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Start Here: How to Write a Book Proposal + Book Proposal Template

Note from Jane: This Saturday (Dec. 4), I’m teaching a class in partnership with Albert Flynn DeSilver on the business of writing nonfiction.

Book proposals are used to sell nonfiction books to publishers.

A book proposal argues why your book (idea) is salable and marketable in today’s market. It essentially acts as a business case for why your book should exist, and—for many authors—persuades a publisher to make an investment in your work before you sit down to write it. 

That’s right: nonfiction authors, if they’re smart and strategic, will sell a publisher on their book before they’ve written very much of it.

Instead of writing the entire book, then trying to interest an editor or agent (which is how it works with novels), you can write the proposal first if you’re a nonfiction author. If a publisher is convinced by the proposal, it will contract you and pay you to write the book. This applies to all types of nonfiction, although it can be very challenging for memoirists to sell a project on the basis of a proposal if they are unpublished or without a compelling platform. (More on that in a second.)

If properly developed and researched, a proposal can take weeks, or longer, to prepare. While proposal length varies tremendously, most are somewhere around 10 to 25 pages double-spaced, not including sample chapters. It’s not out of the question for a proposal to reach 50 pages or more for complex projects once sample chapters are included.

Unpublished or beginning writers might find it easier to simply write the book first, then prepare a proposal—which isn’t a bad idea in the case of memoir, since many editors and agents want assurance that an unknown writer has sufficient writing chops to pull off their project. 

But having the manuscript complete does not get you off the hook when it comes to writing the proposal. If an agent or publisher wants a proposal, you still need to write one even if the book is complete.

What about novel proposals? You may occasionally hear someone refer to novel proposals, which typically includes a query or cover letter, a synopsis, and a partial or complete manuscript. This bears very little relation to a nonfiction book proposal.

Your business case may matter more than the writing

People don’t like to hear this, but for many nonfiction books, the artfulness of the writing doesn’t matter as much as the marketability of the premise, topic, or author. You can see this played out in the rejections received by Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

If your book’s purpose is to improve readers’ lives or to teach, then you’re usually selling it based on your expertise, your platform, and your concept. The book proposal persuades agents/editors that readers will pay for the benefit that your book provides, rather than learning from YouTube, Google, or even a competing book. While everyone expects the writing to be solid, they’re probably not expecting a literary masterpiece. To learn how to lose weight, readers don’t need a poet; they need a clear communicator who can deliver her ideas and methods in a way that will help and inspire readers to achieve their goals. Plus those ideas and methods ought to feel fresh and exciting, and not like last year’s 100 weight-loss books on the market. (Even better: the book shows how the most recent books really missed something critical that readers must know to succeed.)

Especially in how-to categories such as health, self-help or self-improvement, business, or parenting, your credibility and platform as a professional in the field play a critical role; your background must convey authority and instill confidence in the reader. Would you, as a reader, trust a health book by an author with no medical experience or degrees? Would you be OK reading a serious guide on how to invest in the stock market by someone who is living in a van down by the river?

For narrative nonfiction, especially memoir, the writing does matter

Some types of nonfiction require authors with proven journalistic or storytelling skills. (What is narrative nonfiction? It’s a story of someone or some thing other than yourself. Think Seabiscuit.) If your book must succeed based on its ability to artfully weave a story, then your strength as a writer becomes more and more important to the proposal’s success. It’s still necessary to prove there’s a market for that story, but you won’t be successful if your sample chapters are poor or you can’t point to a successful publication record in outlets that matter to your topic or book’s future success.

If your book doesn’t require a narrative structure or long-form storytelling, with masterful use of craft and technique, then your skills as a writer mainly have to be up to the task of producing and revising a book manuscript with an editor’s or agent’s guidance.

The biggest mistake writers make in their book proposals

It’s natural to assume the book proposal should discuss what your book is about. But this is a mistake. Rather than focusing on the content, focus on why this book matters right now to the intended readership. Why is it going to resonate? How is it addressing an urgent need? How does it offer something new and surprising that doesn’t feel like everything that’s come before?

While some types of evergreen topics may not have a sense of urgency tied to them, they still have to demonstrate market relevance. For example, if you’re pitching a knitting book, you probably need to demonstrate that your techniques or projects will be of interest to knitters today, rather than knitters 30 years ago.

Whatever you do, don’t get lost in the weeds of your book’s ideas or content. Always discuss the content in relation to the reader’s need or community need and why it matters now.

Other common pitfalls:

Assuming that a “comprehensive” treatment or an in-depth discussion of your topic is a selling point. Rarely is this enough. Instead, think about how and why the argument that your book makes is new and compelling. How does it shed new light on a topic people care about? How does your book illuminate the unexpected or challenge readers in ways they don’t expect? Another way to think about it: Eric Nelson comments on how authors should position their ideas in terms of a switch instead of a dial if they want to generate agent or editor enthusiasm.Assuming that a short, “accessible” treatment is a selling point. It is challenging to prove that an audience is out there waiting to a buy a book only if it were shorter or less difficult than the alternatives. Assuming that your personal experience of the issue is a selling point. Unless you are a famous author or have an established platform that has attracted agents and editors to your door, just because you have personally experienced something doesn’t make your book instantly more salable.The memoirist’s dilemma

Submission guidelines vary tremendously when it comes to memoir. Some agents don’t require a book proposal, while others want only the book proposal and the first few chapters. Some agents may even ask for both the proposal and the complete manuscript if you’re an unpublished author.

Professional, published writers can typically sell a memoir based on the proposal alone. New, emerging writers who have no publishing track record may be asked to submit a complete manuscript to prove they can write, sometimes in addition to the book proposal itself.

Your memoir is not salable unless you’re confident of several things.

Your writing must be outstanding. If your memoir is your very first book or very first writing attempt, then it may not be good enough to pass muster with an editor or agent.You must have a compelling and unusual story to tell. If you’re writing about situations that affect thousands (or millions) of people, that’s not necessarily in your favor. Addiction and cancer memoirs, for example, are common, and will put you on the road to rejection unless you’re able to prove how yours is unique or outstanding in the field.You have the start of a platform. If you have a way to reach readers, without a publisher’s help, then you’re more likely to secure a book deal.

Here’s the dilemma for many memoirists: If an agent wants a book proposal for a memoir, they are likely judging you based on the strength of your platform or as much on the platform as the writing. They want to see if your story premise might have mainstream media potential or the ability to land major interviews that will lead to sales. If you have little or no platform, and your story is lyrical, quiet, or literary, then you should try to target agents and publishers who don’t require a proposal. A proposal will only highlight what your project lacks.

Finding a literary agent (and do you need one?)

If you are writing a book that has significant commercial value, or you want to publish with a New York house, then you’ll need to submit your work to literary agents. Projects that don’t necessarily require agents include scholarly works for university presses, books likely to be published by regional or independent presses, and other niche titles with little commercial value.

The most common book proposal sections

While there’s no single “best” way to write and assemble a book proposal—it will depend on the  category, the author, and the publishers’ submission guidelines—the following sections appear in almost every book proposal.

Comparable titles or competitive title analysis

I mention this section first because this is where I suggest writers start their proposal research. It will help clarify your idea and avoid lots of wasted time. This section discusses competing titles and how yours fits into the overall scene. The analysis typically includes 5 to 10 titles, but you might be okay discussing just a few if your book is on a specialized topic or for a very narrow audience.

For each competing title, begin by noting the title, subtitle, author, publisher, year of publication, page count, price, first published format (usually hardcover or paperback), and the ISBN. You don’t need to list things such as Amazon ranking, star rating, or reviews. Also don’t worry about including the sales numbers of the competing titles. There’s no way for an average author to find out that information, and the agent or editor can look it up themselves.

Then comes the most important part: for each competitor, you briefly summarize the book’s approach in relation to your own (about 100–200 words per title). You should be able to differentiate your title from the competition, and show why there’s a need for your book. 

Resist trashing the competition; it may come back to bite you. (Publishing is a small industry.) And don’t skimp on your title research—editors can tell when you haven’t done your homework, plus fully understanding the competition should help you write a better proposal. I discuss the research process here.

Whatever you do, don’t claim there are no competitors to your book. If there are truly no competitors, then your book might be so weird and specialized that it won’t sell.

For some nonfiction topics and categories, the availability of online information can immediately kill the potential for a print book. Travel is a good example—its print sales have declined by 50 to 75 percent since 2007. Also, many book ideas I see pitched should really start out as a site or community—even if only to test-market the idea, to learn more about the target audience, and to ultimately produce a print product that has a ready and eager market once it’s published.

Target audience

Who will primarily buy your book? “Primarily” is key here. You want to describe the people who will be easiest to convince, or the most likely readership. Who will be lining up to pre-order and spread the word from there?

Avoid generically describing the book buying audience in the United States, or broadly discussing how many memoirs sold last year. Publishers don’t need to be given broad industry statistics; they need you to draw a clear portrait of the type of person (beyond “book buyers”) who will be interested in what you have to say.

It can be very tempting to make a broad statement about who your audience is, to make it sound like anyone and everyone is a potential reader. Avoid generic statements like these:

A Google search result on [topic] turns up more than 10 million hits.A U.S. Census shows more than 20 million people in this demographic.An Amazon search turns up more than 10,000 books with “dog” in the title.

These are meaningless statistics. The following statements show better market insight:

Recent reviewers of [competing titles] complain that they are not keeping up with new information and trends. The hottest new trend in [category] is not discussed or covered in recent titles.The New York Times recently wrote about the increased interest in military memoirs; [X and Y] media outlets regularly profile soldiers who’ve written books about their experience.My readers include the people who have become devoted supporters of [X podcast or Y paid newsletter], which have X subscribers/downloads.

For more guidance, see my post on How to Define and Describe Your Readership.

Marketing plan

What can you specifically do to market and promote the book? Never discuss what you hope to do, only what you can and will do (without publisher assistance), given your current resources. Many people write their marketing plan in extremely tentative fashion, talking about things they are “willing” to do if asked. This is deadly language. Avoid it. Instead, you need to be confident, firm, and direct about everything that’s going to happen with or without the publisher’s help. Make it concrete, realistic, and attach numbers to everything.

Weak
I plan to register a domain and start a blog for my book.

Strong
Within 6 months of launch, my blog on [book topic] already attracts 5,000 unique visits per month.

Weak
I plan to contact bloggers for guest blogging opportunities.

Strong
I have guest blogged every month for the past year to reach 250,000 readers, at sites such as [include 2–3 examples of most well-known blogs]. I have invitations to return on each site, plus I’ve made contact with 10 other bloggers for future guest posts.

Weak
I plan to contact conferences and speak on [book topic].

Strong
I am in contact with organizers at XYZ conferences, and have spoken at 3 events within the past year reaching 5,000 people in my target audience.

The secret of a marketing plan isn’t the number of ideas you have for marketing, or how many things you are willing to do, but how many solid connections you have—the ones that are already working for you—and how many readers you NOW reach through today’s efforts. You need to show that your ideas are not just pie in the sky, but real action steps that will lead to concrete results and a connection to an existing readership.

Author bio

It can be helpful to begin with a bio you already use at your website or at LinkedIn. But don’t just copy and paste your bio into the proposal and consider the job done. You have to convince agents and editors you’re the perfect author for the book. Show how your expertise and experience give you the perfect platform from which to address your target audience. If this is a weak area for you, look for other strengths that might give you credibility with readers or help sell books—such as connections to experts or authorities in the field, a solid online following, and previous success in marketing yourself and your work. Agent Anna Sproul-Latimer has great advice on author bios for book proposals.

Overview

This comes at the very beginning of your proposal. I suggest you write it last. Think of it as the executive summary of the entire document, around two to three pages. It needs to sing and present a water-tight business case. If done well, it can become the basis of your query letter. My proposal template (see below) includes more guidance.

Chapter outline and/or table of contents

A chapter outline works well for narrative or meaty works, especially those that are text-heavy and anticipated to come in at 80,000 words or more. For each chapter, you write a brief summary of the idea, information, or story presented. I suggest your chapter outline not extend past 3,000 words.

If writing a chapter outline seems redundant or unnecessary for your book’s content, then use a table of contents. And if you want to use both, that’s completely acceptable. The most important thing is to show how your book concept will play out from beginning to end, and strongly convey the scope and range of material covered.

Sample chapters

If you’re writing a memoir that has a distinct beginning, middle, and end, then include sample material that starts at the beginning of the book. If your work isn’t a narrative, then write or include a sample chapter that you think is the meatiest or most impressive chapter. Don’t try to get off easy by using the introduction; this is your opportunity to show that you can deliver on your book’s promise.

Common problems with book proposalsThe writer hasn’t articulated a clearly defined market or need—or the writer has described a market that’s too niche for a commercial publisher to pursue.The concept is too general or broad, or has no unique angle.The writer wants to do a book based on his or her own amateur experience of overcoming a problem or investigating a complex issue. (No expertise or credentials.)The writer concentrates only on the content of the book or his own experience—instead of the book’s hook and benefit and appeal to the marketplace.The proposed idea is like a million others; nothing compelling sets the book apart.

If you’re told the market isn’t big enough, maybe you approached too big of a publisher. Is there a smaller publisher that would be interested because they have a lower threshold of sales to meet? Big houses may want to sell as many as 20,000 copies in the first year to justify publication; smaller presses may be fine with a few thousand copies.

The most common problem leading to rejection: no author platform

A sizable platform and expertise is typically required to successfully sell a nonfiction book to a major publisher, especially for competitive categories such as business, cooking, health, self-help, or parenting. (Here’s a definition of platform.) An agent or editor is going to evaluate your visibility in the market, and will want to know the following:

The stats and analytics behind your online following, including all websites, blogs, social media accounts, e-mail newsletters, regular online writing gigs, podcasts, videos, etc.Your offline following—speaking engagements, events, classes/teaching, city/regional presence, professional organization leadership roles and memberships, etc.Your presence in traditional media (regular gigs, features, any coverage you’ve received, etc)Your network strength—reach to influencers or thought leaders, a prominent position at a major organization or businessSales of past books or self-published works

You typically need to be visible to tens of thousands of people, with verifiable influence, to interest a major publisher. Traditional houses are pickier than ever; producing anything in print is a significant investment and risk. They need to know there’s an audience waiting to buy. Plus, given the significant change in the publishing industry, authors shouldn’t consider a print book their first goal or the end goal, but merely one way, and usually not the best way, for making money.

A book proposal template to help you get started

Download a nonfiction book proposal template (Word file) that is already formatted according to industry guidelines. It also includes brief guidance, tips and common mistakes for each section.

Download Jane’s nonfiction book proposal template

I also offer research worksheets, to help you prepare to write the book proposal.

 More resources on book proposalsAgent Ted Weinstein outlines the necessary parts of a book proposal, and also offers an audio recording of his 90-minute workshop on proposals.My favorite comprehensive guide on book proposals is How to Write a Book Proposal by agent Michael Larsen.For professors and academics, I recommend Laura Portwood-Stacer’s resources.Looking for more help?This Saturday (Dec. 4), I’m teaching a class in partnership with Albert Flynn DeSilver on the business of writing nonfiction.Copy Write Consultants offers assistance with researching agents and publishers.

Art and Commerce Need Not Be at Odds

Today’s guest post is by Albert Flynn DeSilver (@poetAlbert), author of Writing as a Path to Awakening.

On Dec. 4, Jane will be teaching a class in collaboration with Albert, Insights on the Business of Writing Nonfiction.

The apparent conflict between art and commerce is probably as old as commerce itself. Many writers tense up, glaze over, or even freak out when they think about “the business of writing.” Creative writing is, after all, creative. But here we are in a capitalist soup, love it or hate it, and you have to find your place herein. I choose to be an empowered creative, envisioning innovative ways to work within and transform the system.

So what does creativity have to do with business? A lot, it turns out. It’s just a different kind of creativity than you engage with when you write. Imagining dynamic characters, creating distant or exotic landscapes, and devising whimsical or harrowing scenarios uses another part of the brain than conjuring up a business idea or planning for your new product or service. But you are still imagining, still wondering, still dreaming.

I’ve had to remind myself of this as someone who started out as a poet. Poetry is the writing form probably most seen as antithetical to business. But as I’ve gotten older, the distinctions between creativity and business have started to soften and melt away. I am not only a poet but also, as a person who runs a private online writing school, very much a business person engaging in commerce.

Ditch the baggage

Commerce—now there’s a word that carries some baggage. The first dictionary definition I came across was “social intercourse: interchange of ideas, opinions, or sentiments.” Going back to the word’s Latin origin, commerce simply means “to trade together.” Is that so bad? Not at all, especially if we are trading together in positive ideas, in uplifting, inclusive, and inspiring curricula, and in content that makes the world a better place. Looking at commerce this way has helped shift my perception of the activities required to run a business.

As writers, we trade together with our audience—another word that may carry baggage for creative types because of its association with marketing. But for us as writers, audience simply means readers and listeners, and, since I am not in the writing game for myself, I want an audience. Unless you write only for yourself, your words and stories need other human beings to hear and receive them.

Connect to your purpose

Thinking about audience gets me thinking about purpose. I ask myself, “Why am I writing this, really?” Connecting to your purpose as a writer offers another bridge between creativity and commerce. I want my writing to have impact—preferably to inspire. I want to stimulate my readers to think differently about themselves and the world. I want my words to remind them of their inherent creative genius, their innate imaginative power to manifest real change. Why are you writing? To inform, instruct, engage, encourage, motivate? Whatever your intention, if you can touch repeatedly into the heart of your desire around writing and hunker down in that love of process (yes, even when it sucks) I think you’ve struck gold, and audience blooms forth as a natural extension.

These two aspects of your writerly self need not be at odds. See what happens when you put commerce and creativity side by side and encourage them to get along. Reimagine the business of writing as communication, engagement, connection, and participation and see how your creative impulse can live in harmony with the business of writing. 

NFTs for Authors: Is This a Rush for Fool’s Gold?

Today’s post is by author and marketer P. S. Hoffman (@PS_Hoffman).

Lately, influencers are parading Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs, as the shiny new key that will unlock the future of the internet. In publishing, respected entrepreneurs, like Joanna Penn, are wondering if NFTs could become a serious source of income for authors.

And I think by now we’ve all heard of the dazzling displays of wealth behind the earliest NFT artwork and book deals.

But in my opinion, the promise of NFT books is riddled with warning signs. The outlandish hype, the allure of quick riches, and the shining exterior of “new, disruptive technology” paints a picture I’ve seen before.

Here’s why all this chatter about NFTs in publishing will probably amount to nothing more than a rush for fool’s gold.

What is an NFT book?

The short answer: an NFT is a receipt that proves you bought a digital product. Jane has much info on NFTs here, but at its core, that’s all an NFT is—a crypto-generated digital receipt.

Therefore, an NFT book is a receipt for a digital book. Most often, this will come packaged with the actual book’s file, and exclusive content to “sweeten the deal.”

The most basic idea is to allow people to collect, trade, and sell digital products, as if they were handmade and truly unique. But a unique string of numbers on your receipt does not make your product more valuable.

What’s more, I’m going to show you why the promise of NFTs will most likely not upturn the whole publishing industry, and will not decentralize the power of the richest publishing giants. More on that in a second.

First, let’s talk about marketing.

Scarcity does NOT make something valuable

Have you ever heard of “thulium?”

It’s the scarcest rare metal on Earth. It’s smooth, silvery, and easy to work with. Thulium is also one of the least valuable metals. Scarcity alone does not make something valuable.

If I tried to sell a book that no one has ever heard of on the premise that “it’s the only one ever printed,” no one would care. Now, if I tried to sell the author’s original handwritten copy of, say, The Hunger Games, I could probably sell it for a pretty penny.

Without demand, scarcity doesn’t matter.

And NFTs ignore the simple truth of the internet: everything hosted here is infinitely reproducible. There is no scarcity.

Therefore, to make a meaningful income off of NFTs, we’re going to have to talk about artificial scarcity.

Artificial scarcity is a tool to make potential buyers of a product temporarily increase the value they assign to that product. As a professional marketer by day, I use artificial scarcity almost everywhere. Giant ticking timers on sales pages, phrases like “as long as supplies last,” and limited edition runs are well-used tools in every marketer’s kit.

Artificial scarcity has two major drawbacks:

First, it’s not scalable. Limited-time offers, by definition, are limited.

Second, artificial scarcity is fake. Too much use can cheapen your brand, and anger your audience. Nobody wants to feel like they’re being duped.

These problems are magnified when it comes to NFT Books. People who praise Non-Fungible Tokens have yet to address the fact that ebooks are inherently fungible.

Before this century, books had to be printed. Which meant we had to kill trees, process them into paper, and expend gobs of ink to create a single book. Books were inherently limited by their resources and manufacturing costs, not to mention distribution.

The internet changed that. A ebook file is so small, it can be sent in an email. Anything digital can be replicated infinitely, for no cost except the power that feeds your device. Which means, if you want to sell an NFT of your book, you are going to use artificial scarcity.

Will readers buy NFT books?

Only if they’re easier or less expensive to buy than any other ebook. And thus far, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

The internet is obsessed with hype, and letting it spiral out of control. Often, to dangerous effects (I’m sure you can think of a few recent instances).

The hype always begins with a promise—great wealth, or great health, or some dramatic change—while providing very slim evidence (if any) to back it up.

Hype spirals are magnetic. As hopefuls flock to become “early adopters,” they add momentum to the spiral, which pulls in more. When you’re in the epicenter of a hype spiral, it can be hard to see anything but the benefits of hopping aboard.

I have seen it happen to dear friends. I’ve watched them lose thousands on silly schemes that were obvious in hindsight, but because the hype was so strong…

This is a warning about all this NFT buzz: it’s easy to make promises, and hard to deliver. Independent authors, specifically, may be at risk for the predatory sales tactics around NFTs. Even the copyright law isn’t there yet.

Some readers will certainly buy NFTs, for as long as the NFT novelty lasts. But nothing builds momentum forever, and when the hype spiral begins to slow, it begins to die.

The publishing industry will be fine, but any author who stakes their writing future on NFTs may be left holding the bag, so to speak. As with any area, be careful how much you focus on NFTs.

Of course, many still believe NFTs have the power to change the publishing world. The power comes not from basic book sales, but from other areas.

Don’t people want to collect unique NFT editions of books?

Oh, certainly.

But NFTs are digital. So where are you displaying these digital receipts for the books you’ve purchased?

Digital collectibles make sense in limited environments, like cosmetic micro-transactions that are popular in the gaming world. Gamers “live” in their worlds, and the cosmetics are immediately obvious.

But publishing is different. Are readers supposed to sit down with their morning coffee and scroll through their digital library while sighing with pleasure?

I have my doubts.

NFTs might have a place in other industries, but when it comes to turning NFT books into a sustainable and meaningful source of income for writers, the basic premise of the digital collectible business model doesn’t hold much water.

NFT books will be more expensive than regular ebooks (and probably more than physical books, too). They will be less useful, they will have no physical attributes (like the feeling of a leather-bound or the smell of an old bookcase), and—except for that tiny piece of code—they will be nearly identical to a regular ebook.

The main way to make NFT books profitable is to bundle them with other products. We can already do this. I’m skeptical that NFT technology brings anything new to the table here, other than over-specialized proof of purchase.

It’s like hiring a full-time construction crew and a jackhammer to nail a picture to your wall.

Do NFTs have the power to usurp the rich publishing monopolies?

Probably not.

In truth, Amazon is already looking at NFTs, and numerous online distributors are already selling NFT books. Several other are already laser-focused on exploiting people’s hype for NFTs. These major players, who have all the resources in the world, are ready to capitalize on this new fad.

At best, new independent NFT marketplaces will crop up and limp along for a few years, before the giants gobble them up.

You can already see this happening in cryptocurrency markets, like Bitcoin, where a full 30% of the currency is concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of investors.

Decentralized often means unregulated, and today’s digital monopolies easily have the resources and flexibility to take advantage of any new media.

The audience for NFT books is (probably) smaller than the hype

Unless you’re already a big-name author, and the cash doesn’t really matter, you’re probably not going to make a meaningful income from selling NFT books.

I doubt NFTs are dangerous for authors, but recently I’ve seen a lot of slick talkers trying to shove this dollar-sign-shaped technology into the publishing industry. Since the hype around NFT books is nearing its peak, I just wanted to stake my warning down for writers everywhere: if you go rushing for fool’s gold, you might just find it.

Writing Compassionately about Parents

Today’s post is by writer and editor Katie Bannon (@katiedbannon).

You may be familiar with the iconic opening line of Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Many of us end up writing about our family dynamics in memoir and personal essays, whether we planned to or not. Family members, for better or for worse, are endlessly fascinating. But how do we write about our uniquely dysfunctional families—and our parents, in particular—without being petty? How can we craft rich portraits that show their full, flawed humanity?

The more complex, the better.

Readers respond most to complicated characters. Try to be as balanced as possible in your portrayal of your parents. Showing their redeeming qualities alongside their shortcomings will make them read as human on the page. As a species, we are full of contradictions, and your parent characters should be too.

Remember that it’s difficult for readers to connect with characters who appear one-dimensional. If your mother or father is coming across as either wholly good or wholly bad, the reader is likely to distrust you as a narrator. Readers might wonder if you’ve done the processing necessary to come to terms with who your parents are/were, and if personal grievances are causing you to portray them unfairly.

Readers are also highly attuned to moments when the narrator wants them to see a character a particular way, rather than allowing them to form their own judgments. A one-sided portrayal of a parent won’t cause a reader to hate or love them—it will probably only make them detach from the narrative entirely. Capturing our parents’ complexity isn’t about giving them a “free pass” or sugar-coating their flaws. It’s about ensuring our readers can feel invested in them as characters, and as a result, stay engaged in the narrative as a whole.

If you’re writing about a difficult parent, consider how you might add nuance and compassion to their portrayal by asking the following questions:

What might have motivated the parent to act the way they did? Was it protectiveness? Fear? Low self-esteem?As an adult, what do you understand about the parent that you didn’t know when you were a child?Think about the parent’s own trauma and family history. Can you draw connections between the parent’s actions/behaviors and their own past? The ways their own parents treated them?

On the flipside, maybe you idealize a parent. Sometimes this happens once parents have passed away; grief can make it difficult for us to recognize a parent’s shortcomings. But readers distrust perfect characters—they often read as inauthentic or cartoon-like. To help dig deeper into your parent’s complexity, ask yourself the following questions:

What scares/scared this person? What is/was their greatest fear?What do you imagine is/was their biggest regret in life?What makes/made your parent feel embarrassed or ashamed?Don’t tell us who your parents are. Show us instead.

Scenes allow us to watch your parents in action. We can see how they interact with you and others, observe their body language and mannerisms (biting fingernails, scowling, etc.), and hear the way they speak. Detail is at the heart of excellent character portrayals, and scenes are the perfect place to create the color and texture that brings parent characters to life.

Many of us harbor strong feelings toward our parents. This may result in a tendency to sum them up neatly in the narration: “My father was an angry man.” “My mother dealt with a lifetime of guilt.” While telling certainly has its place in memoir and personal essay, it’s often more effective to show us your parents’ personalities through scenes.

Instead of telling us your father was an angry man, show us a scene of him throwing a plate across the kitchen. Paint a picture of his anger through the details: the furrowing of his brow, the thunderous sound of the plate smashing, the way his screams echoed off the walls. A scene like this will allow readers to feel your father’s rage in a visceral, immersive way.

Showing parents in scene also helps you avoid labeling them. Labels reduce your parents to a “type,” diluting the nuance of your character portrayals. Mary Karr doesn’t call her parents “alcoholics” in her memoirs; instead, we see her pouring her parents’ vodka down the drain. Scenes and hyper-specific details are what make your parents idiosyncratic and believable to a reader.

Need help showing your parents on the page? Try this writing exercise:

Write a scene about a time you fought with or were scolded by a parent. The key here is using details to humanize the parent and show the reader the dynamic between the two of you. Play with the tension between what the character of “you” wants in the scene, versus what the character of your parent wants. Try to include the following elements:

Your parent’s physical characteristicsYour parent’s body language (twirling hair, stiffening of the shoulders, etc.)Your parent’s speech (word choice, tone, cadence)Your parent’s actions and reactionsSpeculation about what your parent might have wanted and/or felt in the scene (which may be in conflict with what you felt/wanted)Use “telling details” that capture your parents’ essence.

Sometimes just one detail about a parent can speak volumes about who they are. These “telling details” could be as simple as a nervous tic, a favorite catchphrase, or the way they take their coffee. In my memoir, I describe how my father told waiters we had a show to catch (even when we didn’t) just to speed up the service. My mother insisted on standing on the outside of the group in family photos, doing her best to slip out of the photo entirely. Carefully chosen details evoke a huge amount about a parent’s life and identity.

Don’t neglect “telling” physical descriptors. Sometimes we’re so familiar with family members we don’t include the level of detail necessary for readers to see, hear, and feel them on the page. Details like how your parents dressed, the way they walked, what cherished objects they kept in their purse or wallet, can go a long way.

Which “telling details” about your parents will capture their essence on the page? Brainstorm ideas by filling in the blanks.

On a hot day, my mother/father always wore _______ and drank _______.The object my mother/father most treasured was ______ because _______.When we had company over, my mother/father would ________.When my mother/father was annoyed, her/his voice would ________ and her/his face looked like ________.Around the holidays, my mother/father would _________, but she/he would never ________.Final thoughts

Parents have the potential to be your most vivid characters. Their nuances and contradictions provide incredibly fertile ground for writers. Still, writing compassionately about parents is no easy task. Applying character-focused craft techniques—leaning into complexity, developing scenes, and using evocative details—is crucial to making parent characters believable and engaging for the reader. Only then can we hope to bring our parents, and their humanity, to life on the page.

The Short-Run Printing Option: Pros and Cons

There are three main ways to create printed copies of your book. Which one you choose depends on your budget and goals.

Debuting at the Age of 66

Photo by Stanislav Kondratiev from Pexels

Today’s post is by author Liz Alexander (@ES_Alexander7), author of Lies That Blind.

Anna Sewell sold her only novel, the classic Black Beauty, when she was 57 years old. She had worked on it for six years while confined to her bed due to ill-health. It wasn’t until after Laura Ingalls Wilder had celebrated her 65th birthday that the Little House series came to prominence. And teacher-turned-memoirist, Frank McCourt, won the Pulitzer Prize for his book, Angela’s Ashes, at the age of 66.

When my debut novel, Lies That Blind, came out on October 19, I was two weeks short of my 67th birthday. Becoming a novelist has nothing to do with your age. Nor should you think that having invested your talent so far in one literary arena—as I did with nonfiction—that it’s impossible to shift gears. I’m proof positive you can do both.

In 2018 I left the United States, intending to retire in Malaysia, after a long career as a freelance journalist and the author or co-author of more than twenty mainstream published nonfiction books. Sensing that I wanted a simpler, less financially stressful life, I sold my house, my car, and all but a few personal belongings, and arrived on the island of Penang without ever having stepped foot in Southeast Asia before. My life as a writer, I’d convinced myself, would now take a back seat to reading all those books I never seemed to have time to devour, to learn the Malay language, and sample the delights of Penang’s world-famous cuisine.

But, as the Yiddish saying goes, “Man plans, God laughs.” Or, for the irreligious among you, perhaps I was just about to stumble my way through a series of fortuitous events.

Writers don’t know the word “retirement”

I’d already bought the domain name “My Year of Doing Sod All” (British vernacular for doing nothing), having suspected that it wouldn’t take long before I was desperate to get back to tapping on my keyboard. My intention had been to write a blog about the joys of loafing! But I never got round to making that site public; I soon realized that I’d never worked as a writer, I was a writer—all the way through to my marrow—and that writers never “retire.” Plus, I had long nurtured a writing dream that perhaps now I’d be able to fulfill.

As a lover of crime novels and thrillers, my first thought was to try my hand at plotting a Penang-based murder mystery. (Think: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder by Shamini Flint, but featuring the peculiarities of Penang, rather than Kuala Lumpur.) I tried to come up with a compelling idea, but nothing gelled. Then one day, over coffee with a fellow writer and publisher, I admitted that I’d always wanted to write a novel before I died but couldn’t come up with anything that excited me.

Keith began to tell me the story of how Penang came to be possessed in the late 18th century by an agent of the East India Company (EIC) named Captain Francis Light. I was familiar with the basics: Penang was, at that time, part of the kingdom of Queda whose sultan was keen for the EIC to protect him militarily against his many regional enemies. The carrot that the sultan dangled was to allow the EIC to establish a settlement on Penang; the “Honourable Company” had been looking for a port further east than Madras where they might repair their ships traveling between India and Macau.

But the plan had gone horribly wrong. Yes, Francis Light had taken possession of Penang (rather cheekily christening it Prince of Wales Island in honour of King George III’s son, within days of setting foot there), and the island had become a thriving trading settlement not least because it imposed none of the tolls and taxes common to Queda’s ports. But by April 1791, frustrated that his demands for military protection had gone unheeded, the Malay sultan had amassed an armada of mercenaries and regional pirates to attack the tiny British stronghold, and take his island back. And by “tiny” I mean a garrison of 400 sepoys and EIC officers against an invasion force reputed to number over 20,000 men.

Even though I had made a career for myself as a nonfiction author, I knew enough about storytelling generally to recognize that here were the makings of an intriguing tale. I was reminded of Hilary Mantel’s quote in this Guardian article: “I began writing fiction when I discovered I wanted to be a historian.” I’d never adhered to the adage that you should write about what you know; as a nonfiction author and journalist I had always written about what I’d wanted to discover.

I believe that you will never compel a reader to turn the pages of your book—nonfiction or novel—unless you, as the author, love the process of writing more than almost anything else. Given a new lease of life, as far away from “retiring” as you can imagine, I spent the next two years doing as much research as I could about Francis Light, the early days of Penang, and what life was like in Malaya at that time.

But then my passion for this endeavour hit a wall. I’d tried to write a few early chapters making Light my protagonist, but nothing seemed to work. I guess I just didn’t like him all that much or couldn’t get into his head. I was starting to get dispirited, thinking I’d wasted my time, when I chanced upon an essay written by Dr. Samuel Johnson in 1758, “Of the Duty of a Journalist.” Having just read Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, I came up with the idea that my hero would be a similarly naïve, idealistic young man—a fledgling journalist—named Jim Lord, who maneuvers his way to becoming Francis Light’s assistant and chronicler. The further away I got from the themes of Lord Jim, as I played around with one draft after another, the more I felt inclined to change my protagonist’s name. He ends up in my novel as Jim Lloyd.

The value of lifelong learning

I’m tired of people perpetuating the myth that people over 50 are unwilling or unable to learn anything new. What rubbish! My early drafts were okay, but it soon became apparent that my thirty plus years’ experience as a nonfiction author had not prepared me adequately to write a novel. Already knowing that writing any book is like bringing up a child—it takes a village—I enrolled in online courses with titles ranging from Emotional Beats and Deep POV to Your First 15 Pages. I devoured Save the Cat; answered questions in What Would Your Character Do?; and listened to an audio seminar The Hero’s 2 Journeys, featuring those wonderful story consultants, Michael Hauge and Christopher Vogler. I also engaged three successive writing consultants, one of whom—having seen the outline of my “final” draft, nudged me to tear the whole thing apart. Which I did. For me, writing is never about the destination but how much I can learn from, and enjoy, the journey. 

With a manuscript as close to perfect as I could get it, I set my sights on being published by Penguin Random House SEA, the recently formed Singapore-based office of one of the world’s biggest publishing houses. Six months later (these folks are never that quick to respond to queries), I was offered a contract and the rest, as they say, is history.

Bookshop / Amazon

But there is one important message I want to close with, and look forward to hearing your thoughts on, if you’d be kind enough to leave a comment: How can we shake off the ageism that our cultures seem hell bent on perpetuating, even if this is unconscious a lot of the time?

For example, one of the ways retirement evaded me when I came to Malaysia was when I was invited to get involved with the FameLab contest to find Malaysia’s Best Science Communicator. Recently the organizers asked me to moderate a webinar conversation with two individuals skilled at boiling down complex topics into easy-to-understand concepts. The virtual attendees had sent in questions in advance and one in particular grabbed my attention: How do you communicate science to the older generation? I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that I chose not to pursue that topic. What has age, per se, got to do with it?

Then, in preparation for this post, I went online to find out who, among well-known authors, had written their first or most successful books later in life. Imagine my surprise when most of the “oldies” appearing in these lists were barely over the age of 40!

Which is where you come in. Each of us has a responsibility, in my opinion, to use our talents for as long as we are physically and mentally capable of doing so. So please don’t think you’re too old to start writing, or to change from one genre to another as you celebrate your fortieth, fiftieth, or even sixtieth birthdays and beyond. Let’s show the world that creative individuals never retire, never lose their innate talents, and we certainly never give up.

Deciding Between Simple and Complex Memoir Structures

Photo by Mitchell Luo from Pexels

Today’s guest post is by writer, coach and editor Lisa Cooper Ellison (@lisaellisonspen). Join her on Nov. 17 for the online class Find the Memoir Structure That Works for You.

In my earlier post on memoir structure, we explored the scaffolds that can help you complete a first draft. These tools are great for reducing angst during the early stages of the writing process.

But eventually, you must settle on a final memoir structure.

At this crucial milestone, some writers freeze, fearing they’ll make the wrong choice. Others proceed with confidence. One of the challenges you’ll face is deciding whether to tell your story in a linear, chronological manner, or use a more complicated structure, like a braided narrative. Here’s how to decide what might be best for your memoir.

What is your narrative arc like?

Every memoir has a narrative arc made up of interconnected events (plot) that result in the narrator’s internal transformation (character arc). In the beginning, the narrator believes one thing or operates a certain way. In the middle that way of being and believing is tested. Overcoming those struggles shift the narrator’s worldview and circumstances in a way that creates a satisfying ending.

Understanding your narrative arc can help you identify the specific thing you wish to say about your topic. For example, Carol Smith’s memoir Crossing the River: Seven Stories that Saved My Life isn’t just about grief. It’s about how the stories Carol reported on for the Post-Intelligencer taught her how to live with immense heartache.

But your narrative arc can also tell you a lot about your ideal structure. Some stories, like Carol’s, follow a specific shape. In Crossing the River, each reported story shines like a star. Together they create a constellation of resilience that lights the path for Carol’s healing in the wake of her young son’s death.

However, many memoirs yearn to be told as straightforward stories. While that might seem like the easy way out, easy doesn’t mean ineffective. Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle is a linear memoir that explores child abuse, neglect, and the stories children tell themselves to survive chaotic upbringings. Like most coming-of-age memoirs, there’s less material to flashback to, which is one of the reasons why the linear structure works. But the linear form has other benefits. By staying in the child point of view, we get to experience the young, unreliable narrator’s take on her family’s wild behavior. In this way, Walls imposes the emotional work of the book onto the reader. Young Jeannette might think she’s having a wonderful time, but as readers, we fear for her.

Sometimes it’s better to approach the material slant, something Jeannine Ouellette does in her fragmented collection, The Part That Burns. Like The Glass Castle, The Part That Burns deals with child abuse, but this book is about what happens when a young mother reconnects to a body she’s dissociated from. Dissociation that results from trauma fractures memories—eliminating some parts, jumbling others, and rendering certain events so vividly it feels like they’re happening in the present moment. Reconnection after dissociation is a little like peeling an onion. Survivors circle around events, each time arriving at a deeper layer of understanding and significance. Ouellette uses prose poetry, flash nonfiction, and essays woven together in a circular form that effectively mimics this experience.

As you’re drafting you might uncover two or more complete and compelling arcs that speak to each other. Braiding them together might create a super arc that tells us something we would miss if these stories were told separately. Alex Marzano-Lesnevich’s The Fact of a Body uses the narrator’s personal experience with sexual abuse and a horrific crime to explore the complicated nature of the truth. Like the scales of justice, the narrative oscillates between the two stories and how they intersect within the narrator.

Finally, consider if your memoir chapters feel self-contained, or dive deeply into a concept but don’t necessarily tell a cohesive story with a beginning, middle, and end. If that’s the case, perhaps you’re writing an essay collection.

Do you intend to challenge the reader?

An unspoken contract exists between reader and writer that includes the following components:

You will entertain me—whether that’s taking me inside an unknown world, allowing me to be a detective who works through clues, teaching me something new, or making me feel something profound.You will teach me something about the human condition.More importantly, you will teach me something about myself.The work this book requires will match the effort I’m prepared to put in.

The first three bullet points relate to your story. The last one is a matter of structure.

Straightforward structures are easier to craft and read. The best ones carry the reader on a journey that feels like a lucid dream. While readers might work through clues that help them anticipate what comes next, they can choose how deeply they delve into the material.

The more complex the structure, the more readers must chew on the content to understand its significance. This can lead to greater engagement for motivated readers, but others will give up.

Consider how much effort you want readers to put into the reading experience. What would you like them to chew on—something in their head (ideas) or something in their heart (emotions)? When written well, simple structures can leave more room for heart connections; complex ones sometimes keep readers in their heads.

Before deciding, think of the readership you want to reach and what they like to chew on. I know fans of literary memoir who love a good structural challenge, especially when it’s combined with beautifully written sentences. Others hope to use your story as a form of escapism.

What kind of success are you looking for?

Some writers simply want to write a book they can pass on to family members. Athena Dixon, author of The Incredible Shrinking Woman, values an engaged readership over a vast one. But I know other writers who won’t stop until they’ve secured an agent and a lucrative Big Five publishing deal.

The higher you wish to climb, the more competition you’ll face and the more hoops you’ll need to jump through. While there are always exceptions, memoirs with complicated structures can be a tough sell, even if you have a strong publication record.

If you’re invested in Big Five success, perhaps a simple three-act or letter e structure is best. But if your publishing goals are more modest, and simple structures don’t speak to you, small publishers might give you the freedom to experiment with form.

Do you have a specific vision for your project?

The goal of some memoirists is to turn their life experiences into art. But not all writers care about high art. Some just want to craft a story their friends can read. Others care so deeply about their artistic visions they’re willing to work for years—even decades—to get their stories and structures right.

More than a few talented writers have chosen to honor their visions over other concerns. Some, like Lilly Dancyger, have even canceled publishing deals. For these writers, artistic integrity is paramount.

Maybe that’s something you also value. Consider what you would do if an editor or agent asked you to make significant revisions that would sacrifice your original vision. Would you prefer to self-publish, work with a hybrid press, or reach out to a small, independent publisher before making changes that appeal to large traditional publishers?

Parting thoughts

Writing a book is an audacious endeavor that always requires more time than you initially budgeted. Because memoirists must write about their lives and make sense of them, their projects take longer to finish.

There are several kinds of time you’ll need to consider when writing a memoir—drafting time, resting time between drafts, time to reflect and understand your experiences, time to research your facts, and most importantly, time to acquire the skills needed to tell your story.

The fancier your structure, the more skills you’ll need to acquire, and as a result, the more time you’ll need to finish your project. So how important is this story to you? How much time can you invest in writing it? How much time can you invest in your skills? What else would you like to accomplish?

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, please join Lisa on Nov. 17 for the online class Find the Memoir Structure That Works for You.

How to Secure Early Endorsements (Blurbs) for Your Book

“Eat it or read it?” by Chris Guillebeau is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Today’s post is excerpted from From Book to Bestseller: The Savvy Author’s Guide to Book Promotion, Smart Branding, and Longterm Success by Penny Sansevieri (@Bookgal).

Authors often tell me their first goal in marketing their book is to go after early endorsements. It’s a worthy goal, because getting high-profile people to blurb or endorse your book can add a lot of value to your book’s marketing.

Securing them, however, can be tricky. In the age of social media and email where we potentially have access to everyone, it’s easy to get carried away in your attempts to target a high-profile influencer. I’ve spoken to some authors who create a hit list of high-profile people, or influencers they want endorsements from, and they will just start hitting them up in every way imaginable. Sometimes it works, but more often than not it doesn’t. If you pitch the wrong person in the wrong way, you’ll just waste valuable book marketing time.

Though it can be challenging to secure book endorsements, especially if you’re self-publishing, it’s definitely possible if you go about it with thoughtfulness and patience. And the higher you go up the celebrity food chain, the more involved the process becomes.

Before we go any further, let’s break down the type of endorsement you might want.

Blurb, endorsement, or review?

The terminology is confusing and frankly all of these things are pretty similar. Let’s start with reviews.

Reviews can come from paid and highly respected professional reviewers working for professional organizations, to equally respected blog reviewers, to book reviews written by readers that appear on Amazon and Goodreads.

One of the advantages of reviews is that you can include excerpts of reviews on your book cover and/or inside your book under the “endorsements” or “reviews” section. So often “endorsement” and “review” are used interchangeably.

But if you’re going after a high-profile person in your market, you should use the term “book endorsement”—because that term automatically implies something that’s done before the book is published.

Inside the book publishing industry, “endorsements” or advance praise for a book will often be referred to as “blurbs.” And blurbs have a long history. (Important: Blurbs in this context are not to be confused with short book description copy.)

Celebrity endorsements

Celebrity endorsements can mean virtually anything. It’s not always about trying to get an endorsement from Lady Gaga or Reese Witherspoon. Sometimes it’s a celebrity in your specific market. One complimentary nod from a famous face can launch even the most obscure product. Most advertising agencies pay a high price to have a celebrity take a swig of their soft drink or wear a pair of their running shoes.

The good news is, if you can get an endorsement for your book, it probably won’t cost you a thing—except time, patience, persistence, and did I mention patience? It’s a long road, and you should start down it as soon as you have a reasonably final manuscript.

Forewords

A book foreword is typically written by a celebrity or expert in your market, mostly used for nonfiction. It could also just be someone you admire, or whose work has inspired the book you wrote. Different from a book endorsement, but still “endorsing” your book in a much broader way, a foreword by an industry expert can help enhance your overall book marketing.

Develop and research your hit list

The more you’ve been networking, the faster and easier this process will go. If people know you, or have at least met you, they may be more inclined to help you out.

1. Create your hit list

Whoever is on your list should have a direct interest in what you’re selling. Not indirect, not through some random thing they were involved in ten years ago, but a direct connection. The more direct the connection, the easier this will be. In book marketing, we call this alignment, and your first and most important job is to find people who are aligned with your book.

While I get that someone like Robin Arzon, a leading fitness personality, has millions of followers, and gee, wouldn’t it be great if she shared your stuff … wouldn’t it make more sense if Robin was actually interested in the subject of your book?

2. Look for potential conflicts

Does the potential endorser have a book or product coming out that they’re currently promoting? Sometimes these things can present a conflict, and other times they present an opportunity. A book marketing synergy, as it were. Before you pitch your target for a book endorsement (or a foreword), research them and make sure there’s not a conflict with your book.

Or, there might be an opportunity to offer to share their work with your crowd. Though it may not be as big as the influencer’s (and likely it isn’t), it’s still a nice gesture, and most people won’t turn down a free mention of their book or whatever it is that they’re knee-deep in marketing.

3. Check for connections

Book marketing is all about relationships. Remember, people who know you are more inclined to give you an endorsement (or write a foreword). So check with your list of professional associates and friends and find out if any of them know your target. This could be the opportunity you’re looking for, and while you’re at it, build relationships, because you’ll need them down the road. You do this by adding value, because book marketing is a two-way street. You can share their stuff, help them out, and show others the value of knowing you. Don’t just show up with your hand out for a book endorsement, because I can almost guarantee you won’t get a positive response.

4. Study their current work

If you have your sights set on someone, study them, know what they’ve written, what they like and don’t like. I’m so flattered when people take the time to get to know my work and even a few times when people have mentioned my dog, Cosmo.

Get to know who they are, maybe reference something they recently shared on social media, a trip they took, whatever. Let them know you’re paying attention, and that you care. When it comes to getting the attention of your intended target, these kinds of thoughtful details tell them that you’re paying attention, and it can make a huge difference.

Create your pitch package

Whether you’re seeking book endorsements or someone to write a foreword, the pitch package is pretty much the same. It includes:

Your book cover: You should have a final, or near-final coverA one-page overview of the book: This can be the back cover copy for your bookEarly reviews or endorsements: If you’re targeting people for book endorsements, you may want to include a list of those you already have. Sometimes, if they’re impressive names, it could encourage even more early endorsements. Remember, people like what other people like, and it’s human nature to favor something others are already viewing as positive.Table of Contents: If it’s nonfiction, this is a must. If fiction, skip this.Book sample: I recommend three to five chapters of your book.Pre-written foreword, blurbs, or endorsementsWhat? Pre-written endorsements?!

A lot of authors neglect to include pre-written content in their pitch package. Yes, this means writing endorsement examples, or writing an outline for an endorser to use for the foreword.

In almost every case, the person you’re targeting is busy. Providing them with samples for them to consider will save them some time, and I can almost guarantee you that you’ll double the number of endorsements you receive. The same is true for your foreword. I’m always flattered when someone asks me to write a foreword for their book, but it’s much easier for me to do it if they provide some pre-written content. This doesn’t mean I’ll use it verbatim, but it’s a start and a time-saver.

Include a few different sample endorsements with the package that someone can choose from. You can directly tell them you’ve pre-written some endorsements that you hope they find helpful, and they’re welcome to edit them as they wish. Just be sure to vary the blurb choices you’re sending to your prospective folks so there’s no duplication.

Craft your outreach email

As much as we all know how many emails big names and influencers get, I’m still surprised at how often I see pitches that are unfocused and rambling. Consider this: regardless of how you’re pitching, your subject line is crucial, and most of us have a preview on our phone, too. So aside from a solid subject line, consider the first sentence they see before even opening the email. That’s how a lot of us scan email these days when we decide whether to open it, file it, or just dump it. And if you’re lucky enough to get an influencer to open your email, make sure the body of it is a tightly focused pitch that’s ideally no longer than one paragraph.

How to reach your target

I suggest that you start with their website; look for a contact form or email address. (Hunter is a helpful tool.) I discourage you from pitching someone on Facebook Messenger, or via direct message on Instagram or Twitter. Instead, take the time to obtain their contact information, which should be on their website. It’s not only smart, but good book marketing.

If their website is hard to find, they may have an agent you can contact or you can email their publisher and ask for help, if applicable. For bigger names, the publisher may handle the requests.

If the person is a speaker and you’re attending an event where they are speaking or in the audience, this may be a window of opportunity for you as well. Sometimes you can connect with speakers after their talks, and if you plan to do that, be sure to have your pitch package with you and get their contact information (or ask how to follow up).

If your target is an actor, you’ll want to start by contacting the Screen Actors Guild for current agent/publicist information. You can do this by calling (323) 549-6737 if the celeb you’re looking for is LA-based. If not, head on over to the SAG-AFTRA website for the current contact information for the Guild’s New York office.

The bigger the name, the more follow up that’s required

Depending on who you’re targeting for a book endorsement, the follow-up part may entail your biggest chunk of work. Why? Because the bigger the target, the busier they will be. If you’re targeting a celebrity, you may have to go through layers of people to get to them, so be patient and diligent. Then follow up.

I’m a firm believer (and it’s my personal philosophy) that even the most high-profile influencers are reachable if you make the right connections and take the right steps.

Like-minded influencers will often be excited and more than willing to help you out, but the relationship doesn’t have to end there. I find that these situations often morph into very mutually beneficial long-term relationships, which means that you shouldn’t drop this effort once you get your book endorsement. Stay on their radar, because reaching influencers is not something that has to have an expiration date or be a one-time thing. And of course, when you get what you’re looking for, blast it to the four corners of the earth!

What happens next

Does the search for book endorsements have to stop when your book is published? Not at all. In fact, I’ve known authors who continually go after big names to endorse their book. If book endorsements are your goal, then your focus on getting more shouldn’t stop—even when you have a handful.

Sometimes authors start small to go big, meaning they’ll start with smaller book endorsements, and build on them as the book continues to grow in popularity. If you’ve self-published your book, it becomes fairly easy to update your cover with a new book endorsement, though often they’re just added to the author’s Amazon page. Even if you’re with a traditional publisher, you can add it to your Amazon book page and your website, and that’ll be enough to capture your readers’ attention with your impressive endorsement or blurb.

P.S. for traditionally published authors: You might also find this advice helpful, from agent Kate McKean: How to Ask for What You Need

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out Penny Sansevieri’s book From Book to Bestseller: The Savvy Author’s Guide to Book Promotion, Smart Branding, and Longterm Success.

Maybe It’s Not Your Plot

“Walking the Labyrinth” by zoxcleb is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Today’s post is by regular contributor Susan DeFreitas (@manzanitafire), an award-winning author, editor, and book coach. She offers an online course, Story Medicine, designed to help writers use their power as storytellers to support a more just and verdant world.

Recently, I presented at a virtual summit for writers entitled “Escape the Plot Forest”—a full week of talks with nearly 30 speakers, with 3,000 people registered. Which is ample evidence of what pretty much every independent editor and book coach knows: Plot is the number one thing novelists and would-be novelists tend to struggle with, and it’s what people come to us for help with, day after day.

But eight times out of ten, as I see it, that’s not really the problem at all. The problem is that these writers don’t understand their protagonist’s character arc.

Because while a plot full of trouble, twists, suspense, and reveals will keep the reader turning the pages, in the end, it’s not the external events of the story that make a novel feel meaningful—it’s the internal journey that the protagonist has made along the way.

Recently, I was talking with one of my mentors, the book coach Jennie Nash, about this business of character arc—what I call “Centering the Heart.” It is key to what I teach in my course, Story Medicine, and central to both of our practices as book coaches.

I asked Jennie why she thought so many people came to us seeking help with their plot when, in reality, it was their character arc they needed help with. Why did she think this issue was so nonobvious?

Jennie laughed and said, “Well, that’s the whole question, isn’t it?” And went on to note something I found pretty profound: As people, we’re often unaware of what we’re going through emotionally. Emotions are messy and inconvenient, and we’re often so focused on what we have to do each day to put food on the table that whatever’s going on inside us…lies somewhere just below the surface of our awareness.

I think the same is true of character arc in a novel: It’s not as obvious as the events of the plot. If someone challenged you to sum up the character arc of a book you recently read and loved, you probably couldn’t do it.

But long after you’ve forgotten the events of the plot, you’ll remember how that book made you feel—and whatever strong emotions that story evoked, I can virtually guarantee you, were an effect of its character arc.

Character arc is often the key to the other big thing writers tend to struggle with, which is motivation. Because when the internal journey your protagonist takes in the course of their story aligns clearly with some deep personal truth of your own, that’s where the lights really come on with a novel.

Which is to say, that’s when writing it begins to feel urgent and meaningful. Because that’s when you go beyond simply telling a story to sharing real truths of your own life, the truths of your heart.

If you’re one of those novelists struggling with your plot, consider the following questions:

1. What is the internal journey your protagonist makes in this story?

Often writers will respond to this with something vague like, “I think she learns something about self-love, and about trusting others.” But that’s nearly specific enough to evoke strong emotions in the reader, or to produce the sense of your novel having been meaningful to them in the end.

In order to produce those kinds of strong emotions, and that sense of meaning, the journey your protagonist makes has to be specific: from self-loathing to self-love. From feeling like she can only depend on herself to learning to trust others.

And a big part of this equation is setting up your story so that you’re making it clear, at the beginning, what your protagonist’s internal issue really is. Because if there’s “nothing wrong” with your protagonist, there’s no room for this character to move, no clear direction for them grow in over the course of the story to come.

2. How do the major events of this story push my protagonist to grow and change?

This is where character arc really becomes structural. Because plot, by itself, can go in virtually any direction, like Jorge Luis Borges’s “garden of forking paths.” Character arc is the limiting factor—the one that will turn your maze, with all those possible dead ends, into a labyrinth, which only leads just one place: To the heart of the story.

If you’re struggling with whether to include a given event in your novel, ask yourself: Does this event touch in a clear way on my protagonist’s character arc? Or could it?

If so great: include it in your story. But if not, there’s a good chance it doesn’t need to be there.

3. Does this character arc intersect in some clear way with the truths of my own life?

As readers, we intuitively recognize when the story is personal for the author. Meaning, we recognize that we’re not just in a story based on other stories, but in a story based on the truth of someone’s life. And this is true even if you’re writing a story that has very little to do, on the surface, with your own personal history.

For instance, maybe you’re writing a sci-fi novel about a young man whose best friend was kidnapped by interstellar smugglers. One option would be to go with a familiar, recycled character arc: the protagonist who starts off feeling like a coward, and goes on to discover his own courage and confront the man who kidnapped his best friend.

A stronger tactic with this scenario would be to work out an arc more clearly centered in the truths of your own life. Say, for example, that these interstellar smugglers have actually been terrorizing the protagonist’s region of space for years, and this taps into your own history of being bullied as a kid, and the strong emotions you have around that.

Now it’s personal for you, so when the protagonist finally confronts that antagonist, the leader of this gang of smugglers, at the climax of the story, a lot of emotional power will be unleashed, because you’ll be confronting that bully, and all bullies, in a way you never got to in real life.

And at the end of the day? A strong character arc makes for a strong novel—whatever the events of the plot may be.

NFTs: What Are They and How Much Should Writers and Publishers Care?

Photo by Thought Catalog from Pexels

Note from Jane: This article is adapted from a piece that I originally published in my paid newsletter, The Hot Sheet.

I’ve now spent months reading about NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and the millions of dollars being spent to acquire them, yet I struggle to understand the concept or appeal. Secretly I’ve been hoping they’ll just go away and never be heard from again, along with the pandemic.

However, like it or not, NFTs have entered the media and publishing world. Book distributors are getting into them (see Creatokia). TIME magazine sells them. The Economist sold one. Newsletter creators use them. Gary Vaynerchuk has a community built around them.

Is it a fad? A scam? How much should you care?

I don’t have definitive answers to share, but I hope by the end of this post you’ll grasp the concepts and why there is enthusiasm for NFTs.

First, here is a definition from Wikipedia.

A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique and non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a digital ledger. NFTs can be used to represent easily-reproducible items such as photos, videos, audio, and other types of digital files as unique items, and use blockchain technology to establish a verified and public proof of ownership.

Does that help you understand NFTs? Probably not, because you need to grasp several other concepts first, like blockchain.

So before I get any further, here is a quick and simplified shorthand, just so you can get your bearings and form a deeper understanding as we go:

If Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are the money of the future, NFTs are your unique possessions of the future that can be sold for money.

NFTs showcase your social status and what you care about, similar to a Rolex on your wrist, the Birkin bag on your arm, a Picasso on your wall, or a first edition of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow on your shelf.

Right now, only .009 percent of Internet users own an NFT, but there are people in the publishing community—innovators I respect—who think NFTs are meaningful or even revolutionary for writers and indeed the world. Whatever the case, everyone acknowledges: we are early in the game, and much remains unknown. Dealing with NFTs right now means dealing with uncertainty.

NFTs are a small component of a larger movement that predicts an upcoming shift from what is called web2 to web3

Web2 is the world we all live in now and partly hate: it’s controlled by mega-platforms like Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, etc. You get advertising, sales of personal data, and regular security breaches. Web3 puts an end to all that—or so its proponents hope.

Digital innovator, consultant, and entrepreneur Sebastian Posth wrote in a private publishing listserv, “The value of [web2] is captured by only a few organisations that charge a ridiculously huge cut of the value, which is created by the community, for their services that increase their own wealth and furthermore cement their positions (and instate their business practices). Web3 promises to change this situation so that the value of the community will be distributed among the community and beneficial for the creators and rightsholders.”

In colloquial terms, envision a world where you don’t have to tolerate Apple’s 30 percent cut of all in-app purchases, or Amazon’s lack of transparency, or Facebook inexplicably shutting down your ad account. Sounds like utopia, right? This utopia requires blockchain.

Unlike Google or Facebook, web3 applications run on blockchain networks where control is decentralized. This is where most people get lost and tune out, so I won’t explain the intricacies here. But suffice to say, this technology theoretically offers an escape hatch from the dystopia of Big Tech. In a web3 world that’s decentralized, no one can censor your social media posts, and services don’t go down—there is no central source of power or singular on-switch. Control and power is distributed; users have privacy and sovereignty they do not have on web2.

Cryptocurrency plays a big role in web3 because it supports easy, anonymous, and secure payments and transactions—without giving a cut of the action to payment processors like Stripe, PayPal, etc. All transactions are transparent and, if you trust the algorithms, can’t be tampered with.

For book publishing specifically, one of the most immediate use cases of web3 could be a decentralized registry and distribution service for royalties, rights, and licensing. In such a system, rights holders would be paid efficiently and transparently based on a set of rules and agreements. Rather than having to trust that an agent or publisher will (eventually) send proceeds from a sale, an author could feel confident they will get the correct share of the proceeds the moment a transaction is logged.

However, critics like to say that web3 and blockchain technologies are like shiny new toys that aren’t in fact needed to solve today’s problems; what we need instead is the will to solve them. Moreover, some find this technology ethically objectionable, as blockchains can increase the use of fossil fuels.

Back to NFTs: what role do they play in all this?

A common explanation of NFTs is that they offer bragging rights of ownership in regard to digital or physical goods. Whether you own copyright with your NFT purchase is subject to the terms of sale or platform. As Posth says, “If you buy a limited edition $1,000 sneaker, you would not claim any rights to the design or other IP. Only that no one else is walking in the exact same shoes.”

The owner of a NFT now has a digital token (a possession) that no one else has; this token can fluctuate in value and also be re-sold in the marketplace. The value of this unique, one-of-a-kind token is determined by the market and can indicate social status, gaining the holders of the token entry into specific communities or experiences. Inventor and entrepreneur Ron Martinez has described it as “a right to claim ownership of a set of fulfillment rights,” which includes the right of resale and the right to join the party.

Common NFTs sold right now: digital artwork, in-game items (like accessories for your gaming avatar), and historic firsts (like the first tweet).

A recent publishing industry example: Dirt is an entertainment newsletter that funds itself with NFTs that act as souvenirs and gain the owner access to private Discord channels and in-person events. In the future, Dirt plans to set up a DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization, where people may be able own a stake in the project and vote with their NFTs on what the newsletter should publish.

Critics of web3/NFTs say that it replicates what creators already do as part of web2

It’s already possible to release exclusives or allow fans to buy digital products that have some kind of scarcity or higher community value attached to them. One might ask: Does one really need crypto or blockchain to sell exclusive or limited digital products and experiences? Does it needlessly complicate matters? (And what’s to stop web3 from being co-opted by powerful entities?)

While it’s true that web2 can do everything that web3 can, web3 allows power structures to be set up in a different way. For now, though, the NFT space is not well understood even by those launching NFT-based ventures, so you’re going to see a lot of naive use of them that’s not about changing power structures but about making money or jumping on a hot new trend.

In Posth’s comments on the publishing listserv, I found a more sophisticated understanding of NFT potential: “It does not make sense to offer an NFT for a song or a news article, content which is specifically addressing a mass market. It does, however, make a lot of sense to tokenize a license for a song or news article. An NFT could be associated with specific copyrights, translation rights, or other IP rights that can be invested in—and that could be transferred to a decentralised autonomous organisation or DAO.” (To explore this further, read more at Posth’s site.)

This brings us to another use case for publishing in particular: creators could pre-sell tokens to fund the creation of a new work. This is essentially a form of fundraising or crowdfunding where the supporters get a cut of sales in the future, as an investor would in a startup. You can see this play out in the university community already, where those holding NFTs have full legal IP rights and data access control of research.

A web3/NFT project was launched in the YA community last month

A group of YA authors including Marie Lu, Tahereh Mafi, Ransom Riggs, Adam Silvera, David Yoon, and Nicola Yoon, in collaboration with a team of engineers and designers, announced a web3 storytelling world called Realms of Ruin. The announcement said, “Realm of Ruins starts with an origin story, five realms, 42 characters, and 12 initial stories. Anyone can write a story in this universe and ‘mint’ it into an NFT they own. The initial set of authors will promote and reward the best stories. A collectible NFT character set will be sold at launch to fund the project.”

It’s tough to scrutinize this project’s setup because it’s now offline, but public perception was that copyright would be held by the original YA authors behind Realms of Ruin, not the writers minting the NFTs. Very quickly writers raised questions and objections on the project’s Discord server (and social media) relating to copyright and who would hold it, the potential fees involved to participate, and the targeting of minors.

Unless one really grasps the idealistic vision of web3—and trusts the person(s) launching such an NFT project—it is hard to explain or convey why the holy grail of copyright ownership might not matter to earnings in this scenario. If readership in Realms of Ruin grew, and its social status reached Harry Potter levels, presumably so would the value of participating authors’ tokens. The value and earnings would be distributed across the community. But most of us only tenuously grasp NFT/web3 models in the first place, much less use them, and once you layer the ethical concerns on top, good luck.

In response to criticism, Lu said, “While I have answers, it doesn’t really matter at this point—what matters more are the feelings this project has elicited from you all.” The entire project was dissolved in a matter of hours—social posts and announcements were deleted, and the Discord server disappeared.

Parting thoughts

Like any new technology, NFTs are subject to hype and dreams, scams and abuse; the market is not supervised, and the issues are complex. Skeptics often compare NFTs to pyramid schemes. But those who genuinely understand and believe in the technology see NFTs as part of a future that’s decentralized by design and can’t be co-opted by the rich and powerful or by the state.

Martinez, who is a pioneer in this area and a developer/creator of NFTs and NFT platforms, commented in the private listserv, “The NFT tribe and web3 weirdos (haha) are interested in pushing knowledge, culture, power, and economic rewards for one’s online engagement back out to the edges, back into the hands of everyday people, and away from mindlessly avaricious big platforms, surveillance capitalism, filter bubbles, misinformation, tagging and tracking people like wildebeests, too often dehumanizing us in the service of equipping Ozymandian billionaires with spaceships to alpha-dog each other with on the edge of space.”

On Twitter, someone commented, “I think recognizing the spiritual hunger that sits at the core of these movements (and remember how many in the space are young people!) is an important step to understanding them. Crypto culture is a mirror world that feeds off of the unexamined failures of the real world.”

I am grateful to both Posth and Martinez for helping me better understand NFTs and ensuring that what you just read about web3/NFTs is accurate (fingers crossed). If you’d like to explore the issue in greater detail, check out this reading list that includes varied perspectives.