Hey Word Nerds! Welcome to this week’s episode of DIY MFA Radio. Now that Book Expo America (BEA) is behind us, I wanted to take a look back at the conference and its notable moments and start looking ahead at the publishing industry and the trends I see coming up in the future. This year… Read more »
Hey word nerd! Today’s episode is all about how to take your writing from a hobby to something more. This episode was inspired by an email I received from a fellow word nerd named Emily. She wrote: “I want to be a writer when I grow up, and I’ve been told that I’m even good… Read more »
Hey there, word nerds! Thanks for joining me for this episode of DIY MFA Radio. Today I want to share with you some survival tips for Book Expo America (BEA), the publishing industry’s premier trade show in the United States. BEA is the Big Kahuna of trade shows in the US. If you’re in the book… Read more »
This is a continuation of a previous article from editor Constance Renfrow about six things you need to know before you submit your novel. Check out Part One right here! Make Your Email Stand Out Okay, so Fifty Shades of Twilight Abbey is free of clichés and that anti-woman monologue, you’re ready to “sware” all… Read more »
“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” — The American Marketing Association Sounds scary. What does that even mean? I’ll admit, that once upon a time, I was one of those writers who was scared… Read more »
Thanks for sticking with me! We’ve already talked about creating a professional book package for fantasy and romance books, but we’re not done yet. Continuing on our genre cover journey, let’s dive right in: Science Fiction This genre includes several subsets for the purposes of cover design: “hard” and “soft” science, space opera, steampunk and dystopian. In… Read more »
Continuing where we left off, let’s take a look at those genre specific cliches that can help make your cover a success. Are these hard and fast professional book package rules? Of course not. But someone looking to hook as many readers as possible would do well to pay heed to their genre guidelines. At… Read more »
Hopefully by now you agree that a great book package is vital to your publishing success. That thought might even be overwhelming, especially if you have no graphics background. First, take a deep breath. Like any problem, if you break it down into steps it becomes much more manageable. Step One: Change Your Hat Take off… Read more »
Every month or two, DIY MFA’s Wendy Lu will be hosting “New Spin,” a column that covers everything that falls within alternative storytelling: literary mash-ups, books that put a new spin on classic stories, and “meta-books” that use new media, graphic illustrations, and interaction between words/design for an enhanced reader experience. Supernatural, eerie, weird. These… Read more »
Have you waded into the murky waters of indie publishing? You’ve probably noticed advice everywhere. Do this. Don’t do that. No wait, do the other thing. You’ve spent a year, or two, or ten, crafting words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs. Angsting over every detail. Now it’s time to hit that giant shiny PUBLISH button…. Read more »
