Letters To The Editor For January 23rd
- Integrity
- More Than One Way to Expose a Deadbeat
- Paying to Make a Book Returnable is a Total Waste of Money
You stand by your table, book in hand, smiling at the mother dragging a toddler as she walks into the bookstore. She smiles and moves to the children’s section. She’s in no mood to chat about a grown-up book. Then a teen strolls by, sees you wrote a mystery and turns away
Can you send me your list of recommended freelance illustrators?
-Melinda
Success, for a writer, can be measured by a leap into the spotlight with a high-end book deal, or by steady publication over a long period of time. My own path has been the latter.
I’m happy to say that I have been sticking to one of my New Year’s Resolution! I worked for an hour every morning last week (and for three hours on Sunday), and finally finished formatting one of my new books. We then printed it out for one last crack at editing. I always have to edit twice on paper – once using the manuscript and then once more using a real, printed copy of the book. That’s the nice thing about Print on Demand (POD). You can make changes whenever you want.
I received the following letter last week:
I was interested in your article on book return policies. Recently, I published a book with AuthorHouse and was expected to contact bookstores myself. When they found out there wasn’t a return policy in place they wouldn’t order my book. AuthorHouse then came out with a fee (currently $699) for book returns. They wouldn’t cooperate with advertising either even though it was part of the package. The publisher would not help with the most important part of the presentation of my book. Both publisher and bookstores expected me to do it all myself.
Your newsletter is the most valuable resource out there, bar none. No come ons, gimmicks, or insulting get rich quick schemes. You tell it like it is, and it’s much appreciated.
Tris
The concept of ghostwriting makes perfect sense. It allows for those who have expertise in an area, but are not the most proficient writers, to express themselves in well honed, well written books and articles. It also allows for writers to make money behind the strengths of well known names, since celebrities and experts can sell books based on their name recognition and, or, expertise in a field.
My designer has disappeared and I can’t figure out what font he used on my cover. Can you help?
I found a great resource online for this! You upload an image of the font in question and you get an instant result. See: https://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont
I’m relieved the holidays and our “home-based vacation” are over. I’ve made two New Year’s Resolutions and I’m really going to stick to them this year…and neither one of them has anything to do with weight loss – ha ha!