Jennifer Lyons - The Business of Writing: Professional Advice on Proposals, Publishers, Contracts, and More for the Aspiring Writer

The Business of Writing

Professional Advice on Proposals, Publishers, Contracts, and More for the Aspiring Writer

Copyright 2012 by Jennifer Lyons

Queries and Cover Letters: A Cosmic Approach by Bob Silverstein; God Forbid...
The Legal Stuff by Paula M. Breen; Writers: Tax Rules, Ritualsand Reminders!
by John Giacchetti; Personal Branding: Advice for Authors by Fauzia Burke; To
Write a Nonfiction Book Proposal, You May Need to Include a Little Fiction, by Leora
Tanenbaum; Reverse Engineering: One Writers Path by Liza Monroy; Real Books
Tonya Bolden; To Reach the Literary Editor by Mark Jay Mirsky; Some Advice for the
First-Time Author by Avi Steinberg; With Fiction I Am Looking for Art by Kathy
Belden; Publishing Nonfiction: A Look Behind the Scenes by Ronit Feldman; Chil
dren: The Toughest Audience Youll Ever Love (to Write for) by Caitlyn M. Dlouhy;
Childrens Picture Books: The Format Changes but the Process Remains the Same by
Howard W. Reeves; A New Chapter by Judy Sternlight; What Are Subsidiary Rights?
by Jennifer Thompson; When a Book Becomes Something Else by Michael Cendejas;
Seeking Visibility in a Mist of Rising Choices by Colette Inez; Self-Publishing: How It
Works, Who Its Right For by Irene Gunther; Getting Started as a Literary Translator
by Jason Grunebaum; Your First Book-Length Translation Project by Peter Constantine;
The New American Page by Lori Marie Carlson; Getting from There to Here by
Ken Krimstein; The Accidental Writer by Peter Steiner; On Writing Smart: Tips and
Tidbits by Leslie T. Sharpe; To MFA or Not to MFA? by Melvin Jules Bukiet

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mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written consent of the
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Published by Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. 307 West 36th Street,
11th Floor, New York, NY 10018. Allworth Press is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Pub
lishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation. www.allworth.com

Page composition/typography by Victoria Waters, Hughes Publishing Svcs.

Cover illustration by Ken Krimstein

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The business of writing : professional advice on proposals, publishers, contracts, and more for the
aspiring writer / edited by Jennifer Lyons ; foreword by Oscar Hijuelos.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-58115-917-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Authorship--Marketing. 2. Authors and publishers. I. Lyons, Jennifer.

PN161.B88 2012

808.02--dc23

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to my father,
author, editor, and publisher Nick Lyons.

Contents

by Bob Silverstein, Quicksilver Books Literary Agency

by Paula M. Breen, Publishing Consultant

by John Giacchetti, Tax Consultant

by Fauzia Burke, FSB Associates

by Leora Tanenbaum, Author of Slut!: Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation

By Liza Monroy, Author of Mexican High and Writing Instructor at Columbia University

by Tonya Bolden, Author of Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl

by Mark Jay Mirsky, Fiction Magazine

by Avi Steinberg, Author of Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian

by Kathy Belden, Bloomsbury Publishing

by Ronit Feldman, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday

by Caitlyn M. Dlouhy, Atheneum Books for Young Readers, Simon and Schuster Publishers

by Howard W. Reeves, Abrams Books for Young Readers and Amulet Books

An Interview with Sharyn November, Viking Childrens Books and Firebird

by Judy Sternlight, Independent Editor

by Jennifer Thompson, Perseus Books Group

by Michael Cendejas, Lynn Pleshette Literary Agency

by Colette Inez, Poet

by Irene Gunther, Author of Kibbutz: A Novel

by Jason Grunebaum, Translator of The Walls of Delhi

by Peter Constantine, Translator of The Essential Writings of Machiavelli

by Lori Marie Carlson, Editor, Translator, and Novelist

by Ken Krimstein, Cartoonist, The New Yorker

by Peter Steiner, New Yorker Cartoonist and Author of The Resistance

by Leslie T. Sharpe, Author, Editor, and Educator

by Melvin Jules Bukiet, Novelist and Professor at Sarah Lawrence College

Foreword

by Oscar Hijuelos

E

very writing life begins at a certain moment of falling in love with prose, of entering inside literature, as one might a forest clearing at dusk. In my case, this happened while reading a few lines from Walt Whitmans Leaves of Grass in high school. I dont remember just which lines they were, but I do recall thinking that some kind of magic had been involved, for it had amazed me that so much of ones universe could be captured in words. I may have then aspired to write poetry like Whitman, for a few weeks at least, scribbling down my own New York City teenage verses, but, for the most part, that first enchantment simply made me a more carefuland discerningreader. Later, at City College, that same attentiveness blossomed into an all-consuming interest in literature by authors of every kindfrom Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and onwards. One day, while reading an especially wonderful passage by Jorge Luis Borges, I felt so uplifted by the grace and cunning of his prose, that, wishing to imitate him, I began my first attempts at writing fiction. They were, of course, awful, awkward, and crude. But, while doing so, to reconjure my earlier image of the forest, I began, perhaps naively, to see the act of writing as something akin to the lighting of a lamp in the window of a house somewhere deep within a woods, toward which one is always striving.

Or at least thats what I once told an interviewer, years hence, during the prepublication phase of one of my novels. Hed actually concluded that I was going through a depression of some kind. Thats what really comes into your head when you think about why you write? hed asked me incredulously. Well, yes, indeed it did. But Id only intended that image to sum up my feelings about literature and writing and, to go a step further, to explain the wildly romantic, somewhat nutty dream that the writing life represents to blossoming authorssomething that I still stand by now, especially given what experience has taught me: that writingin whatever form it takesis about as difficult a profession as any, and especially so if your dream, aside from the romance of the endeavor, includes making a reasonable livelihood from it.

And what an uphill struggle that is, particularly given this day and age when so much freelance and freebie writing of varying quality is floating about on the Internet. But even during my formative years as a writer, in the 1970s and 80s, when the turnaround time from a final manuscript to publication date took at least a year, if not longer (in a way, a wonderful thing), learning how the business end of that profession worked remained a daunting, learn-as-you-go thing. Take one element from my own story: I published my first novel with a small New York press in 1983 without an agent, while working full-time for a transit advertising company. I had managed to negotiate an advertising campaign of poster ads for my book in some quite primo New York City routes, like the Fifth Avenue lines. Now, I do not know how many passengers were persuaded to seek out my book after seeing those ads, but I will tell you that one of the first lessons I learned is that to make a sale the book had to be stocked in the stores, which was not always the case. Though I often look back on that time now with amusement, I sometimes simply wish I had known far more about the selling, publishing, and marketing of books than I did.