By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin Do you have some books on your shelf that you re-read from time to time or maybe even once a year? One of my friends re-reads The Lord of the Rings every year. Through each reading experience, she sees something new about the story. For many years, I have been reading and re-reading a single book, The Bible. Reading The Bible is how I begin my day. Each year I choose a different version and this year, I’m reading The Daily Bible NLT. With each reading, I learn something different. There are merits to re-reading and that’s what I want to examine ..read more

By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin It begins with a dream and a goal. Since 2004, I’ve been blogging each week in these articles about The Writing Life. It’s grown into a large body of work and I’ve been recognized as one of the top 27 content writers with millions of blogs. About 400 people get these articles on their email and many others read it online. Yet I want to reach more people. How can that happen? The first step is to create a plan, and then execute your plan, test it and keep telling others. I began to look for new places and ways to tell others about how to subscribe to my bl ..read more

By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin While I’ve been reading pitches and making pitches for decades, sometimes I miss the mark. A pitch are some carefully selected words targeted to a decisionmaker to get a specific result. There are many different types of pitches because you have a variety of possible results. You pitch a magazine article to an editor. Or you pitch a book idea in a proposal or a query letter.  When you pitch, it is not about you. Readers don’t care about you. They care about themselves--so focus on the reader and what they want--their needs, the benefit to them and th ..read more

   By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin In my work as an acquisitions editor, I speak with many first-time authors. These authors have little concept of the steps to get published and likely do not understand the limited time editors and agents will take with their pitch. These professionals receive many email pitches and are looking for reasons to click delete and press on to the next one. If you pitch the wrong book, wrong length, and other wrongs, you will never know the reason. Instead of a response, you will not receive anything (ghosted) or you will receive a form rejection le ..read more

    By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin How does any writer learn the craft of telling a good story? Let me say right off the bat, there is not one path but it's a journey with many different paths and possibilities. In this article I want to give some ideas and direction to you if you want to write and publish stories. 1. Read many stories. Writers are readers. Whatever it is you want to publish, you should be reading this material--to be aware of others who are writing in your area, to form relationships with these people and many other reasons. If you want to publish stor ..read more

    By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin I encourage every writer to be looking for opportunity. When it happens, seize it. It’s important to take immediate action and not delay and forget about what you intended to do. In this article, I want to give some specifics about how to seize opportunity and some actions that I took and also learn about others. In the past, I’ve mentioned I’m a fan of bestselling author Daniel Silva. He writes one novel a year then goes on book tour. His new book, A Death in Cornwall, released on Tuesday, July 9th and in his newsletter, he announced h ..read more

By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin Throughout my week, I often receive packages from authors and publishers with books. I read these books outside of my work and write reviews to support other authors and publishers. Occasionally a package will stand out as different. Some people call this an attention-getting gimmick. Do they work? In this article, I want to give you some ideas and cautions. Once I received a book to possibly review. This author added confetti into the package which caught my attention but also made a mess in my office. Confetti was on the floor, on my keyboard and anythi ..read more

By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin For decades, I’ve been in the world of publishing and working with authors. Repeatedly I’ve seen the unpredictable nature of this work and life. For example, as I meet authors and acquire their books at Morgan James Publishing, I learn about authors who are eager to sell their books and reach their readers. I have one author who writes fiction and published two novels with us. She was actively selling these books at specialized trade shows which tied to her plot and characters. When she pitched her third novel, she told me that she had sold over 300 b ..read more

  By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin The book publishing community is in constant motion and change. While they may not feel like it on the surface, authors have a great deal of control and options in this process. The roots of it are understanding your choices then making good ones. I admit is is not easy and there are lots of options. In this article, I want to help you explore your options and talk about some of the pitfalls. If you take one of the pitfalls you can waste a lot of money and time.   Look at Your Assumptions Many authors don’t explore their options because ..read more

  By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin The details of publishing are important. Each of us as individuals can make a difference in our world--but only if you see something and say something about it. In this article, I want to give several specific examples. As a writer, it’s easy to feel like you are writing and putting material into the world, but getting little feedback and few things are changing. Or you feel like there is little you can do about incorrect things you see in your work. I understand these feelings and yet I want to tell about a couple of actions that I took this week. T ..read more