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In this issue, we look at why authors cross out their printed name when signing their books, new market spotlight, and so much more!
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Why Do Authors Cross Out Their Names?
When I attended my first book signing (for the Market Book series), a fellow editor advised me to cross out my name when signing copies. It's a practice I've kept up since, and I've seen other authors do it as well, but I still wonder, "Why do authors cross out their names when signing books?"
(What should writers blog about?)
Of course, like any well-connected editor, I knew how to get feedback on my question. I took to Facebook with the following query: "Authors! When you sign books, do you cross out the printed name in the book before signing your own? If so, why?"
And then, the replies started piling in. Below are a few of the more interesting answers I received. Read the full article...
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Craft & Business of Writing
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Mastering High Concept Ideas
There's no such thing as a "sure thing" when it comes to anticipating the sales of a book based on a query letter. But agents leap at the chance to represent authors who deliver well-executed, high concept manuscripts.
(20 literary agents actively seeking writers and writing.)
Simply put, "high concept sells," according to Paula Munier, senior literary agent and content strategist at Talcott Notch Literary Services, thanks to its measurable audience appeal and big-screen adaptability. Read More...
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Ad Astra: Market Spotlight
Ad Astra is the official publication of the National Space Society. This quarterly magazine goes out to all its members, libraries, schools, and businesses.
(Bird Watcher's Digest: Market Spotlight.)
The editors say, "Ad Astra is open to unsolicited submissions, but prefers queries from writers, photographers, and artists interested in assignments for future issues of the magazine."
Payment is 25¢/word. Read More...
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Do Writers Need to Go to College?
Recently, I took my oldest son on his first college visit. So college (and wondering where the time goes) has been on my mind. But it's true that I've often been asked if writers need to go to college and what major a person should pursue if they wish to be a writer.
(When Should Writers Use a Pen Name or Pseudonym?)
As someone who took enough credit hours to graduate with writing certificates in both Creative Writing – Fiction and Professional Writing, in addition to my English Lit degree, I can attest to the fact that a student can learn a lot about many disciplines of writing at the college level. That said, I don't think there's one easy answer that fits everyone's situation.
With that in mind, let's unpack this one question at a time. Read More...
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Must the Novelist Crusade?
Not too long ago I read in some respectable press that Faulkner would have to be reassessed because he was "after all, only a white Mississippian." For this reason, it was felt, readers could no longer rely on him for knowing what he was writing about in his life's work of novels and stories, laid in what he called "my country."
(Representation in fiction.)
Remembering how Faulkner for most of his life wrote in all but isolation from critical understanding, ignored impartially by North and South, with only a handful of critics in forty years who were able to "assess" him, we might smile at this journalist as at a boy let out of school. Or there may have been an instinct to smash the superior, the good, that is endurable enough to go on offering itself. But I feel in these words and other like them the agonizing of our times. I think they come of an honest and understandable zeal to allot every writer his chance to better the world or go to his grave reproached for the mess it is in. And here, it seems to me, the heart of fiction's real reliability has been struck at—and not for the first time by the noble hand of the crusader.
Read More...
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Robert Lee Brewer is a senior editor for Writer's Digest and former editor of the Writer's Market book series. He is also the author of Smash Poetry Journal and Solving the World's Problems. Find him on Twitter at @RobertLeeBrewer
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