writers.com bookstore
The Business of Writing
(markets, getting published, agents, publishing & copyright laws,
promotion, manuscript format, proposal how-to, etc.)
Arranged alphabetically by author; click on title for more information.
How to Get Happily Published (Fifth edition)Judith Appelbaum
"Over the past 20 years, few books have proven more useful to authors, established and beginning, than Judith Appelbaum's How to Get Happily Published, now appearing in its fifth edition. This new edition adds material on a number of areas of current concern to writers, including how to work with small publishers, how to use the new electronic media and how to decide whether or not to self-publish; there's also information on hundreds of new resources, from books and magazines to Internet sites." -- Publishers Weekly
The Writer's Legal Companion:
The Complete Handbook for the Working Writerby Brad Bunnin & Peter Beren
This good overall guide takes up contracts, collaboration, agents, defamation, copyright, taxes, and more, but it was published in 1998 and thus is already a bit out of date in some respects. An even more specific book, Kirsch's Guide to the Book Contract: For Authors, Publishers, Editors and Agent Kirsch's Handbook of Publishing Law: For Authors, Publishers, Editors and Agents (also from 1998), is recommended (below) if you are interested primarily in contracts. But, we'd also like to point out...
The Writer's
Legal Guide: An Authors Guild Desk Referenceby Tad Crawford and Kay Murray
Up dated for 2002 publication, the author-attorneys cover electronic rights, ebooks, fair use, copyright, accounting methods, liability, fair use guidelines, royalty collecting societies, some permissions, various sub-rights, and more.
2005 Novel & Short Story Writer's Market
By Ann Bowling, Michael Schmeer
Similar to Writers Market (just below), this book is devotedly specifically to fiction and is especially helpful for short fiction writers. There are views from several cheerful authors, advice on technique, and good overviews of contracts, queries, and other "writerly" business, along with contest information, conference details, and more. Like its sister volume, it falters as to timeliness and tends toward the overly optimististic. Still, it is a great place to get a great deal of information for any beginning fiction writer. Those with a bit more experience are less likely to find it of interest.
2005 Writers Market: 8,000 Editors Who Buy What You WriteKathryn S. Brogan & Robert Lee Brewer (Editors)
A good place for anyone who want to write to start. Plus, if you want to sell what you write, definitely buy the most current edition of Writers Market. It's a full of good basic (if often overly optimistic) info. Whether you should buy more than one edition is, however, debatable. Yes, it IS updated annually with tons of accurate information for general freelancers, but the individual writer will have to decide is a yearly investment is worth it. Genre writers should be particularly wary of WM's market listings as they just do not keep up with such publications.
Publicize Your Book!:
An Insider's Guide to Getting Your Book the Attention It
DeservesJacqueline Deval
Deval, the former director of publicity for William Morrow, Doubleday, Villard and Book-of-the-Month Club, has written (as Publishers Weekly put it) "easily the most incisive and expert guide to book publicity ever. Deval covers every conceivable aspect of generating and participating in book publicity, from creating press materials to engaging in a publicity tour, from getting on Oprah to marketing on the Internet, from conducting media interviews to hiring a freelance publicist and much more. And she gives advice that's applicable to both veterans and novices... With all this information, plus an extensive resource section, this is the book for authors who want to expand publicity for their books, and there's not a publishing professional who won't learn something new and useful from it as well."
Kirsch's Guide to the Book Contract: For Authors,
Publishers, Editors and AgentJonathan Kirsch
Published in 1998 as a companion volume to the earlier (and now out of print) Kirsch's Handbook of Publishing Law : For Authors,Publishers, Editors and Agents, this book and goes into detail on contracts. Kirsch's breakdown of a standard contract explains everything and there's also a good glossary to help with understanding the legal lingo. For other "legal" recommendations, please see above
Formatting and Submitting Your Manuscript
Cynthia Laufenberg
Past Writers Digest guides were comprehensive, and this 2004 version still provides the basics of a variety of manuscript formats. As a matter of fact, it's about the only general guide to format currently available. (Preparing Your Manuscript by Elizabeth Preston, a 1994 book, and Every Page Perfect: A Full-Size Writer's Manual for Manuscript Format and Submission Protocol (1997) by Mary Lynn may still be available, but both are woefully out of date.)
The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to WritersBetsy Lerner
This one is not a "how to" guide by any means and it's definitely written from an individual viewpoint, but it is enlightening. As Bookpage put it: "Lerner is good because she can see what the writer sees, and moves from there to what the author needs to see. She understands delusion. Her book encourages clear-sightedness when writers deal with publishers."
The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection
PileNoah T. Lukeman
The author on why he wrote the book: "As a literary agent, after reading more than 15,000 manuscripts in the last few years alone, I couldn't help but notice that many writers -- from Texas to Vermont to Japan -- fall prey to the exact same mistakes... In [the book] covering topics such as Viewpoint, Narration, Characterization, Setting, Pacing, Dialogue (five chapters), and Progression, I set down the most common mistakes writers make -- and how they might avoid them."
The Insider's Guide to Getting an AgentLori Perkins
From the author: "This is a how to get your book into the right hands
and sell it book, so you can share your writing with all those who love
to read. This is a guerilla guide to getting published, a sort of no
holds-barred look at the inner workings of the publishing industry, a
naked literary lunch. Once you've read this book, and taken its advice
to heart, you should be well on your way to getting an agent who get you
published. This book will show you beyond a reasonable doubt that
without a literary agent, you will not be published well. And, without
the right literary agent, you will not continue to be well-published."
Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction and Get
it Published
Susan Rabiner, Alfred Fortunato
According to the authors, the freshness of ideas and the size of the
potential audience drive the process the first three rules of book
publishing:"audience, audience, audience." Part one discusses how to put
together a book proposal and whether to work through an agent or not. In
part two, they move to the writing process. The discussion of research
undergirding all writing is noteworthy: authors and publishers sometimes
become too lax about accuracy in nonfiction. Part three concerns how
authors and editors can work together well. A sample proposal
accompanied by a sample chapter are included.
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