Writer Tells All: Insider Secrets to Getting Your Book PublishedA witty and candid firsthand account -- for writers by a writer -- on how to write, sell, publish, and promote a book. This invaluable book is written by a working writer -- not a professor, not a publisher, not an editor, not an agent. Robert Masello is a writer who speaks his mind with absolute candor on everything aspiring book authors need to know. He explains the publishing process step by step -what to expect, how it works, and what authors can do at each point to keep things going smoothly. Equally important, Masello has a lot of fun doing it. His book is filled with sometimes hilarious anecdotes from his own experiences in the trenches of publishing. Writer Tells All covers many topics along the way, both large and small, including the things every writer needs to know: choosing a book topic (fiction or nonfiction), writing the proposal, selecting an agent, understanding book contracts, finding an editor, losing an editor, following the production process from manuscript to bound book, using your own savvy and contacts to maximize the effect of marketing, and publicizing the finished product. |
Contents
Mission Statement | 3 |
Confronting the Monster | 7 |
Clearing the Hurdles | 12 |
The Quota System | 15 |
Your Worst Boss | 19 |
Fact or Fiction | 22 |
The Hydraulic Theory | 27 |
Why Dont You Write One of Those Sidney Sheldon Books? | 32 |
The Editor ldealized | 134 |
The Editor in Practice | 144 |
Revisionist Misery | 149 |
Blue Pencil White Knuckles | 152 |
The Cover Story | 157 |
Galley Slaves | 163 |
Of Catalogs and Conferences | 169 |
The Song of Yourself | 173 |
Outlining Nonfiction | 36 |
Proposing Nonfiction | 44 |
Proposing Fiction | 51 |
Genre Snobbery | 56 |
Title Search | 60 |
Muzzling the ThreeHeaded Dog | 67 |
My Grandmothers Cadillac | 75 |
Bagging an Agent | 81 |
The Perfect Agent | 91 |
Submission and Acceptance | 103 |
Art of the Deal | 113 |
The Sea of Legalese | 122 |
The New Arrival | 181 |
Publication Day | 184 |
You Want Me to Buy a Copy? | 190 |
The Critical Consensus | 192 |
If This Is Tuesday | 199 |
Talking Head | 207 |
Still Talking | 215 |
Hollywood Calling | 220 |
Other Paths to Glory | 226 |
And Now for My Next Trick | 232 |
Other editions - View all
Writer Tells All: Insider Secrets to Getting Your Book Published Robert Masello Limited preview - 2016 |
Writer Tells All: Insider Secrets to Getting Your Book Published Robert Masello Limited preview - 2001 |
Common terms and phrases
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Popular passages
Page 1 - Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
Page 241 - So you have to discard the vision of yourself as 'a writer', and find out what you want to say, and how you want to say it.