Anne R. Allen's Blog... with Ruth Harris
Writing about writing. Mostly.
by Anne R. Allen Maybe you’ve got a novel finished and you’ve been sending out queries. Lots. And you’re getting rejections. Lots. Or worse, that slow disappointment of no response at all. Or maybe you write short fiction and poetry and you’ve got a bunch of pieces you’ve been sending out to contests and […]
by Ruth Harris Are your Rejection-levels too low? Is publication coming too easily? Did your publisher’s promo/ad campaign turn your book into an overnight blockbuster? Did that mega-million movie deal just fall from the sky into your lap? If the answer is yes, if you feel you are not paying your dues, if you […]
by Anne R. Allen Yesterday Catherine Ryan Hyde and I spoke with a wonderful bunch of eager authors at the Digital Authors Seminar in San Luis Obispo. They were full of lots of great questions, some of which I’ll address here on the blog in coming weeks. We talked about the two events that […]
First: The big day has arrived!The ebook version of HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE…And Keep Your E-Sanity which I wrote with my mentor Catherine Ryan Hyde is now available on Amazon from MWiDP. For a limited time, the e-book price will be $2.99 in the US and roughly the equivalent in the UK. (This book […]
by Ruth Harris I‘m a TradPubbed NYT bestselling author gone indie. I was also an editor for over 20 years (Macmillan, Bantam, Dell) and the Publisher of Kensington—so let me put rejection into a little perspective. Let’s be clear: Manuscripts get rejected; not writers. Trust me. (Most of the time) it’s not personal. Let me […]
by Anne R. Allen For a new writer, this can seem like a terrifying time to be launching a career. Everything in the publishing industry is in upheaval. Bookstores are closing all around us. Publishers and online retailers are conducting high-profile battles in the legal system as well as the court of public opinion. (If you want a […]
I have to admit that when Ruth Harris first talked to me about “writer masochism,” I cringed. I realized she was describing me. Not so long ago, I fell so deeply into the writer-masochism pit, I couldn’t see a way out. I gave exclusives, signed onerous contracts, accepted puerile assessments of my work as gospel truth, […]
by Anne R. Allen I’ve had a number of people ask me that “now what” question in the last few months. There’s tons of info out here in Cyberia, but not everybody knows how to access it. And along with the good info, there’s plenty of bad—especially from predatory vanity publishers and bogus agents. So here are some basics. […]
by Anne R. Allen When you’re beginning to write, you’re likely to be bombarded with advice from all quarters—your family, your friends, your hairdresser, and that know-it-all guy at work. I don’t know why, but everybody who ever watched a few minutes of Oprah’s show seems to think they know all about the publishing […]
by Anne R. Allen Update: I’m so pleased this post has had thousands of hits over the last year and is energizing so many writers to take up short fiction. But I fear a number of readers don’t read the whole piece and assume I’m telling newbie writers to self-publish their first efforts at […]
by Anne R. Allen First: This week marks the anniversary of that fateful day three years ago when I started this blog…and then promptly lost it. But luckily I found it a few months later, and this blog now gets an average of 12,000 hits a month on its four monthly posts and […]
by Mark Williams Today we have a different kind of post. And yes, it’s long. But our guest poster, author and publisher Mark Williams, has a lot to say. Mark is the co-author of the thriller Sugar and Spice —the most popular self-published book in the UK for 2011. He has also started a […]
by Anne R. Allen I’m often approached by parents or grandparents of children who’ve shown a talent for writing. They ask how a child can learn to be a writer. Or sometimes a person going through a mid-life job change will ask my advice about going back to college to pursue a long-deferred writing dream. […]
