Author Enablers

Self-Published Authors Seek Agent

Authors Florence J Clowes and Lois J Blackburn have self-published two books in their Bashia Gordon mystery series, Bones in the Backyard and Old Secrets Never Die. They have been hand selling them for ten years now and are hard at work on a third in the series. Their question for the Author Enablers is how to get an agent’s representation.

Florence and Lois, we recommend attending a writers’ conference. Make sure you choose a conference that features face-to-face meetings with literary agents; http://writersconf.org/ is a good place to explore your options.

A good source of agent listings is a publication called Literary Marketplace, which you can find in your local library or online: http://www.literarymarketplace.com/lmp/us/index_us.asp. LMP lists agents, including their web sites, submission guidelines, and specialties.

Thanks for Writing,

Kathi Kamen Goldmark and Sam Barry
The Author Enablers
Authors of Write That Book Already: The Tough Love You Need to Get Published Now
Visit us at www.kathiandsam.net
Find us on Facebook and Twitter

Publisher Offers Free eBooks on Writing for NaNoWriMo

Are you joining the thousands of writers aspiring to write a novel in just 30 days for NaNoWriMo? Publisher Adams Media and F+W Media are offering seven great books on writing for FREE, November 6-12!

And one of the titles is our own Write That Book Already! Happy writing!

Where Do I Submit a Short Short Story?

TJ in Wellsville, Ohio writes “I have recently finished a short story, a very short story. I mean short! We’re talking a page and half handwritten. I want to send this somewhere; maybe a magazine or something. Any ideas?

TJ, we suggest you do the hard work of submitting to literary journals and competitions. Writer’s Digest and Poets & Writers are two great resources. These links might offer some assistance:

http://www.writersdigest.com/competitions/short-story

http://www.pw.org/grants?sort=asc&order=Deadline&apage=*&perpage=*

Kathi Kamen Goldmark and Sam Barry
The Author Enablers
Authors of Write That Book Already: The Tough Love You Need to Get Published Now
Visit us at www.kathiandsam.net
Find us on Facebook and Twitter

Author’s Debut Novel Cancelled

Check out this interesting New York Times blog by David Streitfeld about an author trying to make ends meet by publishing an eBook with Amazon, resulting in the publisher cancelling her forthcoming novel’s release and asking her to return the advance. These are tough time for authors (and publishers) indeed!

Litquake Looms Large

Book lovers: get ready for Litquake 2012. San Francisco’s annual literary festival is a week-long literary spectacle for book lovers, complete with cutting-edge panels, unique cross-media events, and hundreds of readings.

Litquake fosters interest in literature, perpetuates a sense of literary community, and provides a vibrant forum for Bay Area writing as a complement to the city’s music, film, and cultural festivals. Since 1999, the festival has presented more than 2800 author appearances to an audience of over 67,000 in a lively and inclusive celebration of San Francisco’s thriving contemporary literary scene.

This year, 850 authors will participate, and two of them are (drum roll, please) . . . us! You should attend all the Litquake events you can, paying special attention to ours. Here’s the lineup:

The Author Enablers at Litquake’s Pitchapalooza, Litquake wants you to pitch your book! Pitchapalooza is like American Idol for books, only without Steven Tyler. Twenty to 25 writers get one minute to pitch their book ideas to an all-star publishing panel, including David Henry Sterry, Sam Barry, and Kathi Kamen Goldmark. The winner receives an introduction to an agent or publisher.

Sunday, 10/09/2011 at 05:00 PM
$10 in advance and at the door

Sam Barry Moderates Litquake’s Religious Renegades, Part 1 of Renegades, Activists & Chroniclers: A Trio of Nonfiction Panels

How important is faith as a guiding compass in our lives? And how important is it to question one’s faith, one’s indoctrination, and indeed one’s religious hierarchy? Sanjiv Bhattacharya, Anna Broadway, Tony DuShane, Julian Guthrie, and Don Lattin will provide some lively debate on the topic. Moderator: Sam Barry, author of How to Play the Harmonica and Other Life Lessons, and former marketing executive at HarperOne, a division of HarperCollins.

Thursday, 10/13/2011 at 04:00 PM
Free

Kathi Kamen Goldmark at Litquakes’s Litcrawl, HE SAID WHAT? is doing LitCrawl at San Francisco’s LITQUAKE. We’ll be at the Amy Dresden Gallery, 312 Valencia St., from 6-7PM. Who’s “we”? Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Amy Ferris, Sherry Glaser-Love, Margot Duxler, and Victoria Zackheim.

Saturday, 10/15/2011 at 06:00 PM
Free

Inspring Books on Writing

Bonnie writes, “I am at an age of life where I have more time now on my hands that I don’t know what to do with.  I would like to try writing for personal pleasure but do not know where to begin.  Although a passionate reader, I am not a natural storyteller.  What books or other resources would you recommend to learn the craft of writing, beginning with the basics of helping with generating ideas?”

Every December in our BookPage column we ask a group of writers and intelligent readers to recommend “a book to give to the writer in your life” for inspiration. You can find these lists in the Author Enabler BookPage archives, and they might be a good place to start.

One personal favorite of ours is On Writing by Stephen King. Part memoir and part creative-writing guide, On Writing inspires without condescending and is written by one of our generation’s master story tellers. Another is Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird—a wise and very funny journey through the ups and downs of the writer’s creative process.

Ghost Writers in the Sky

D. Christy writes, “My wife would like to write about her experiences and thirty-three year career as a sixth grade math and science teacher. She does not feel comfortable writing herself. She may need someone to help her with that job. I don’t know what they are called or where she could find one. Can you help?”

Your wife is looking for a ghost writer or co-author. Publications such as Writer’s Digest and Writers’ Journal have classified sections in which professional writers place ads offering these services. You can also check the message boards of websites that cater to writers. Once you have a few names, contact each writer and ask for a cost estimate. The writer may charge a flat fee; charge by the page; or bill at an hourly rate. Your next step is to interview a couple of writers, ask for writing samples and references, make sure you are comfortable with their style of communication, and choose the person who seems to be the best fit. This is a close relationship and your comfort level is an important factor.

Why Don’t Agents Love My Book?

Dick Johnston writes, “I have sent 60 queries in the past six months to carefully selected literary agents and gotten no nibbles regarding my 100,000-word family saga about my family struggling to do homestead farming and livestock ranching 1915-1965 in a God-forsaken southwestern Utah desert. The unique aspect of the book is that my father, a 37-year-old farm hand, lured my 21-year-old mother away from a very comfortable life in Santa Barbara, CA, to a life of recurring hardship in the desert, ending with her being proud of her family and her survival. An agent, in one of the few extended comments I received, said multi-generation histories have no market, and I should concentrate on one dramatic phase. I have thought that a book of this kind, without gratuitous sex and/or violence, would have a market among older readers and persons with past or present rural/farm/ranch backgrounds. What do you think?”

We don’t think there is any special rule about multi-generational histories having no market. The agent may have been politely saying “this book is not for me.” An agent has to believe in and love your book in order to sell it.

You should write the best book you can. This means putting your writing to a rigorous test. First of all, be tough on yourself–does you work measure up to the great writing you love by others? Hire an editor, take a writing class, or join a writing group that has members who are smart, kind, and honest enough to tell you where you are on track and where you aren’t.

100,000 words sounds long to us, and maybe that’s what the agent meant. Thre’s a lot of competition out there and you need your writing to be the best it can be.

Good luck!

Thanks for Writing,

Kathi Kamen Goldmark and Sam Barry
The Author Enablers
Authors of Write That Book Already: The Tough Love You Need to Get Published Now
Visit us at www.kathiandsam.net
Find us on Facebook and Twitter

The Future of Bookstores

Check out our latest BookPage blog, in which we offer our thoughts on the future of independent bookstores.

Who’s Your Muse?

“Where do you get your ideas?” This is the infamous cliché question that irritates so many authors. “Bob’s used idea shop in Utica, New York,” is Stephen King’s quip. However, it is interesting to consider the source of fiction. Often a writer draws on the autobiographical or historical; but another common source of inspiration is other writing, such as mythology, the Bible, the Odyssey, Pat the Bunny, or Jane Austen.

Writer Danton Steele of Fern Park, Florida has an unusual muse: “I just wanted to offer my experience, strength and hope on future story-tellers. I have been using the Mormon Encyclopedia as a cross-reference while writing. For me, and my fantasy books, it is tremendously helpful. When I create a character, who belongs to a city, galaxy, or whatever, and then install another group of characters that co-exist as well as embark within the same story, it is helpful.”

Writers, as long as you’re not lifting passages written by others and passing them off as your own, please feel free to find inspiration anywhere you can. Great authors (and not-so-great ones, too) have been doing this ever since storytelling began. We’d love to hear about what inspires you. Who’s your muse? Where do you get your ideas?

Thanks for Writing,

Kathi Kamen Goldmark and Sam Barry
The Author Enablers
Authors of Write That Book Already: The Tough Love You Need to Get Published Now
Visit us at www.kathiandsam.net
Find us on Facebook and Twitter

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