How do advances work? When do you get royalties? How long until you can quit your job? A pro demystifies the money part of writing

Finding a literary agent is one thing, but the hard part is gaining representation. In this post, we share how to hook a literary agent to represent writing and get published by looking at the query letter, synopsis, book proposal, and sample pages.

Learn how to write successful queries for any genre of writing by breaking down the query letter and supplying links to example queries that worked.

Your reading today comes in the form of this Medium article by Heather Demetrios: “How To Lose A Third Of A Million Dollars Without Even Trying.” It’s a good article. I feel deepl…

Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 100-year archive of POETRY magazine.

Being any good as a publishing commentator requires talking to others, learning varied perspectives, and writing about ideas you didn’t come up with.

So, here’s the deal — August for me is, as the kids say, “supa-cray-cray.” I’m working on like, 17 novels and two scripts or something like that. As such, I have put …

Publishing is the business of creating books and selling them to readers. And yet, for some reason we aren’t supposed to talk about the latter. Most literary writers consider book sales a half-crass / half-mythological subject that is taboo to discuss. Most literary writers consider book sales a half-crass / half-mythological subject that is taboo to discuss. […]

The title to this post is Admiral Ackbar’s greatest fear: It is, indeed, a trap. Because the answer to this question is obvious: you shouldn’t pay anything to get published. Now, classi…

Jonny looks at what lies behind some of the most successful books of recent years. He explores the patterns and trends underlying their popularity and describes what a literary agent looks for in a writer. After spending twenty years as a literary agent, he reveals some of the secrets he has learned and argues about the power of the reader in the making of a bestseller.

I figure it's about time I be helpful again. It's been a while. I know several friends who are about to be on submission, and I've watched s...