Talk To A Publisher on Tuesdays

As a Helium writer whose articles suggest a high interest in creative writing and literature, we wanted to let you know an exciting new program we’ve developed, called Helium’s Book People Talk series. By participating in this Tuesday talk series, you will have a chance to meet publishers and get direct advice on questions like:

How do I get my book published? Do I need an agent? How do I avoid the rejection pile? What's fair for an advance? Should I self-publish? Can I get a job as a book editor? What are publishers really looking for?

Tomorrow’s discussion features:

Chapter One: THE FUTURE IS BLEAK (but your writing career doesn’t have to be).

Helium is honored to welcome Bleak House Books, a publisher of crime and dark literary fiction. Bleak House has been written about in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Crimespree Magazine, Mystery Scene Magazine, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus (The Book Standard), and others.

For future discussions, check out the listings at:

http://www.helium.com/
topic=13072.0

Editing Is Your Friend

Guest author and aquisition's editor for Enspiren Press supplied this article. We thank her for offering some insight to our readers.

As an editor, I find many writers have either edited their work too much or too little.
The key is to edit well enough to create a great story, but not too much that your work no longer has heart.
A lot of novel authors believe the golden word limit is 100 000. This is not always the case. Many publishers, big and small, prefer the word limit to be around 90k or even under. One of my publishers is UK hardback publisher Robert Hale Ltd. Their word count is approx 73 000 words. Always check the publisher’s guidelines, if possible.
Now some writers will be horrified that their beloved opus is a massive 300k words, and they refuse to cut a single word from it, but honestly think of the bigger picture — money. Publishers are companies out to make money, some foster careers, too, but mainly it is money and it is silly to think otherwise. For them to make money they have to create marketable books that will sell. If your book is a massive tome, do you think that the average publisher is going spend an awful lot of time and money on something that will be priced above all the competition?
When writers are confronted by the prospect of cutting words, they panic and think it can’t be done without destroying plots and characters.
In actual fact, most writers will learn that there is a skill to trimming word count. Once that skill is learnt, they can apply it to other works, and also this will change the way they write future manuscripts.
Sometimes, the act of cutting words from the manuscript is simply a case of re-writing the odd paragraph, of eliminating passive writing or over telling, deleting repeated or redundant words. Look for instances where you have explained the same thing more than once, but perhaps in different ways or by different character’s viewpoint. There are many good websites built to aid writers in writing the best work they can. I have a list on my website of several such websites.
http://www.annewhitfield.com/writingwebsites.html

In the end, write the story of your heart, but edit it with a business mind and the chances are you’ll have a better prospect of becoming published and the journey with your future editor may be also smoother.
Good Luck!
Anne Whitfield, author and editor.
http://www.annewhitfield.com

Do You Write Book Reviews

We have a site that is building at www.novel-writer.com that needs book reviews. You need to subscribe and be given publisher permission, but you can post all your book reviews (that you've already earned money from) along with a link back to one of your sites.

One of the benefits of writing reviews is that, once you can prove you do this, and the sites you write for have ample exposure, you can get books/ebooks sent to you free. This is great for an avid reader.