Unpublished Writers Get Their Chance
The Sobol Award is a new literary prize but only writers who are both unpublished and who do not have an agent can try to get it. The winner will recieve $100,000 and for second and third place, they will recieve $25,000 and $10,000 while 7 others will recieve $1,000 each.
Participants must enter through the Sobol website, where up to 50,000 manuscripts will be accepted, online only and when applying an $85 fee is required.
Top Five Publishers Make $4.8 Billion
The five largest US publishers (aka the “Big Five” — Random House, HarperCollins, Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster and Time Warner Trade Books) raked in $4.8 billion in revenue in 2004.
Random House, of course, was the country’s largest publisher last year, with U.S. sales of about $1.33 billion, roughly flat with 2003. HarperCollins and Penguin usually run neck and neck for the country’s second largest publisher. In 2004, HC, with a big assist from Zondervan and The Purpose-Driven Life, edged ahead of Penguin. HC had North American sales of approximately $965 million last year, with North America accounting for about 73% of HC’s worldwide sales. Penguin, which received a boost of $40 million from its Penguin Press, Gotham and Razorbill imprints in 2004, had estimated sales in the U.S. of $900 million last year.
To compare: 63,000 small publishers (’everyone else,’ I’m guessing) generated revenue of $14 billion.
[Source: Publishers Weekly, via KeepMedia]
Grammar for the Rest of You
I’ll have to admit I’m a bit of a grammar geek. I usually refer to myself as a word nerd. I’m a professional editor as well as being a writer, so words, and the correct usage of words, are my business.
Because I’m more than a little obsessed with all things wordy, I can’t resist reading books about grammar and usage. I came across a fun one yesterday that even those who aren’t word nerds will enjoy: Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies by June Casagrande (Penguin, 224 pages, $14).
Casagrande, author of the “A Word, Please” column that appears in several community sections of the Los Angeles Times, offers a guide to usage that’s mostly based on doing what feels (or at least sounds) right. She’s not big on rules, and she is big on cheesy mnemonic devices to help you remember the rules you do need to know.
She hopes that people can learn to strike a balance between being clueless about grammar and being a “grammar snob,” someone who delights in his or her knowledge of grammar and will use that knowledge to humiliate others who do not know as much.
If you haven’t had the pain of running into a grammar snob, Casagrande elaborates:
Unlike normal people who get giddy about things like love, sex, money, free beer, and classic REO Speedwagon, these guys have the hots for things like punctuation marks and syntax rules and the excavation of lost words that were lost for a reason.
Like a lot of ‘happy’ drunks, these people can turn on you in an instant, transforming from Jekyll-like, playful nerds into bloodthristy grammar Hydes.
Some grammar snobs, Casagrande points out, give truth to the adage that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. They think they know the rules, so they think they have license to correct what they see as gaffes in other people’s writing and speaking.
But the truth is, these people often don’t know the rules any better than the average person. Or they know rules that are no longer considered rules, like the “rules” against splitting infinitives, ending sentences with prepositions or starting them with conjunctions, all of which this book trashes, once and for all (we hope).
Casagrande also tackles more ticklish subjects like use of the subjunctive (was vs. were), saying “literally” when you mean “figuratively,” how to punctuate and why, and why rock stars can’t spell and what to do about it.
This entertaining and funny book is also educational if you don’t already know the basics of grammar and usage or are always getting rules confused. If you’re a grammar geek already, you might not learn much from this little book, but you should take it as a warning never to become one of the grammar snobs Casagrande takes to task, even if you think you really do know it all.
50 Writing Tools
It is not recent news–these have been online since quite a couple of years–but since they were recommended to me by a fellow writer, I’ve never stopped checking these Fifty writing tools by Roy Peter Clark on Poynter Online. Perhaps they’ve been most useful to me due to English not being my mother tongue. Regardless, I think they may be of interest to anyone wanting to perfect their use of this language, and not only in the domain of journalism. Beware of adverbs? Why, it’s amazing, how irritating to the eye they now seem when I proof-read my texts and find a handful of them in the same sentence! This series of articles was a treasure chest for me, and I hope it can be one for you as well.
Writing Help
Walden University Website has a great section on writing. You can get more help with more writing tips like:
Getting Published, part 2
It’s been a few weeks since I sent out my first queries to literary agents. So far, no bites — just a few rejections.
Luckily, I’m immune to rejections. (I’ve been a freelance writer for a few years, so I’m used to them.) Also, I’m thankful they’ve all been good non-form-letter rejections — each responded to specific things I’d said in my query, which is encouraging.
If I don’t have any luck with anyone from this group, I have another batch of queries ready to go out in May…
In the meanwhile, here are a few more sites offering advice on how to get an agent:
- Literary agents: a four-part series from Writing.org
- Words of Wisdom to Snatch a Literary Agent from FreelanceWriting.com
- Literary Agents - Answers and Advice from TaraKHarper.com
Reading Books Multiple Times
Their is an episode of Seinfeld in which George wanted Jerry to get his book from his now ex-girlfriend and later in the episode after Jerry got stuck being the girls new boyfriend he asked George why he wanted the book since he had already read it.
If people don’t understand why you would re-read a book in which you already know the ending, then I would ask why do you keep your music, movies and tv shows on dvd? You already know how the movie ends. You have seen Sixth Sense and know the big ending, so why don’t you throw it away, give it to charity or sell it? Because you enjoyed the movie and want to watch it again some other time.
That is how we feel about our books. I could be watching something on tv and suddenly remember a scene in a book I enjoyed and then I could spend hours in frustration looking for that book and when I find I read it all over again. There are also some books that I have, that I may not have read in more than a year and I have forgotten some or most parts of it and it’s like reading it for the first time all over agian.
Don’t Look At The Word Count
A few years ago I was writing a novel and was frustrated because I had an eye on the word count. It was for an ebook publisher and I needed to have a novel size at 60,000 words and I was literally keeping count after every sentence I typed. So it was pretty slow going.
Another author I chatted with in email gave me some of the best advice I think about to this day. She told me not to pay attention to the word count. Each novel will be the size it can be, don’t force it. If I concentrate on the amount of words I need to put it in the novel will seem forced.
She said keep writing until I have a novel that is roughly the size I need and she was right. It was much easier after the advice she gave me. So don’t spend all day looking at the word count and don’t force a 40,000 word novel into a 100,000 word book because your readers just might notice.
Getting Published, part 1
This morning, I sent out my first batch of agent queries.
They were all e-queries, thankfully, so there was no printing, paper-folding, or envelope-licking involved — just cutting, pasting, and sending. This was refreshing, as the process of finding potential agents and crafting a personalized query for each had been pretty arduous.
First, I’d checked sites like Publishers Marketplace and Agent Query to find agents interested in representing the types of books I wanted to write (nonfiction books on parenting). Parenting is a popular topic, so there were hundreds of agents to choose from.
Once I’d whittled my list down to about 40, I began writing my query, which consisted of a hook, a description of the book, a mini-bio, and a conclusion with contact info. It was formatted like a typical one-page business letter.
Researching agents and perfecting my query took weeks. My friends and family (all of whom I’d forced to read the query multiple times) were getting impatient, asking why I hadn’t sent the letters out yet.
Finally, today, I looked it over and could find nothing to change. So I sent out the first batch of 10 (figuring that a rate of 10 per month would suffice).
Now, all I can do is cross my fingers and wait. In the meanwhile, I have a manuscript to edit and a book proposal to write…
The New York Round Writers’ Conference
Regardless of the level you in writing you are welcome at the New York Round Writers’ Conference which takes place at The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen in Midtown Manhattan on April 28-29, 2006.
They hope to attract the beginner to the professional writer and they in turn will meet and speak with the top editors, agents, publicists, reviewers, bestselling authors and publishers in the business.
Planning for this year’s conference is proceeding rapidly. Programming for 2006 will include best-selling keynote speakers, gala Saturday evening dinner, performance by the Bowery Poetry Club, two cocktail receptions and two lunches and panel discussions on the following topics:
- Writing Book Proposals
- Negotiating Contracts
- Getting a Job in Publishing
- Under Twenty Literature
- Online Publishing
- PR and Marketing
- Independent Publishers
- Magazines and Journals
- Book Reviewing
- Writers’ Organizations
This is a great way for a new author to meet people in the book industry and learn more about this craft.
