Sarah Nicolas's Blog, page 12

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What We’re Looking for in #PitchWars Mentors

If you’re entirely unfamiliar with Pitch Wars, please read the info on the PW site first. If you’re unaware how I became the 2019 Managing Director of Pitch Wars, there’s a post about that here.

Pitch Wars mentors are the heart and soul of PW. Without mentors freely giving their time to give a hand-up to unagented writers, Pitch Wars would not exist. They are volunteers, yes, but our mentors often dedicate themselves to helping other writers with a professional zeal. I am constantly in awe of how much some of these people give to the community. I am grateful that they exist.

Last year was the first year we had a full application and selection process for Pitch Wars mentors and we’ve decided to keep that process for now (with some small tweaks). It’s not a perfect process, of course, but it’s the best way we know to give us the best chance of selecting quality mentors. If someone is not invited to mentor for PW after applying one year, it doesn’t necessarily mean we think they will be a bad mentor. Sometimes it’s because it’s simply not a good match at this time. Unfortunately, we can’t give individualized feedback.

I know that’s vague and reminiscent of the most frustrating query letter rejections we’ve all received, so I thought I’d share with those interested what we’re looking for in Pitch Wars mentors. I can’t speak for the members of the Mentor Selection Committee when it comes to specifics, but I can give you insight to our guiding philosophies.

Industry Experience

This comes in many different forms, but to put it in more concrete terms, we’re looking for mentors who have been through a professional editing experience and understand what that should look like. The core aspect of Pitch Wars is the mentoring period, and the lion’s share of that is a manuscript edit. If someone hasn’t been through that process from any angle, we can’t have confidence that they’ll be able to plan a manuscript edit for their mentee.

The experience often comes from being an author who has gone through an edit with an agent or editor, but it can also come from being an industry intern or assistant, using a professional editor before self-publishing, or other means.

It would be irresponsible of us to invite someone to mentor who had no more industry experience than the majority of people applying to be mentees.

A Volunteer Spirit

To be a Pitch Wars mentor, you have to want to be a mentor. You need a desire to pass on the knowledge you’ve managed to collect to the next class of authors. This should be (at least mostly) motivated by altruism and selflessness. Anything less won’t get you through the hardest days.

Some people are drawn to PW because of the attention it receives, but that attention is short-lived and when it goes away, you still need to mentor your mentee.

If someone wants to be a PW mentor for the glory of it:

They’re going to be sorely disappointed as soon as mentees are announced (we call it the Great Unfollowing)
They’re probably not going to be a good mentor to their mentee in the quiet, difficult hours

Genres

Pitch Wars only encompasses Middle Grade, Young Adult, and Adult novels, with allowances for memoirs and New Adult. The majority of our adult submissions come in the romance, mystery/thriller, and science fiction & fantasy genres, with some women’s fiction, literary fiction, and other commercial fiction genres.

We have to make sure we have enough mentors for those majority genres, so if the genre a person can mentor is very narrow or is in a genre for which we don’t receive many submissions, they are less likely to be chosen. (Notice I didn’t say “automatically ruled out”!)

Caution: This does NOT mean that you should lie and say you can mentor genres you know you can’t give a fair shake! We put a lot of thought into genre match-ups and we also aren’t a huge fan of liars. Please don’t do this. It’s not fair to us and it’s not fair to mentees.

On the flipside, if someone says they can mentor literally any genre, we do have to look sideways at that. There is no one who knows the market for every genre well enough to mentor for it.

Understand the Mission

Pitch Wars is, first and foremost, a mentoring organization. Yes, the process of getting a mentor is competitive, but only because it must be, due to the constraints on time and energy of mentors.

Point being: It is not a contest. There is no winner. There aren’t losers, though I understand it definitely feels that way when you’re not chosen.

It’s not even really about getting an agent or book deal. The agent showcase isn’t even the icing on the cake (tangent: I hate the phrase because icing is the best part, fight me), but the optional sprinkles on top. Many mentees find representation outside of PW thanks to the improved manuscript and enhanced skills their mentor helped them develop.

Being chosen as a mentee or having your MS featured in the agent showcase aren’t the big prizes here, the months your mentor spends helping you improve your craft and marketability are.

I think this is a common misconception due to the fact that the submission process and the agent showcase are such public events, while the mentoring and related discussions mainly happen in private spaces. It’s like an iceberg; the bulk of Pitch Wars is below the surface.

Diversity

It is a demonstrable fact that marginalized populations have been systematically denied an equitable place in publishing since the very beginning.

As stated in one of our posts about the 2018 restructure:

As leaders of a program that many look to for guidance, we have a responsibility within that community. To acknowledge our privilege and listen to others. To believe the underrepresented in our community when they say that we are creating barriers to access. To accept responsibility when we fail to do so. We are fully committed to making Pitch Wars a safe space for all members of the writing community this year and for many years to come.

This means that we seek to boost voices that have historically been silenced in this industry. We value these voices and what they have to offer this world. We actively and enthusiastically encourage qualified mentors from marginalized communities to apply as Pitch Wars mentors.

This does not mean that white allocishet able-bodied neurotypical folks aren’t welcome to be Pitch Wars mentors. It simply means their voices are not given preference over others in a way that many are accustomed to.

We value and encourage a diverse, intersectional group of mentors, mentees, and leadership. If that doesn’t align with your personal values, Pitch Wars may not be the right fit for you.

Community

This one isn’t a requirement, so much as an added bonus. And I’ll disclaim that this may just be my personal feelings and it’s possible no one else agrees with me.

The Pitch Wars community is a powerful force because we work together, supporting each other, sharing resources, and helping out where we can. I, personally, value mentors who wish to be a part of the community and contribute to it. This doesn’t have to be anything big or formal, just being there sometimes when you’re not seeking a benefit for yourself.

I have heard people say when they didn’t know/realize who I was that they wanted to be Pitch Wars mentors because it will help them promote themselves. I heard one say they wanted to be a mentor because they had a book coming out during the submission period and it would give them a boost. I’m a former publicist and I don’t believe it’s bad to seek promotional opportunities for your writing. It’s fine if self-promo is part of your motivation. But your primary motivation? This is not in the spirit of being a Pitch Wars mentor.

We have had incredible mentors who are unable to be very active in the community, and that is totally fine. We all have to figure out how to allocate the limited time we’re given. There have been years where I didn’t do much beyond what was required. There was even one year I fell into a major depression and leaned heavily on my amazing co-mentor. But if you seek to benefit from the support of the community, I ask that you occasionally contribute to it as well.

Things We Don’t Care About

These are based on the worries people have expressed to me in private communications and this is list is by no means exhaustive.

How popular you are
How many copies you’ve sold
Whether or not you’re with a Big 5
If you don’t have a degree
Whether or not you are on twitter / how many followers you have
Your other activities, unless it creates a conflict of interest or renders you unable to fulfill your duties
How long it’s been since you’ve published a book
Where you live, as long as you’re familiar with the American book market

 

Being a Pitch wars mentor is an amazing, rewarding experience. If you want to help upcoming writers and feel you have something to offer them, I hope you’ll apply this year. And remember, if you’re not chosen, it doesn’t mean we don’t like you.

To find out more about applying to become a Pitch Wars mentor, click here.

Post #pitmad Thoughts

The #pitmad prep post I put up yesterday seemed to be well-received so I thought I’d do a post-#pitmad wrap-up while everything is fresh in my mind.

General Thoughts

JFC, read the guidelines! And follow them!

While watching the tweets go by, there was a constant stream of people not following the basic guidelines. They’re only hurting themselves by doing this, as I explained in yesterday’s post. It’s a good general lesson for me that I re-learn every quarter while hosting #pitmad: If you follow all the directions, you’re already in the top tier of applicants. In pretty much any context.

If you don’t like the rules, you don’t have to participate! You also don’t have to send passive-aggressive tweets to the people volunteering their entire day to help run the event.

#pitmad is a great learning opportunity, even if you’re not participating. If there’s an agent who participated today who you’d like to work with, here’s a great activity to do right now: Go to their page, click to see their likes, and see what kind of books they’re interested in. Take a look at the most popular posts on the hashtag to see what’s getting a lot of attention. (Also notice how they FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES.)

It’s also a great opportunity to make writer friends who are in a similar stage of the process. I saw so many new friendships spark today because someone said something nice to a stranger about their pitch.

If You Received Requests

Please make sure to research thoroughly before submitting materials. I wrote a post for the Pitch Wars blog on exactly how to do that.

Whether it’s scams or just people not great at their jobs, there are a lot of agents/editors out there that can harm your career. Please be careful and shrewd. Also please remember that the Pitch Wars volunteers cannot do your research for you. Please don’t ask them to.

If  your current goal is to find a literary agent, I wouldn’t recommend submitting to the really small presses. It’s not a good idea to submit to both agents and small presses at the same time — you need to decide which path you’re pursuing. Trying to do both at the same time is asking for trouble.

If You Didn’t Receive Requests

It’s okay! I promise. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your book. We saw over 138,000 tweets today (I don’t know how many of them were RTs). That’s a lot of hay for agents to sort through to find their favorite needles.

Try not to be hyper-negative in public spaces. It’s okay to feel sad for a day, but you may want to keep that to private discussions with friends.

This wasn’t just the right opportunity for you. There are so many others out there, including traditional querying. Traditional querying works! That’s the way most agents find their clients because… it works.

Thank You!

Thank you all so much for participating in #pitmad and making it an overall incredible event and rewarding experience.  And thanks so much to Leigh Mar for running the show and Laura Lashley and Brenda Drake for helping out!

Secrets to #pitmad Success

As the 2018 Pitch Wars Social Media director, I’ve overseen a year’s worth of #pitmad events. (If you’re unfamiliar with #pitmad, it’s a quarterly pitch party on Twitter where writers tweet a 280-character pitch for their completed, polished, unpublished manuscripts. Agents and editors make requests by liking/favoriting the tweeted pitch. More info at the link above.)

Overseeing #pitmad consists mainly of answering questions and keeping one eye on the hashtag for twelve hours straight (with help from our wonderful volunteers, of course!). Over the past year, I’ve made observations and thought I would share with you things that can increase or decrease your chances of a successful #pitmad.

Read the Rules & FAQ and … Follow Them!

I know it seems obvious, but so many people don’t bother to read the rules or think they’re somehow above them. Every single one of these rules is there for a reason — and it’s not to be mean to you or to make your life difficult.

For example: If your pitch includes a link or a picture, there is a very good chance many agents will not see it because they use search filters to filter those out — because they need to filter these out to filter out the thousands of spam tweets!

Agents and editors can see you not following/knowing the rules, which may result in them deciding not to work with you. Why would you want to establish a long-term professional relationship with someone who has publicly demonstrated they cannot follow a basic set of guidelines?

Start Strong

Those tweets go by lightning fast. You gotta grab ’em from the get-go. Your first 5 words are your bread and butter in a twitter pitch. Long sentences make eyes glaze over. Unexciting details or world-building are a waste of prime real estate.

Comp Titles

With so little space, comp titles are a great way to convey a lot in a few characters. But they’re tricky to get right. Your comp title should convey more than simply a genre or a setting.

A couple years back, everyone with a space-set book was using Firefly as a comp in their pitches, when the only thing the stories had in common was they were (partially) set on a smallish space ship. Anyone who’s seen Firefly can tell you the setting was not what set that series apart.

You want to avoid using blockbusters as your comp titles. Using only the biggest titles to ever hit your genre tells me two things:

You haven’t read widely enough in your genre.
You have unrealistic expectations as to the success of your book. Anyone who says “my book is the next Harry Potter” is probably not going to be a pleasure to work with.

Your comp titles also need to be current. The publishing industry has changed vastly in 40 years; show me that you’ve read something published in the last decade. Though, using a very old comp title can work if it’s paired with something new.

No Room for Vagueness

It’s a single tweet. There is no room for vague or cliched phrases. This includes phrases like:

“more than he bargained for”
“will never be the same”
“an impossible choice”
“will change everything”
“to make matters worse”
“an incredible journey”

Specificity is exciting.

Four/Three Questions

When crafting short pitches, I’ve always found it helpful to ask the following four questions:

Who is your main character? (like who are they, not what is their name)
What does your MC want/need?
What stands in the way of your MC getting what they want/need?
What happens if they don’t get what they want/need?

Alternately, you can ask:

Who is the protagonist?
What choice do they face?
What are the consequences of that choice?

Tweet Schedule

In #pitmad, you’re permitted to pitch each book three times throughout the day. The number one reason a great pitch doesn’t get a like is because the agent/editor doesn’t happen to be looking at that time. So don’t post your three pitches right in a row! Space them out so you’re getting a variety of eyes on them.

Don’t Cheat

No agent/editor wants to work with a cheater. In #pitmad, this includes:

deleting tweets that get no interaction so you can post more than 3 times (yeah, we see you)
using an image to provide more info than can fit in a tweet
linking to a page about your book
pretending like a previously self-published book is unpublished
threading tweets

Vary Your Pitches

You get to try three different pitches. Don’t just use the same one over and over again with one or two words changed. If “blah blah blah blah” didn’t catch someone’s attention, it’s unlikely “blah blah blab blah” will either.

I always recommend people try at least one pitch with comp titles in it, if they can come up with (a) decent one(s).

The fun thing about #pitmad, is there is nothing to lose! You can still query people if you get no interest. You can try again next time.

Don’t… Quick Round

Don’t:

Be negative about your own work
Be negative about others’ work
Be negative about the event/agents/editors/anything else.
Tag agents
Yell at well-meaning people who like tweets (let it go, it’s okay)
Use rhetorical questions
Use 1st person, especially if it’s creepy
Feed the trolls
Introduce too many characters
Introduce unfamiliar concepts (e.g.: call it a “time travel device” rather than a “Quantum Leap Accelerator”)

Do Your Research!

Literally anyone can put up a twitter account and call themselves an agent/publisher. And there are some scams, trolls, schmagents, and well-meaning-but-bad-at-publishing-as-a-business presses out there. Do not send materials to someone before researching them fully. The Pitch Wars volunteers cannot do this research for you.

I think it’s best to decide before hand what kind of interest you’re open to before ever tweeting a pitch. If your goal is to get an agent, and at the end of the day you only have interest from small presses, there are so many emotions that it’s hard to be honest with yourself about whether or not that’s the best decision for the career you want. But if you decide ahead of time that you’d be happy to see interest from small presses, you know you’re not making an irrational decision due to emotions running high.

Have fun!

#pitmad is one possible path (of many) to publishing success. It should be treated as an extra opportunity, but not the foundation of your career plans. It is by no means make or break.

Make friends. Tell other people you like their pitch. Support both friends and strangers. (just don’t use the #pitmad hashtag when you do; keep that open for pitches only)

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EveryPlate Affordable Meal Kit Review

Apparently the word has gotten out that I enjoy trying out a lot of different meal kits because a couple people have asked me about them in the last few weeks. My mom recently alerted me to EveryPlate, a more affordable meal kit, which is good because I need to cut my spending.

I love cooking and I even enjoy meal planning, but it’s nice to have a meal kit to cut down on some of that planning and prep work, especially on busy weeks.

So I thought I’d do a little post here to let y’all know how I felt about EveryPlate — and if you like it, I could be persuaded to do more reviews.

EveryPlate is $4.99 per serving, but they do charge a shipping fee on top of that. It’s $8.99 for me.

You choose 3 meals from 5 options and you can choose to get 2 or 4 servings of each. With only 5 options, there’s not as much variety as other meal kits, but I guess this helps them keep the cost down. I didn’t have any trouble choosing three meals I wanted to try, though.

The box arrived with every packaged item loose in the box, but the meat was packaged directly next to the ice packs. It arrived pretty late in the day and I live in Florida so it’s not cold here, and everything was still cold.

My first meal was Hoisin Pork Meatloaf with Wasabi Mashed Potatoes and Green Beans.

This was good. I wished there was sour cream or something more for the potatoes — I had some in my fridge and I could’ve added it, but I wanted to try it how it was intended. I’m only cooking for myself, so it’s important to me that I can eat the second serving the next day for lunch and this reheated very well.

The second meal was corn bisque with salad and garlic toast. While this meal was vegetarian, EveryPlate doesn’t have enough vegetarian options if you don’t eat meat.

This was very good and reheated very well. I loved the garlic bread preparation and will be using that in the future. The only thing was the salad greens were on their last day, just starting to get slimy, and I was not able to eat them for the 2nd serving the next day. I made this meal the day after the box arrived so it definitely wouldn’t have been good 2 or 3 days after delivery. Every other item in the box was appropriately fresh.

The final meal was chicken sausage and rice stuffed peppers.

I don’t usually eat chicken, but I make the occasional exception for ground chicken or chicken sausage. This one was very good and reheated great! These were the smallest bell peppers I’d ever seen, though.

Overall, I enjoyed EveryPlate and will be ordering from them occasionally. It was much better than the other budget meal kit I tried, which I would not recommend to anyone. I like that it’s more affordable, even if the trade-offs are less options and slightly more simple meals.

If you decide to try it, I’d appreciate if you could click on my referral link here or any link in this post. If you do that, we both get $20 off.

10 Tips for an Outstanding Query

People think I’m crazy when I say this, but I LOVE query letters. I love writing them, I love editing them, I love reading them. When I worked for a publisher, reading queries was my favorite part! With #pitchwars coming up and the workshop on query writing I just taught at my local library, I’ve been thinking a lot about queries lately.

My fellow YAtopian Lori covered the 10 basics to writing a query in her March post. Once you’ve mastered the basics, here are some of my tips for making your query letter really zing.

1: Infuse Voice

If your book is funny or voice-y in any way, a dry query is not going to do your book justice. It can sometimes be hard to do this without seeming gimmicky or cheesy, but a few well-chosen words or phrases can breathe true life into your query.

Author Elana Johnson presents one method that will help you infuse voice into your query. (Read that post! It’s a great trick!)

One of the lines in my query for Dragons are People, Too was: “…the Commander In Chief himself has the balls to ask her to launch a secret rescue mission…” Anyone who has read DAPT can tell you that certainly sounds exactly the way Kitty would paraphrase the situation.

2: Your MC Must Act

… in every sentence of the query. You use maybe ten sentences to describe your book, right? If your character is a passenger in any of those sentences, she is seen as passive, just letting things happen to her. Your character should drive the story, not the other way around – and this needs to be true in the query as well.

Speaking of action…

3: Use Strong, Specific Verbs

List the verbs in your query separate from everything else. If you spot any “to be” verbs or any other word that kinda bores you, see what you can do to eliminate those. See how I said “eliminate” instead of “get rid of?” The latter was in my first draft. See how much fiercer of a verb “eliminate” is?

Some recent edits I’ve made in queries (mine and others’):

“gives him his power” –> “imbues him with power”

“when she finds out the truth” –> “when she uncovers the truth”

4: Cut the Cliches

“His world will never be the same again.”

“She must make the most difficult decision of her life.”

“He gets more than he bargained for.”

These phrases can describe thousands of books. Find the sentences that can describe only your book. What makes your book unique?

Rule of thumb: If you have ever heard a phrase or sentence used to describe another book or a movie, see if you can re-word to make it more specific. Sometimes you can’t, but most of the time you can.

5: Conflict and Stakes

The two most important questions a query answers are: What (specifically) is standing in the way of your character getting what he wants? What (specifically) happens if he doesn’t get it? Do not let your query end without showing us the answers to these questions.

6: Keep Your Ego in Check

Chip MacGregor just posted on Facebook that he received a query with the sentence, “This is the most important book that can ever be written for the benefit of everyone.” This is a bit of an extreme example, but you’d be surprised how many queries contain similar statements.

Look, your book is probably not going to be as successful as Harry Potter. Maybe you will, you never know. But saying that in a query is a red flag that we’re dealing with either erroneously high expectations or a egomaniac.

And if you say that your book is better than all the other books in your genre/subgenre, an agent is just going to assume you either haven’t read widely in your genre or you have no respect for it. Either way, it’s not a good sign for the quality of your work.

7: Raise Questions without Asking Them

We all know rhetorical questions are big no-no in querying.

Right?

But you can raise questions without putting a question mark to paper.

A line from my query: “Kitty soon discovers that no one’s loyalties lay where they should – or at least where she wants them to.”

Questions this line raises in the reader’s mind: Who betrays Kitty? Everyone? In what way? How do Kitty’s priorities differ from what “should” be?

Even though I would never actually ask those questions on paper, I am guiding the reader towards asking herself those questions. And the only way to get those questions answered? Read the book. (Cue evil laugh!)

8: Know What to Omit

Sub-plots. Characters that don’t drive the plot. Weird words/concepts that slow the reader down. Exclamation points. “Fiction novel.”

Self-deprecation. Irrelevant personal information. Politics. Religion (unless for a religious book). Jokes. Your age. Comments about the state of the industry or market. Agent’s personal information or comments on their appearance. How long it took you to write the book. Your query history. Editorializing. Attachments (unless requested).

Leave it out.

9: Emulate the Greats

Go to a bookstore and read the back cover copy of many books and pick the five that most appeal to you. Study them, pick them apart. Take a close look at word choice, especially, and tone and sentence structure. Try to figure out what, exactly grabbed you and how it was crafted. Then, copy those techniques (not the words!).

10: Remember the Purpose of a Query

I think too many writers overthink queries because we focus so much on The Rules and the “Dos and Don’ts” and lose focus on the one and only thing a query is supposed to do.

The only thing your query has to do, the whole reason for its very existence is this:

To make the reader want to read the book.

That’s it. That’s all you have to do.

I know, I know. Easier said than done.

If you are ready to query, make sure to check out Pitch Wars, coming soon!

Published Authors: Your Basic Media Kit

My day job is to plan events, mainly author events.

I have emailed my manager the words “I just can’t.” twice today.

Because I have spent the entire day dealing with authors who don’t have the most basic materials they should have in order to promote their book, I thought I’d develop a short list of the things you should have readily available once you have a book published. Some of these may seem obvious — and I thought so too, until today.

So please, make it easy on anyone who wants to help you promote your book and have these things at the ready the day your book is published (or earlier if you want day-of-release publicity). I like to have them saved in my google drive and dropbox so that I can access them anywhere with an internet connection.

1) A high-resolution jpg of your book cover.

At the very least, it should be 500 pixels wide and more long. I routinely get 250px wide book covers. I can’t put those up on a big screen. I can’t print those in an event program booklet.

Do not copy this into the body of the email. Do not put it into a word document and send it that way. Both of these reduce the quality of the image automatically. Attach it to email as a jpg attachment.

2) A high-resolution professional headshot.

If you don’t have the money to get a professional photographer to shoot one, check out my post here on faking it.

No bathroom selfies, please. Unless it is a distinct and obvious part of your author brand, no purses or bra straps. Please.

Same quality and delivery guidelines as discussed in #1.

3) Your book blurb.

Well-edited. Typo-free. Not in first person from the author’s perspective, unless it’s a memoir.

4) Direct, clean links where your book is available for purchase. Include Goodreads even though it is not a retailer.

When I say clean links, I mean remove all the junk retailers add on to track different things. For example, you may copy an Amazon link that looks like this:

“https://www.amazon.com/Keeping-Her-Secret-Endless-Summer-ebook/dp/B01JGMLPEW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1533305558&sr=8-1&keywords=keeping+her+secret”;

but all you need is this:

“https://www.amazon.com/Keeping-Her-Secret-Endless-Summer-ebook/dp/B01JGMLPEW/”;

5) Your bio.

To be on the safe side, have the following versions prepared: 1-2 sentences, 1-2 paragraphs, a page long. Only send the page-long one if specifically requested. Most people want the 1-2 paragraphs version.

6) Your web links. Website, Twitter, Facebook, and anywhere else you maintain an author presence.

Don’t make me google you. Especially if, for instance, there are violent criminals with your name who rank higher in search results than you do. For example. Hypothetically. *cough*

7) Book review quotes.

1-4 sentence quotes with source, linked if possible.

 

Bonus: Include numbers 3 through 7, in that order, in a single simply-formatted word document that can be sent off at a moment’s notice. This is sometimes called a “one-sheet.” It can include embedded images of your cover and photo, but these should not be the only way you send these files. Do not get fancy with formatting. This should be informative first.

Help yourself by helping those who are trying to give you free publicity have all the information they’ll need. Please. I’m begging you.

Faking a Professional Author Photo

At the dayjob, I work with a lot of authors and frequently ask for headshots to use in our marketing of their events. You would be floored by how many people send me shots like these:

click to see what’s really wrong with this one.

(Note: These are all altered stock photo images, not actual headshots I’ve been sent, but they are in no way exaggerations. In fact, these are probably better than 50% of the ones I’m sent))

An unprofessional author photo makes you look like an unprofessional author. Full stop. I cannot send these pictures out to my media contacts or put them on the big screen at an Authors Festival.

The primary purpose of an author’s photo is to give the reader a personal connection to the author. For some readers, this is very important. My main purpose (at the dayjob) is to create recognition so an event attendee will recognize you when they see you.

But do not worry! If you’re booked for an event or media appearance soon and you don’t have time or money to book a pro session, you can fake a decent author headshot in about 5 minutes. In fact, here’s one I just took right now at work.

1. Lighting is Everything

Great lighting can make anyone look fantastic. You want your face to be fully and evenly lit either straight-on or from multiple angles. The camera should be between you and the light source. Fluorescent lighting is the devil. Overhead fluorescent lighting is the devil and his twin brother.

The #1 best non-pro lighting is indirect sunlight while the sun is fully risen. If you can find a large window and stand a couple feet inside of it with a nice solid wall behind you, that is ideal. Covered porches/overhangs work great too. It will give you a soft glow and make colors pop. Direct sunlight can wash you out and make you squinty.

If you work during every daylight hour or live in Alaska during the Winter, you can use lamps to light your face. When I vlog at night, I put two white-bulb lamps on either side of the camera.

I’m a makeup addict, so I do have to say that makeup can supplement good lighting. A brush of blush for healthy color, a sweep of mascara and/or eyeliner to define the eyes, and a swipe of lipstick or gloss can help define your features.

2. What’s Behind You?

The best backgrounds for these photos are: a solid or lightly-textured wall, an empty (of people, buildings, cars, powerlines, etc) landscape, or a bookshelf that is several feet behind you.

Weird backgrounds can be distracting and draw the attention away from you. (Like why is that dude in a graffiti-ed alley?)

3. Mechanics & Tools

You don’t have to have a super fancy camera to take a decent photo. A point-and-shoot or a mobile phone camera (released in the last three years) is definitely good enough. If you can have someone take the photo for you, that is preferred, but you can actually fake this with a selfie, as long as you keep your extended arm out of the shot. My photo above is a selfie. Some front-facing cameras are better than others, but the back-facing camera will always be best, if possible.

The camera should be at or slightly above eye level. Look up to it with your face, not just your eyes. Play with tilting your head at slight angles. Make sure your whole head is in the shot and there is space between your head and the frame on all sides.

4. Keep the Creativity for Your Writing

You may think that weird face or funny hat is hilarious, but there will be many people who don’t. Keep it simple so you don’t run the risk of an editor removing the photo. Even if you are a comedic author, you might face the opportunity to run a writing workshop or give a keynote address and you want people to think that you’re a professional.

When I say this, I know there will always be shouts of “If they don’t like who I am, forget them! I’m not going to pretend to be somebody I’m not.” I caution you to stop and think about this for a minute. Is making a goofy face in your author photo really worth alienating readers and potential allies for your writing career?

5. Only You

I see so many “author photos” that were obviously part of a group shot and then cropped. No one else’s body parts should appear in your author photo. Not to mention, these are usually lower quality because they’re only a small portion of a decent-quality photo.

6. Formatting for Success

Save at the highest resolution in every step of the process (if you use your phone camera, there is usually a setting to change the quality). Don’t let photo editing software compress the photo.
Save it as a .jpg. Every platform on the planet can use a jpg.

Do not, under any circumstances, copy it into a Word document and send someone that.

Whhhhyyyyyy?




Save it with an identifiable name. Mine is called “Sarah Nicolas.jpg” on my computer. If someone works with multiple authors, they may have several headshots in a folder. Don’t frustrate them by making them look through a folder that looks like this to find yours:

While a professional photography session will usually give you the best headshot possible (as long as the photographer is decent), you can use these tips above to fake it until you can get that done.

Let me know if you have any questions in the comments! Or if you think you got it, take a shot at it and post a link to your photo in the comments!!

Congrats Stefani!

On a LARP

Ten Tips for Your Elevator Pitch

There is one thing writers at any point in their career need to have prepared: an elevator pitch.

The last time I asked an author “what’s your book about?” I got a fifteen minute rambling monologue. I know a lot about the guy’s son (?) but still have no idea what his book is about. If I don’t know what it’s about, I’m not going to buy it.

Whether you’re looking for an agent, on submission, or a multi-published author, you need to be able to quickly and concisely tell other people what your book is about. And you need to prepare so that you don’t find yourself hemming and hawing the next time someone asks that golden question:

So, what’s your book about?

Anytime someone asks you this question, that is an epic opportunity. They are literally giving you the ability to pitch your book without any awkwardness or resentment. Take it!

The sole purpose of an elevator pitch is to make the listener want to know more. Don’t lose sight of that.

Here are ten tips to help you prepare your elevator pitch:

1) Take about 30 to 45 seconds to give the initial pitch. If they ask for more info or specific questions, that’s the time to expand on your book, but don’t talk for several minutes. (Reminder: your sole goal in an elevator pitch is to make the listener want to know more.)

2) Focus on story, not themes, emotional journeys, or background info. If you are pitching a published book to a reader, do not discuss your publishing path. If they want to know that, they will ask. Focus on your book.

3) Remember that you are a real person speaking to another real person. You should sound natural and conversational, not like you’re memorizing something you’ve written.

4) You must include: genre, conflict, stakes. Most writers leave out the genre, but unless it’s already obviously apparent some other way, start off with something like “Dragons are People, Too is a young adult urban fantasy about…”

5) Don’t use any cliched phrases. Ex: “will never be the same,” “more than he bargained for,” “falls into the wrong hands,” “to make matters worse,” “will change everything.” When you have such few precious words, don’t use ones that can describe any hundreds of other books.

6) Be passionate. You can’t expect others to be excited about your book if you are not.

7) Don’t editorialize your book. Ex: “It’s a fast-paced thrill ride..” SHOW that it’s fast-paced without saying it.

8) Don’t discount yourself. Do not, under any circumstances, say things like “oh, this probably sucks, but…” or “it’s not that interesting..” Whatever you say, people are going to believe you, so if you tell them it sucks, they’re already not that interested.

9) Consider comp titles and use them if they work really well for your book. For some books, comp titles don’t work. Make an attempt, but be willing to drop this strategy if it’s not working for your book.

10) Practice ad nauseum. Practice on your friends and family until they could give you the pitch themselves. When you get so comfortable with your pitch that you can mumble it flawlessly the second you wake up, that’s when you’re not going to freeze or mess up when asked the golden question by someone you truly want to impress.

Good luck!