Writer Tells All: Insider Secrets to Getting Your Book Published

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Macmillan, Apr 10, 2001 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 256 pages
A 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.
 

Selected pages

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
Copyright

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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.

About the author (2001)

Robert Masello is the author of three novels & ten nonfiction books, including "A Friend in the Business". He has taught writing classes at the Columbia University School of Journalism & UCLA Extension. He is currently executive story editor for the Aaron Spelling television series "Charmed".

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