She had put [her poems] on the back burner, and they had fallen behind the stove.

–Lorrie Moore

Melissa Wuske, my saintly editor at Writer’s Digest Books, asked me to answer questions she sent for an author Q&A that WD will post online to promote the fourth edition of How to Write a Book Proposal, which comes out in April. One of the questions and the answer:

What message do you find yourself repeating over and over to writers?

• Become an expert of the kind of book you’re writing. Read what you love to read and write what you love to read.
• Find books and authors to use as models for your books and career, and to help you set literary and publishing goals.
• Be a contenpreneur: produce or collaborate on a continuing stream of material, in all lengths, for all media, for free and fees, and take responsibility for the success of your work.
• Maximize the synergy of your work by writing books that sell each other and that you can resell in as many forms, media, and countries as possible.
• Make every word count. Word of mouth and mouse are the most potent forms of promotion. No amount of marketing can make a bad book sell.
• Build your platform–your continuing visibility, online and off, on your subject or kind of book with potential book buyers.
• Build communities of fans, writers, and publishing people to help you.
• Don’t be guilty of premature submission. Keep revising your worik until you can’t improve it. Get feedback on your work from a network of knowledgeable readers while you’re writing and after you finish.
• Maximize the value of your book before you sell it by test-marketing it, online and off, in as many ways as you can, to prove it will sell and get the best editor, publisher, and deal for it.
• Chicken souperman Jack Canfield said: “A book is an iceberg. Writing is ten percent; marketing is ninety percent.” Create a promotion plan that proves you will make your book succeed because of what you will do for it.
• Take the long view as well as the short view about your writing and career. Writers usually become successful by writing a series of books that sell each other and build an audience for their work.
• Make nothing more important than your commitment to your craft and your career, and success is inevitable.

I hope this condensation of advice in previous posts will help you make this be your most creative and successful year yet. If you have put your writing on the back burner, make this the year you create an irresistible feast for the heart and the mind.

Onward and upward!

Alan Rinzler and I will be doing a breakout session on proposals at the  Eighth San Francisco Writers Conference  and a three-hour class on them on Monday, February 21 / Mark Hopkins InterContinental Hotel on Nob Hill / Keynoters: Dorothy Allison & David Morrell / Pitch your book to agents and editors / Free feedback on your work / www.sfwriters.org  / sfwriterscon@aol.com / blog: http://sfwriters.org/blog / Open to anyone: a day of in-depth classes on Monday, February 21  / Free MP3s at www.sfwriters.info / New! San Francisco Writers University: Where Writers Meet and You Learn, a project of the San Francisco Writers Conference / Laurie McLean, Dean /  www.sfwritersu.com

There are twelve steps you can take to ensure your success as an author.

Jack Canfield, Melissa Wuske, Writer’s Digest Books, How to Write a Book Proposal, Lorrie Moore, Alan Rinzler

Writers, this is your time! It’s the most exciting, amazing time to be alive. There are more subjects for you to write books about, more forms and media in which to express yourself, more ways to reach readers, and more ways to enrich yourself in the process.

A number years ago, people thought going to the moon was impossible. Consider these “impossibilities” that are going to happen and how you can use them in your writing:

• Being able to live forever at the height of our powers will happen by 2050.
• Harnessing the power of nature to create energy means the cost of raw material will be nothing. You’ll be able to power your house with the solar energy collected by your windows.
• In fifteen years, computers will be 1,000 times more powerful.
• Nanotechnology will enable the replication of (almost?) anything. There will be molecule-size machines coursing through our bodies monitoring our health and dispensing medicine.
• Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak is in the works. 
• Time travel is possible.
• A prototype for a camera that can see around corners already exists.
• Telepathy will become the ultimate form of text messaging.

Only time and resources separate us from making anything we can conceive a reality. Preventing hurricanes and tornadoes, and getting tectonic plates to stop rubbing each other the wrong way; these will  also take a while. But if we can survive our frailties and natural catastrophes, we will do it.

All of these wonders are fodder for the imagination. Consider what all of the world’s brightest, most creative people collaborating on touch-screen, voice recognition computers they carry in their pockets will accomplish.

It must be getting harder to write science fiction. Star Trek takes place three centuries in the future. But by that time, technology will be far more advanced than what Captain Kirk had access to. Our future is only limited by your imagination. What a huge gift for writers life’s possibilities are! Can you use the future in your writing to help us understand the present so we can get there?

The past is history; the future is a mystery; and the present is a present. Unwrap it, beam yourself into the future, let your mind take flight, and don’t worry about your destination, just enjoy the ride. Then figure out how to use what you discover in your writing.

The Eighth San Francisco Writers Conference / A Celebration of Craft, Commerce & Community / President’s Day Weekend, February 18-20, 2011 / Mark Hopkins InterContinental Hotel on Nob Hill / Keynoters: Dorothy Allison & David Morrell / Pitch your book to agents and editors from both coasts / More than 50 breakout sessions / 100 presenters / www.sfwriters.org  / sfwriterscon@aol.com / blog: http://sfwriters.org/blog / free MP3s at www.sfwriters.info / open to anyone: a day of in-depth classes on Monday, February 21^st

New! San Francisco Writers University: Where Writers Meet and You Learn, a project of the San Francisco Writers Conference / Laurie McLean, Dean /  www.sfwritersu.com

Now is the most exciting time to be alive and be a writer.

The title of the story of every book should be Great Expectations. Authors and publishers start with high hopes that are usually dashed on the merciless realities of publishing.

If a publisher pays a $1,000 advance for a book and it sells 5,000 copies, it’s a success. If a publisher pays $50,000 for a book and it sells 5,000 copies, it’s a failure.  So one question to ask yourself is: How do you establish inspiring but reasonable expectations for your book?

Because of all of the options for getting a book published from podcasting,  ebook, and print-on-demand publishing to a large house, your book is publishable. But out of the wealth of possibilities for writing and publishing your book, how do you figure out what’s best for you now?

The books and authors you choose as models are the nexus between craft and commerce. They will help you determine your literary and publishing goals. The books you love will help you decide what and how to write, and for whom.

The authors whose careers you want to emulate will help you decide on the  publishing goals for your book:

• what size house you want to publish your book
• how big an advance you want for it
• how many copies you want it to sell

Your choices clarify how to achieve your goals.

I always ask writers about their goals for their books. I encourage them to express their desires not calculate what’s realistic. Their answers enable me to advise them about how to achieve them. The greater your goals, the more you will have to do to reach them.

Define and align your literary and publishing goals, and you’ll be well on your way to meeting them. Aim as high as you dare. I promise you’ll astonish yourself.

The Eighth San Francisco Writers Conference / A Celebration of Craft, Commerce & Community / President’s Day Weekend, February 18-20, 2011 / Mark Hopkins InterContinental Hotel on Nob Hill / Keynoters: Dorothy Allison & David Morrell / Pitch your book to agents and editors from both coasts / More than 50 breakout sessions / 100 presenters / Indie Publishing Contest / www.sfwriters.org  / sfwriterscon@aol.com / blog: http://sfwriters.org/blog / free MP3s at www.sfwriters.info / open to anyone: a day of in-depth classes on Monday, February 21^st

New! San Francisco Writers University: Where Writers Meet and You Learn, a project of the San Francisco Writers Conference / Laurie McLean, Dean /  www.sfwritersu.com