Graphic by Alexis Daria
Writing the book can be hard, but sometimes hardest part is what comes after: selling it.
How do we entice readers / editors / agents to buy our books? How do we pitch our books in person with a pitch, a blurb or a query? And how do we make sure the openings of our books are enticing enough to hook readers into the whole thing?
Join us to talk about it next Sunday 4pm PT / 7pm ET!
~Robin Lovett
When I started building websites in the 90s, it was hard. Now, we’re living in a golden age where anyone can turn a free theme into a functional author page. My intention when I started querying was to turn my online art portfolio into an author site—but a hacker wiped it! Rather than rebuild from scratch, I gave my rarely-used WordPress blog a fresh layout. But one question remained: If you aren’t published yet, what do you include on an author website? Below, I’ll give you some easy elements to add to your site, including the one that netted me several comments from agents.
Next in our publishing origin stories is C.L. Polk’s journey. Be sure to check out Robin Lovett’s story from earlier!
Did twitter get me a book deal? Well, not exactly. But it helped…
Step one: I wrote a book.
Seriously, this is step one. You cannot use twitter to help you until you’ve done this part. I wrote a book. I revised the book. I edited the book. It took a little over a year to do this step, because I interrupted my process by writing a book length fanfic for the fun of it. And then I was ready for… Continue reading
Next in our publishing origin stories is ROBIN LOVETT’s whirl wind journey to her first big five book deal. (Don’t forget to check out Alexis Daria’s story.)
I was lucky. Getting an agent came pretty easy for me. Well, easy if you count writing three books before sending out my fourth to query. I made decisions based on market research, what I’d heard at writing conferences from editor and agent panels. I gave up on my dystopian romance book and wrote an erotic contemporary–because that’s what they said was selling. And it worked, for getting an agent at least.
Rachel Brooks of the L. Perkins asked for a Revise & Resubmit (R&R) then signed my dark erotic romance. There’s some stuff I can’t tell you about here — see Kim Bell’s The First Rule of Pubclub. This was winter 2015.
But my luck ran out there. Unfortunately, for that book, the ending is not happy. It was on submission for a year and did not sell.
That’s right–a year.
Romance Writers Chat 