Beta readers are people who can read a draft of your writing and give good feedback. I wouldn’t recommend family because they tend to tell you they love everything and don’t give you enough criticism. I’ve found that author friends can be really helpful. You can meet these people in…
Brandon’s assistant Karen here. We know that writing and publishing novels is hard work, so we congratulate you on your accomplishment. As you might imagine, we receive a large number of blurb and critique requests, which makes reading and following up on them quite difficult. Reading and commenting requires the…
This answer is from Isaac Stewart, our in-house art director, but I agree wholeheartedly. Hire a Cover Designer/Artist. If the book looks professional, a reader is more likely to click on it. Conversely, I believe that if you have enough drive and time, you can figure out book design for…
When would I self-publish versus New York-publish? I would not abandon either model. Self-publishing has proved itself so viable recently that if I were a new writer, I would be looking at doing both at the same time. Maybe taking the longer, more epic-style books to New York and doing…
I don’t feel that there has been any push from New York to publish books at any different speed at all. In fact, one of the main reasons to publish with New York as opposed to self-publishing is if you are an author who doesn’t write at least one book…
It depends on your method. What you’re getting at here is the balance between promotion and just writing the next book. That’s a balance authors have had to work with for decades, if not centuries—the idea being that promoting your book keeps it in people’s minds. Right now you can…
There are so many questions in there that are going to be very situationally dependent. If you have not already written a few novels, I would say absolutely do not write your grand epic yet. You won’t have the skill to do it, and it will disappoint you. I’ve run…
Did you cold-query or did you have connections? Originally, I cold queried JABberwocky (the agency). I got turned down. I then met Joshua (my agent) at the Nebula awards and he told me to query again. That time, he liked the query and read sample chapters–then rejected those, but told…
I recommend that you look at books that you like that are most like your work and find out who edited that book. That would be a good contact. Or you can check out the Writer’s Market and find that editor and submit your work. Make sure that you mention…
As in any industry, networking is an important asset in advancing your career. Conventions are a great place to meet people, as are online forums and blogs. It’s important in networking though to not just look for resources–BE a resource. Find people with similar publishing goals to yourself, whose writing you…