High-ho, Elisabeth Kauffman here (I’ve always wanted to start a post that way… any other original Muppet Show fans here?). The past few weeks I’ve been honored to meet and participate with the DIY MFA Street Team, a group of committed and enthusiastic writers who are helping us get the word out about DIY MFA,… Read more »
As writers, we can’t help digesting as many author interviews as possible in the hopes of discovering how exactly that bestselling author wrote a blockbuster book. We want to discover the writing secrets that enable people to create unforgettable stories. That’s why I couldn’t resist the opportunity to start an interview series on my blog…. Read more »
When I first entered the lofty realm of book publishing as nothing but a meek little editorial intern, I believed all sorts of misconceptions about the industry. Not least the editors’ choice: “So you just read all day, right?” Haha, that hasn’t gotten old! . . . But over the years, I’ve discovered that’s just… Read more »
It’s easy to learn about the basic benefits of guest posting—articles about it are all over the place (including this particularly excellent one from DIY MFA, not that I’m biased). Guest posting is a great way to give your blog a boost in traffic and grow awareness for a website, book, or other project. These… Read more »
A few weeks ago I helped Gabriela launch a new quiz for DIY MFA called “What’s Your Storytelling Superpower?” Basically, you take this personality quiz, and based on your responses we tell you what kind of story you’d be good at writing. I don’t know about you, but I’ve taken plenty of online quizzes before…. Read more »
Agents read hundreds of query letters every week, not to mention sample pages. It takes hours to get through them all, and it’s easy for the queries to start to run together. So how do you make your query stand out? A flashy font? A goofy intro? The truth is, the best queries are the… Read more »
After I signed my book contract, I thought I’d have a few weeks to let things sink in before editing began. I mistakenly thought I’d have a month or more to do nothing but pound out the first draft of book two. Nope. The discussions on editing and the cover began within a week, and… Read more »
Welcome back, writers, to part two of my walk-through of the book publication process, in which I attempt to show how an accepted manuscript becomes a pretty, published book. Last time, I talked you through the manuscript stage—how a novel is edited, copy edited, and proofread, among other things. Today I’ll be discussing production through… Read more »
I’m a marketing professional and blogger who runs an online short story publication … so I’ve been in the game of building an audience online for years. It’s what I do for clients, and it’s also been, essentially, a personal hobby. But when it came time for my first novel to get published earlier this… Read more »
I just returned from a week at SleuthFest, the Mystery Writer’s of America Florida chapter’s annual conference. A self-confessed ThrillerFest fan, I was skeptical how this conference would compare. ThrillerFest has nearly one-thousand attendees and almost forty editors/agents who participate. You can get lost in the ThrillerFest’s endless sea of workshops and author panels. At around two-hundred… Read more »
