It’s finally happened. After days, weeks, months, or even years of waiting you finally see the email you’ve been dreaming of — an agent you’ve queried wants to offer you representation! After rereading the email about a dozen times (to be sure you aren’t dreaming), and perhaps calling or texting your most trusted writing friends to share the news, you might be struck with a single question. What do I do now? A close writing friend recently found herself in this position, and while chatting with her about the amazing news, I realized that we often spend so much time trying to perfect our query ..read more

As some of you may already know, in addition to being a highly sought-after shirtless model for romance novel covers, I am also a longtime professional musician, having earned my first money for playing drums at the ripe old age of 14. In fact, music was my fulltime profession until my late 30s. And I didn’t start seriously writing fiction (inasmuch as anything I write could be considered “serious”) until I turned 40. (So you might say that as a writer, I was a 40-year-old virgin. But I digress…) Coming into a new-to-me art form with a lengthy background in another, I’ve been repeatedly struc ..read more

In my senior year as a math major, I scored second from the top of my class in the theoretical aspects of advanced analysis (calculus squared, as it were) and fifth from the bottom in the practical applications of the same material. The head of the department, Dr. Arnold Ross (born Chaimovitch)—a man who profoundly influenced me in numerous ways—took me aside and said, “You want to be a philosopher, not a mathematician.” He wasn’t wrong, though I ultimately became neither. But my philosophical disposition has revealed itself in both my reading and writing. Although we speak often and at lengt ..read more

In the late ‘70s, when I was a freshman at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, a film crew descended upon our quirky little town to shoot a movie. At the time I believe it was called “Bambino,” but that would change. The movie focused on an annual bicycle race the university hosted, called the Little 500 (a reference to the famed Indianapolis 500, the big annual auto race held 50 miles to the north). The Little 500 was the event of the year for students and townspeople alike, and to this day it draws crowds of 25,000 whenever April rolls around. When you live in smalltown central Indi ..read more

The current self-publishing industry has its roots in the mid-1990s, when three startups–Xlibris, Trafford, and AuthorHouse–began selling digital publishing services to individual authors. (Bear with me: I’m getting to the subject of this post!) Along with similar provider iUniverse, these companies later incorporated under the umbrella of Author Solutions, Inc. (AS). A pioneer in the assisted self-publishing space, AS also pioneered the hard-sell sales tactics, deceptive advertising, and expensive junk marketing techniques that dominate this publishing segment. (Junk marketing: marketing ser ..read more

  Three years ago, in mid-August, my first historical novel debuted in the summer of lockdown. The launch situation was far from ideal, and those of us who were published that summer did the best we could with bookshops closed and no in-person events. When August 2021 rolled around and my second novel was released along with the paperback version of the first, my expectations weren’t high. Another eerily quiet summer, another novel comes out into the world with a whisper. The summers of 2020, ‘21, and ‘22 were all about book release and promotion, so there was some structure to my writin ..read more

Permit me a moment of apostasy. I realize it might seem perverse to pursue this topic in light of Jim Dempsey’s far more sanguine post from just this past Tuesday (“How Books Can Change Lives”), but for some time, I’ve had the uneasy feeling that the merits of storytelling have been oversold. The use of the mercantile metaphor is deliberate. In any ever-increasing number of realms, the “craft of narrative” is being used to justify the unjustifiable—the dishonest, the trivial, the crass, the sanctimonious, the unnecessary, and all manner of other dubious ends. Tell the story has become the hal ..read more

My book has been out in the world for a few months, and they’ve been a whirlwind of signings, panels, interviews and blog posts. Parts of it were absolutely amazing, and at times overwhelming. I haven’t had much time to reflect on any of it until now. I was warned about what to expect, but other lessons still surprised me. Here are 8 things I learned as a debut author:  Don’t be afraid to ask for things. I asked my publisher about a local book launch and book plates, and they came through with arranging book store signings as well! Some things may not be possible, but it doesn’t hurt to ..read more

Last month’s post on book bans opened with a quote from historian Thomas Zimmer, which I’ll repeat here for reference: There is indeed something going on in America, and it does make a lot of people…really uncomfortable. We are in the midst of a profound renegotiation of speech norms and of who gets to define them. And that can be a messy process at times. But it’s not “cancel culture.” From a democratic perspective, it is necessary, and it is progress. I believe this is an accurate statement of where we are culturally, and that one of the most apparent arenas undergoing renegotiation is publ ..read more

Therese here to introduce you to our new monthly columnist, Densie Webb! Densie had been working as a vital part of WU’s Twitter team for quite some time, gathering links to share there on the business of fiction. She’ll now bring that valuable knowledge to WU-blog — sharing some of the best, most pertinent links on the business here every month in Getting Down to Business. Please join me in welcoming her to this important beat for us all. Welcome, Densie, and thank you! While we all want to stay on top of what’s current about craft, be alerted to the latest conferences, and connect with fell ..read more