institution, our processes and who we have to convince may be a bit different, which can be confusing to a first-time university press author.

Do I need to go through an agent with a university press?

University presses will (and some often do) work with agents, but having one isn’t a requirement. Almost none of our scholarly titles are agented, and few of the poetry manuscripts. In respect to UNM Press’s literary nonfiction and fiction, we’d say half to two-thirds are pitched directly by the authors and the rest are represented by agents. Many smaller independent presses don’t require an agent either. If a prospective author does their homework and checks out the websites of publishers, the website will note whether or not the press requires agented representation for submission.

What are some of the unique benefits of going with a university press?

That’s a great question because there are trade-offs. For instance, many university presses can’t compete with advances offered by larger publishers, and some can’t offer advances at all. And no university press is going to set up and pay for a cross-country book tour. However, because university presses operate on a smaller scale, there are some unique benefits.

University presses are generally committed to keeping a book in print for as long as possible. Those smaller print runs give the presses more flexibility. And while we’d naturally do backflips if a new title sold ten or twenty thousand in its first year of publication, UNM Press has a different standard of what “successful” means. If we have a novel that sells 1,500 or 2,000 copies in its first year and not only earns back all of the costs put in to produce it but also earns additional income, that’s a success. That’s a book we want to have on our backlist for as long as we can.

Here’s an example of how that can work: UNM Press has a novel on our list that has been in print since the 1980s. We sell maybe a hundred copies a year, but we keep it in print and available to readers because we can print it in small quantities that are still affordable for us to produce. That also means, here at UNMP, that a book that was originally printed in cloth (hardcover), if it sells through those couple of thousand of copies within the first two or three years, has an excellent chance of being brought out in paperback. An author doesn’t have to worry about hitting that ten or twenty thousand (or higher) mark before a paperback becomes a possibility.

Authors also generally have more say and more knowledge of the production process with a small press or university press. Because UNM Press produces 50-60 books each year and has a smaller staff, our authors work closely with people in every department and can get to know people on a first-name basis. They get some say in the design of their book cover and the book’s cover copy. They work closely with our three-person marketing and sales team to set up a publicity campaign for their book. They can ask their acquisition editor questions. They work closely with the editorial, design, and production staff, and can ask the staff questions as their book moves from final draft to page proofs to printed book. We’ve had many authors tell us that they enjoy the more personal and intimate experience they have with a publisher our size, and we love to hear that.

Finally, an author’s book has an excellent chance of getting more marketing time and being considered a front-list title at a smaller press. At UNM Press, the trade titles stand out among the 50 being published that year (half trade, half scholarly) rather than get buried in the midlist.

Do university presses offer standard royalties?

The idea of standard royalties is based on what is offered by the Big Five and its imprints. The reality is that royalty arrangements can vary widely depending upon the press, how large it is, how it operates, etc. For trade books at UNMP we use the same basic royalty ranges as the larger houses. We do offer advances, and while they will generally be smaller than larger houses, they are competitive with other university presses with robust trade programs, and with independent trade publishers.

Have any blockbuster books come out from university presses?

Absolutely! Reaching back, A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean was originally published at the University of Chicago Press in 1976. John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces was first published in 1980 by Louisiana State University Press and has been in print continuously ever since. Hanif Abdurraqib’s Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, published by the University of Texas Press in 2019, was a New York Times best seller and on the longlist for the 2019 National Book Awards. And in 2020 Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, published by West Virginia University Press, was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award.

But perhaps the most surprising blockbuster ever published by a university press is Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October. This was first published in 1984 by the Naval Institute Press of the U.S. Naval Academy. It was the first work of fiction ever published by the press and launched not only a long list of books and movies by and based on Clancy, but arguably launched the whole subgenre of techno-thrillers.

What’s something you wish every writer knew before or after pitching a university press?

This is something we wish writers would do before pitching to any press: Do some research! Go to different press websites, look at the books they’ve published, look at the subjects they publish, read (and follow!) any guidelines listed for how to approach them. Rejection unfortunately is part of the process and it’s never pleasant, but doing some research in advance and tailoring your queries to those publishers you can tell are a good potential fit with your project will save you time, work, and frustration.

Thank you, Elise and Stephen.

5 Ways to Use Community Marketing for Your Book

Photo by Claudio Carrozzo on Unsplash

Today’s post is by Amanda Miller of My Word Publishing (@mywordpub), a self-publishing consultancy.

Locally and globally, in your community and around the world, it’s possible to create connections and memorable experiences with readers by using fun and interesting ways for them to interact with your book. This only requires a few copies of your book to give away. If the cat scratches the cover, don’t throw it away—use it for one of these nifty, inexpensive opportunities to get others involved in the marketing.

1. BookCrossing.com

Have you ever wondered what parts of the world and whose hands your book has landed in? With BookCrossing you can track your book and its travels. It’s free to register your book and it’s free for those who play. Here’s how it works: After registering, you get a unique BookCrossing ID to place on the inside of your book. When a reader picks up your book and sees the sticker, they are prompted to go to the website and indicate that they have your book. Like throwing a bottle out to sea with a note in it, you get to see who responds and where your book has traveled!

2. Reader’s pass-along

Similar to BookCrossing, a more informal way to connect with readers is to start a reader’s pass-along. First, prep your book by designating a space for readers to write in a sentence or two about what they took away and enjoyed most. Or, you can tuck a one-page insert inside the book for them to fill out. Add a prompt that says, “What did you learn or take away from this book?” Next, leave your book on a bench for someone to find, or even drop it off in a Little Free Library in your community. For every reader who comes across your book, they can list what they learned from your book and pass it on. This is especially great for self-help genres and inspirational books!

3. Little Free Library

Little Free Libraries can be found in most towns and cities. I’ve even seen them in airports. You can leave a copy of your book at a Little Free Library for others to “borrow.” To make it fun, you can also create a treasure hunt by writing a post on Nextdoor, telling people in your geographical area that your book is hidden in a special place and something awaits them inside the book. As an example, if you are a children’s book author, you could offer a $5 gift card to a local ice cream shop. It supports walking, family time, and reading!

4. Doctors’ and dentists’ offices and coffee shops

Who actually looks forward to visiting their doctor’s or dentist’s office? Help lighten the mood for those in the waiting room by leaving a good read for them to browse through! If you are a children’s book author, drop your book off at your local pediatrician’s office or children’s dentist’s office. Books can help distract and keep kids calm during stressful times. Similarly, consider leaving a book at your local coffee shop. Add a note, saying something like, “I hope you pick up this book and enjoy it. After you’ve read it, drop it in another coffee shop, waiting room, or park bench for someone else to enjoy.” It will keep the book fun for readers by tasking them with a mission and connection to the book itself.

5. Local silent auctions and fundraising events

Know of any silent auctions or fundraising events coming up in your town? Ask the organizers if you can donate a signed copy of your book to their event. Make a themed gift basket around the book. For instance, if your book is about travel, you can put little model airplanes and maybe even get the local shoe store to donate a set of sneakers. That increases the value of the total gift, but be sure to leave your book front and center.

For more ways to get readers to interact with your book, check out Jane’s wonderful interview with Amy Stolls, author of The Ninth Wife, where she lends quality advice to authors through her experience working with traditional publishers.

Why Plots Fail

Photo by Laura Ockel on Unsplash

Today’s post is by editor Tiffany Yates Martin (@FoxPrintEd). Join her on Wednesday, Oct. 5, for the online class 5 Steps to an Airtight Plot.

Many authors embark on a new manuscript with one of two common inspirations: a great idea for a plot, or a fascinating character and situation.

Both can be good springboards for story, yet without more development, each may result in stories that peter out, dead end, or get lost in rabbit holes (especially during the breakneck pace of NaNo).

Plots most commonly fail when:

they’re approached as an isolated element of story, a series of interesting events for authors to plug their characters into, orwhen interesting characters are randomly loosed into an intriguing situation with no specific destination or purpose.

Characters must take action, but action is not plot, and plot is not story.

The role of plot in story

The basic definition of story is a character pursues something he desperately wants, and he is changed by that pursuit and his success or failure in achieving his goal. Plot is simply the road the character travels on that journey.

I often reduce it to a simple formula:

Point A + Plot = Point B

In other words, story equals character arc plus plot.

Creating an elaborately structured plot and calling it story is like mapping a trip and calling it a vacation. What makes it complete is the character’s experience of it. Character drives plot, not the other way around.

Don’t panic, plotters. That doesn’t mean you can’t map out your plot ahead of time. And fear not, pantsers—it doesn’t mean you have to painstakingly develop or outline the whole story before you begin.

But creating compelling, cohesive stories does mean considering how these two crucial story elements work together.

Know what your character wants

Before you can put a character in motion, you have to know where she is headed and why. What drives your characters is the engine and the fuel for the actions they take and fail to take in the course of the story, the reason they—and we—take this journey.

Your character’s goal(s) and motivations determine those actions, as well as her reactions, inaction, and interaction; they dictate every choice she makes that pushes her along the plot. It’s essential to understand at least these basics about your characters before trying to put them in motion.

In director Baz Luhrmann’s recent movie Elvis, the titular character’s main motivation is evident from almost the first scene: Elvis loves music, especially blues and gospel. It literally moves him—in an early scene he wanders into a tent revival and his body starts shaking and swaying seemingly without his volition.

That dictates his main goal—to make his own music—which is the propulsive force for every subsequent action he takes (or doesn’t take) in the course of the story, starting with recording his own version of the one of the songs by a local blues musician that fascinated him, accepting Colonel Tom Parker’s offer to tour him on the carnival circuit, and every subsequent choice he makes.

But characters may have other goals and motivations as well, and will also continue to evolve as the story develops and as the author’s understanding of them deepens and grows—which will also affect the choices they make and the paths they take.

Elvis’s desire to pursue his music begins to morph early in the story as he is seduced into a new goal—fame and fortune—which evolves from his deeper motivation: a desperate need for love.

These are powerful and universal desires, the kind many readers can relate to. But they’re vague—another reason plots can falter or lose focus.

Create tangible as well as intangible goals

Pinning your character’s intangible longings to a concrete goal gives readers something to root for—or against—and tells us when the character has “won” (or lost).

Without that, momentum may stall, like a footrace with no definitive finish line for runners to orient themselves toward or to tell them when they’ve reached it.

Or the story may lose cohesion and feel episodic: “This happens…and then this happens…and then this happens…” but because the plot has become disconnected from the character arc, the actions lack meaning or impact.

Tie your character’s more generalized motivations to some specific, tangible “brass ring” that represents them.

For Luhrmann’s movie version of Elvis, each element of what drives him is pinned to a definitive representation of that longing:

His love of music—his kind of music—is tangibly represented by a Christmas special where Colonel Parker demands he sing sanitized traditional carols and not swivel those hips, as well as the broader concrete representation of Parker’s pushing him to shift his career to inoffensive, bland music, against a new manager who wants to encourage Elvis to play his own kind of music and swivel at will. This sets up a clear story conflict that serves as a powerful propulsive force.His desire for fame and fortune is represented by specific, tangible goals that Elvis associates with money—wanting to buy his mother a pink Cadillac, Graceland, his own plane, etc.—and popularity and acclaim, like bigger venues, Hollywood movies, and eventually a European tour.His longing for love is represented by his profound devotion to his mother, Gladys (and to a smaller degree his father); the Colonel; Priscilla and Lisa Marie; and, as the Colonel himself reminds viewers throughout, the fans. Elvis thrives on attention and confuses it with love—and that motivates every decision he makes in the story.

Defining what your character wants and why allows you to grow a cohesive, integrated plot as you throw obstacles in the path between your characters and what they want, and let their “why”—what drives them toward that goal—dictate the choices they make. Each choice sends them on the next step of the path as your plot develops organically, always driven by the characters.

Know how your character changes

One final reason plots may fail is that the character’s point B—how they change by the end of the story, externally, internally, or both—is not directly related to or a result of what happened to them in the course of it.

But if you let their goal and motivation dictate their actions and behavior at every decision point, then readers will see on the page, step by step, how your character moves along her arc: how each challenge she faces, every choice she makes, affects her, shifts her perspective, and causes her growth or change.

This direct, intrinsic relationship between plot and character—the character’s struggles, choices, longings, and goals that drive the actions they take in the course of the plot—is what makes for dynamic stories that feel organic, cohesive, and satisfying to readers.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, join us on Wednesday, Oct. 5 for the online class 5 Steps to an Airtight Plot.

To Nail Your Book Proposal: Think in Synergies, Not Sections

Photo by Shiny Diamond

Today’s guest post is by editor and coach Lisa Cooper Ellison (@lisaellisonspen). Next week she is teaching The Three Essential Questions Every Agent Hopes Your Book Proposal Answers with Creative Nonfiction.

Writing a top-notch proposal can feel a bit like birthing a baby, complete with grunts, groans and cries by tired writers who fear they don’t have what it takes to push to the finish line. But with persistence, it can be done.

The key to writing a great proposal is to understand the essential questions it must answer, and—here’s the most important part—the synergies that will help you truly answer them.

Those essential questions:

Why me?Why this?Why now?

Unlike a query or a pitch, which might answer each question in a single paragraph, these questions get answered across multiple proposal sections. The most common proposal sections include Overview, About the Author, Target Audience, Marketing Plan, Comparable Titles, Chapter Outline, and Sample Chapters.

Why Me synergy

Key Sections: About the Author, Target Audience, and Marketing Plan

Unless you’re famous or know you have a robust platform, this question can feel like the great intimidator. Even experienced writers can get their knickers in a twist when creating a marketing plan.

That intimidation factor can lead to pixie-dust-filled prose about what the writer hopes to do once an agent or publisher signs them. These aspirational lines sometimes read a little like this: “In the leadup to my launch, I’ll publish a Modern Love essay and speak at multiple bookstores and conferences.”

If you’re publishing regularly with big places, speaking at conferences, and have relationships with editors or bookstores, this might be a solid plan. But if you’ve never published or spoken anywhere, how can agents and publishers trust you’ll be able to pull this off?

The best proposals use the About the Author section to lay out your current reach then follows up with a Target Audience section that reveals how your audience includes your readers. Once this connection has been made, you’ll use your marketing plan to show how you’ll leverage your existing platform (which you’ll promise to keep growing) to engage readers in ways that lead to book sales.

Why This synergy

Key sections: Target Audience, Comparable Titles, Chapter Outline, Sample Chapters

This is where the rubber meets the road. To answer the Why This question, you need to prove four things:

People are interested in this topic.There’s a need for this book.This book holds together.The writing sings.

Your Target Audience section sets the stage for your book’s glory by describing the readers interested in this material. Then your Comparable Titles section greases the wheels by showing that yes, other fantastic books have been written appealing to a similar readership, but they’ve yet to say your important thing, or failed to make your important point, or haven’t brought everything together the way you do.

Once you’ve proven interest or need, you’ll serve up your Chapter Outline. This section is the proof of concept for your book and will tell us whether you’ve strung together a series of unrelated chapters or created a meaningful, well-constructed manuscript that speaks to the interest developed in the Target Audience section and delivers on the thing your comparable titles have missed.

If you’ve written a memoir, your chapter outline will deliver a fresh and clear arc of transformation where every chapter serves an essential purpose. In a narrative or traditional nonfiction project, we’ll be able to identify your cogent argument and then see how your chapters work together to answer your book’s essential question.

Chapter outline perfected, you’ll deliver the pièce de résistance: your sample chapters. These crucial pages will prove that you don’t just have a great concept, you have the writing chops to pull it off. Your sample chapters should include pristine pages that reveal your best writing. If you’re selling on proposal, don’t assume impressive bylines give you a pass on this requirement, especially if you’re a debut author. Writing in short and long form aren’t the same thing. Some writers can nail the first while failing miserably at the second. Prove to agents and publishers you can do both, by sharing prose that wows them.

Why Now synergy

Key sections: Overview, Target Audience, About the Author

The Why Now synergy tells us why the world needs your book nowish. I say nowish because the publishing cycle is between 1 and 3 years depending on who’s publishing your book. That means your book-in-progress can’t jump on the latest bandwagon. Instead, it needs to speak to something that will be relevant for a while.

To do this, identify the conversations we’re having now, then think about what comes next. For instance, if our current conversation is about division, what comes after that? That next item is your nowish conversation. To capitalize on this synergy, you’ll refine certain proposal sections to reveal your book’s relevance.

If you’re writing traditional or narrative nonfiction, you’ll use a portion of your Overview to set up this nowish problem and how your book speaks to it. If you’re writing a memoir with a direct relationship to this problem, you might do the same thing, or you might lead with a key moment that exemplifies it.

To strengthen your argument, you’ll share how this issue shows up in popular books, movies, TV shows and other forms of pop culture. If you know your audience well, you’ll use a portion of your Target Audience section to talk about how your readers consume the media mentioned in your Overview. Then you’ll double down on your understanding of this conversation in your About the Author section by reinforcing how certain things you do, such as larger speaking engagements or bylines with traction, demonstrate demand for these concepts—plus you as its best representative. 

Studying well-written proposals is one of the best ways to understand these synergies. As you see how other authors put them in motion, you’ll find ways to do this in your proposal. Lucky for us, Jane has posted some great examples in the supplemental materials section of her Business of Being a Writer website.

Note from Jane: Want to learn more about these synergies and what belongs in each section of your book proposal? Join Lisa for The Three Essential Questions Every Agent Hopes Your Book Proposal Answers on Wednesday, Sept. 28, hosted by Creative Nonfiction.