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Category : Career
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Continue Reading "What do I do with my life?"What do I do with my life?
Steve wrote to say, "I have a degree in teaching, and I've taken classes in a professional writing program… but I feel stuck between two careers. What do I do?"
If you're trying to make it as a writer, you've got an uphill climb. But so does everybody who wants to make a living with art. Making a living in the arts (ANY art) is hard. Here's an example I've used several times: I'm a pretty good ballroom dancer. (Really. Publishers love it when I come to their publishing balls, since there will be 300 authors and 6 guys who know how to dance.) I took lessons, was in dance classes, and hoofed it in musical theater. If you saw me on the dance floor at the Harlequin ball, you might think I was head and shoulders above most beginners. But I realize there's a huge gap between being pretty good at the local dance club and asking people to pay $80 to come watch me dance in a show on Broadway. There's a gap between being "pretty good" and being "a professional."
My son is a good guitar player, but there's quite a leap from playing in a garage band and asking people to plunk down $18 for your latest CD at Wal-mart. My daughter Molly could act and was in the plays in school — but there's a big gap between "being pretty good in the high school comedy" and "asking people to come see me at an equity theater." All of us who grew up in churches have heard really good singers over the years… but there's a big gap between the woman who is pretty good with a solo in the Christmas concert and the professional singer who has been granted a record contract.
So just because someone is a pretty fair writer doesn't mean she can expect a reader to pay $21 for her latest -
Continue Reading "A Series of Fortunate Events – a guest blog from Gina Holmes"
A Series of Fortunate Events – a guest blog from Gina Holmes
It's not everyday that a debut novel becomes a bestseller, which is perhaps why people are curious as to why and how Crossing Oceans made its way on to the CBA, ECPA, Amazon, and PW Religion lists.
Anyone who regularly follows the bestseller lists for a few months will notice that while the book titles change, the authors rarely do. People like Ted Dekker, Francine Rivers, Karen Kingsbury, etc show up there over and over—making it difficult for a new name to squeeze in. (This is true in the CBA as well as the general market).
There is, of course, no single way to turn a book into a bestseller. If there were, everyone would be doing it with every book. I can’t speak for the rest of debut novelist’s who were lucky enough to break in, but this is how it went for me:
· I had a champion.
Actually several. It started with a top-notch agent, Chip MacGregor, who championed the book and sold it to Tyndale House. Karen Watson, Associate Publisher there, read a partial manuscript and became passionate about it. She took a risk and gave an untried author a chance.
This wouldn’t have happened though if the idea had been poorly executed. It took years to hone my skills. Over the course of ten years, I'd written several manuscripts that were ultimately rejected, read every how-to writing book I could get my hands on, and aligned with the toughest critique partners I could find.
Lucky for me, the rest of the team at Tyndale House also got excited and additional resources were thrown at the book. One "higher-up" from Tyndale commented it was one of the best debuts he’d ever read. That’s the kind of excitement that helps sell a book.
· I had a great editor.
I doubt I have to convince writers how important this is. Kathy Olson saw my vision for the
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Continue Reading "Failing Forward – a guest blog by Alton Gansky"
Failing Forward – a guest blog by Alton Gansky
A 2010 issue of Wired magazine contains “The Master Planner,” an article/interview with Fred Brooks, an early computer programmer and former department head for IBM. Thirty-five years ago he wrote a small book, The Mythical Man-Month in which he argued against the idea that two programmers can achieve twice as much work as one in a month. This became known as “Brooks Law.” He has written another new book The Design of Design, a collection of essays dealing with leadership, hardware systems, and more.Two comments from the interview caught my attention; comments that deal with life and creativity. Author/editor Kevin Kelly brought up a statement Brooks made about some of his early work. Brooks called the IBM 360 OS “the worst computer programming language ever devised by anybody, anywhere.” When Kelly asked him about the frank self-appraisal, Brooks said:
"You can learn more from failure than success. In failure you’re forced to find out what part did not work. But in success you can believe everything you did was great, when in fact some parts may not have worked at all. Failure forces you to face reality.”
This bit of honesty is difficult for some to swallow. People in my profession are often insecure about their work and become defensive. Who can blame them? They work alone and try to create from nothing a piece of work that will entertain, educate, and please not only readers but a phalanx of editors, pub boards, professional reviewers, amateur reviewers, bookstore managers, and more. Sometimes writing for publication seems akin to baring one’s back for flogging. So, we become sensitive souls; tender in all the wrong places.
Writing, however, is a craft and an art, one which requires the writer to have the guts to commit to self-examination. You need to know this: I am the poster boy for insecurity. I always have been. I’ve felt that way in every career I’ve had–and I’ve had several of them. Yet I’ve learned that creative growth comes
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Continue Reading "Failing Forward – a guest blog by Alton Gansky"
Failing Forward – a guest blog by Alton Gansky
A 2010 issue of Wired magazine contains “The Master Planner,” an article/interview with Fred Brooks, an early computer programmer and former department head for IBM. Thirty-five years ago he wrote a small book, The Mythical Man-Month in which he argued against the idea that two programmers can achieve twice as much work as one in a month. This became known as “Brooks Law.” He has written another new book The Design of Design, a collection of essays dealing with leadership, hardware systems, and more.Two comments from the interview caught my attention; comments that deal with life and creativity. Author/editor Kevin Kelly brought up a statement Brooks made about some of his early work. Brooks called the IBM 360 OS “the worst computer programming language ever devised by anybody, anywhere.” When Kelly asked him about the frank self-appraisal, Brooks said:
"You can learn more from failure than success. In failure you’re forced to find out what part did not work. But in success you can believe everything you did was great, when in fact some parts may not have worked at all. Failure forces you to face reality.”
This bit of honesty is difficult for some to swallow. People in my profession are often insecure about their work and become defensive. Who can blame them? They work alone and try to create from nothing a piece of work that will entertain, educate, and please not only readers but a phalanx of editors, pub boards, professional reviewers, amateur reviewers, bookstore managers, and more. Sometimes writing for publication seems akin to baring one’s back for flogging. So, we become sensitive souls; tender in all the wrong places.
Writing, however, is a craft and an art, one which requires the writer to have the guts to commit to self-examination. You need to know this: I am the poster boy for insecurity. I always have been. I’ve felt that way in every career I’ve had–and I’ve had several of them. Yet I’ve learned that creative growth comes
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Continue Reading "Home from ACFW … (where Sandra won Agent of the Year!)"
Home from ACFW … (where Sandra won Agent of the Year!)
Chip, Amanda, and I are all just coming off a six
day road trip to ACFW conference, followed by visits to several publishers. It’s
always good to get home.The conference was great. We had a lot of fun
connecting with friends and associates in the world of ACFW. I worked very hard meeting hopeful authors;
connecting and praying with my clients; squeezing in times to confer with Chip
and Amanda whenever possible. Between us, we taught or participated in at least
half a dozen teaching and/or industry sessions. Chip did a great job as emcee
of Susan May Warren’s My Book Therapy pizza party. Though I had to duck out
early to attend a publishing dinner, I hear he helped move things along at the line
dance lesson which followed. Here’s a YouTube link to one of the most well
organized line dance lessons I’ve ever seen … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNvFf7tQH0w.At the awards banquet, we were pleased to cheer
for all the winners, and picked up a few awards ourselves. Our very own Jenny
B. Jones won twice; once in the Young Adult category for I’m So Sure (Thomas Nelson) and again in the Long Contepmorary
Romance category for Just Between You and
Me (Thomas Nelson).Jenny is always a hoot, and her off the cuff
acceptance speeches were no exception. If you weren’t there and would like to
get an asparagus-free taste of the awards banquet, check out the liveblog at http://acfw.com/conference/liveblog.shtml
led by Tyson Wynn of Wynn-Wynn Media.By the time the Agent of the Year was announced, I’d
thoroughly decided there was no way I would possibly be walking up front to
accept the award, so I was thoroughly shocked, quite honestly, when my name was
called. I think my thirty-second-at-best acceptance remarks relayed this.I will admit I was asked to prepare a speech just
in case, which I did. But learning mid-conference -
Continue Reading "On Relationships in Publishing"
On Relationships in Publishing
Donna wrote to ask, "Is it possible to have two agents, one for fiction and one for nonfiction, or one for ABA and one for CBA?"
It's possible, I guess. I'm not a fan of this plan, since I think it makes it harder for an agent to do his or her job in terms of career planning. Still, some people do it. The alternative? Find an agent who fits what you do.
Julie wrote with this: "Some agents have a large number of clients, and represent very successful authors. But where does the midlist client fit in today's market?"
I think your question presupposes that having a small list of clients is a good thing — perhaps better than being part of a larger agency. In my view, it's not as simple as that. First of all, I don't think most authors would know what a large or small number of clients is. I represent around 40 or 50 authors. Is that large? Not in publishing — it's fairly small. But so what? You don't sign up with an agent because he or she has only five clients, do you? You sign up with an agent because he or she does a good job, knows how to help you, is a fit for you and your work, and can help make you successful. Move from the world of books to the world of investments for a moment – Would you prefer to hand your hard-earned money to a startup guy who admits he doesn't have many clients, or to somebody with a proven track record of success? (And I"m not making an argument for going with a big agency here — I'm just trying to show the weakness of this particular argument.) Janet Grant, a friend and a very good literary agent, and I are two of the people who have been agenting the longest in CBA. We've both seen
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Continue Reading "A Mixed Bag"
A Mixed Bag
A mixed bag of questions today. Donna sent this to me recently: "Nonfiction seems to be struggling in bookstores, but fiction has been on a growth track. I heard you say one time that this disparity is due to the growth of the internet. Can you explain that to me?"
Okay, let's call this The MacGregor Theory of Non-Fiction Struggles. First, the core of nonfiction is what we call "problem/solution" writing (or sometimes question/answer writing). A person comes into a bookstore with a problem ("I need to lower my cholesterol" or "I don't get along with my teenage daughter"), and wants a book that offers a solution to the problem ("Lower Your Cholesterol in 30 Days" or "How to Talk so your Daughter will LIsten"). They walk in with a problem, and they look for a book that offers a solution. Or they walk in with a question, and they look for a book that offers an answer. That's the focus of most nonfiction. (There ARE alternatives: history books tend to educate instead of answer, craft books offer an idea without necessarily being a "solution"). Fiction, on the other hand, is usually written to entertain, occasionally to inspire or educate. And during the current economic times, people are turning to fiction because it is basically a cheap, satisfying, and long-lasting entertainment option. (There's plenty of evidence to suggest fiction reading goes up as the economy goes down.) Anyway, with the advent of the web, people aren't buying as many nonfiction books because they tend to look to the web for a solution. (Think about it… the last time you needed to know how to make Yorkshire Pudding, did you dig through a cookbook or look it up online?) I'm not declaring the death of all non-fiction — I'm just explaining why it's struggling, while fiction is growing.
Andrew wrote and said, "I couldn't help but read that letter you received the other
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Continue Reading "A Mixed Bag"
A Mixed Bag
A mixed bag of questions today. Donna sent this to me recently: "Nonfiction seems to be struggling in bookstores, but fiction has been on a growth track. I heard you say one time that this disparity is due to the growth of the internet. Can you explain that to me?"
Okay, let's call this The MacGregor Theory of Non-Fiction Struggles. First, the core of nonfiction is what we call "problem/solution" writing (or sometimes question/answer writing). A person comes into a bookstore with a problem ("I need to lower my cholesterol" or "I don't get along with my teenage daughter"), and wants a book that offers a solution to the problem ("Lower Your Cholesterol in 30 Days" or "How to Talk so your Daughter will LIsten"). They walk in with a problem, and they look for a book that offers a solution. Or they walk in with a question, and they look for a book that offers an answer. That's the focus of most nonfiction. (There ARE alternatives: history books tend to educate instead of answer, craft books offer an idea without necessarily being a "solution"). Fiction, on the other hand, is usually written to entertain, occasionally to inspire or educate. And during the current economic times, people are turning to fiction because it is basically a cheap, satisfying, and long-lasting entertainment option. (There's plenty of evidence to suggest fiction reading goes up as the economy goes down.) Anyway, with the advent of the web, people aren't buying as many nonfiction books because they tend to look to the web for a solution. (Think about it… the last time you needed to know how to make Yorkshire Pudding, did you dig through a cookbook or look it up online?) I'm not declaring the death of all non-fiction — I'm just explaining why it's struggling, while fiction is growing.
Andrew wrote and said, "I couldn't help but read that letter you received the other
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Continue Reading "Making Money through Articles"
Making Money through Articles
Kerry sent me this question: “Is it realistic to think an author can still sell articles and get paid for them? It seems like magazines and journals are all moving to unpaid, web-based forms.”
I started out in magazines, and I still think magazine, journal, and e-zine writing is a viable way for an author to make some money. No, it's not as easy as it once was… but when was making a living as a writer ever easy? If you're looking for ways to generate income through your writing, don't feel you've got to land a book contract — focus on writing short articles. My experience has been that I made more money in less time creating articles than in writing books.
It's best to go to magazines or e-zines you already know, so you're familiar with (1) the sort of articles they publish, (2) the most likely reader of the 'zine, and (3) the length and tone of the articles. By going to the website of, say, Redbook magazine, you can find out what they buy, how long they want each piece to be, and what their interests and requirements are… but you might not really get a feel for what the voice is in that particular magazine.
Once you have targeted a magazine, you create an article for them. Have a clear topic, find out who is the decision-maker, and send them an email. Put the title of your piece in the "subject" line. Tell the editor very simply who you are, what your idea is, the details of the piece (word count, etc), and why you're the person to write it. Keep it short, and under your name list a handful of links to other articles you've written.
This really isn't rocket science, but it takes some work. Magazines have a tendency to do business with the same writers again and again (like every other sort
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Continue Reading "Ten Notes for Today's Writer"
Ten Notes for Today's Writer
1. Lots of big news this week, including something nobody seemed to have sniffed… THOMAS NELSON WAS BOUGHT OUT by an equity company, Kohlberg and Company. Remember, Thomas Nelson is one of the largest Christian publishers in the world, and they were sold just a few years ago to the guys at InterMedia (one of the pioneers in cable TV, InterMedia made the interesting step of pulling the company out of being publicly traded, and went back to being a private company). Anyway, the previous owners had financed a big chunk of the purchase, and Kohlberg must have seen Thomas Nelson was going to make them money, since they paid off the $219 million loan (go ahead and read that figure again) and took control of the company.
2. Wow. And it didn't stop there – they had the good sense to keep Michael Hyatt, perhaps the brightest mind in CBA, and the man who has restructured the company and made it both leaner and more focused, AND they brought on Jane Friedman as a board member. Some CBA people may not recognize the importance of that, but Jane used to be the boss at HarperCollins, the owner of Zondervan, before that was the Executive VP of Random House, and before that Publisher at Vintage . I'll tell you there isn't a publishing professional who doesn't respect Jane — she's one of the best, most experienced minds in contemporary publishing. An incredible addition, frankly.
3. Novelist (and longtime friend) Joyce Magnin, best known for her wonderful "Bright's Pond" novels with Abingdon, has started a company to help new novelists get their manuscripts ready. This isn't just another editorial service — take a look at her website. You'll come away totally impressed: www.joycemagnin.com/Site/Narrative_Destiny.html
4. If you're a married woman (or you have any married women in your life), they can be part of a research project on