Welcome!
Once we have our story written, we need a business mindset.
If you need help, you're in the right place to explore posts and topics about the business side of writing on Jami's blog, including advice for our career, publishing process, and marketing.
(And don't miss the pages exploring the topics of Storytelling, Writing Craft, and Process & Miscellaneous posts.)
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Highlighted Posts within Career & Publishing Topics
Improving Our Ability to Be Successful in Our Publishing Career
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Posts about Getting Help from Others
The Beta Reading and Critiquing and The Publishing Business categories of Jami's blog are filled with tips, advice, and insights about working with others, such as beta readers/critique partners, agents, editors, and publishers.
Sample topics:
* issues of various publishing options
* weighing self-publishing vs. traditional publishing
* finding beta readers
* handling feedback
* tips for being a better beta reader, etc.
Below, check out featured posts, as well as some latest posts, from both tags.
For more posts on these topics, click the buttons at the bottom of this section to explore each category, and find more posts like how to find a developmental editor, what to look for in a line editor, or how to deal with editing on a budget.
Featured Post
Help! What If I Can’t Find Beta Readers?
Every writer struggles to get their thoughts on the page and make their ideas make sense to others. The typical advice for how to resolve that issue is to use beta readers, but what if we can’t find beta readers? What can we do?
Featured Post
How to Make Beta Reading Work for Us
As writers, we’re so close to our stories it’s impossible to know how readers will interpret our words. That’s just one reason why we often need beta readers.
Featured Post
Picking Editors: How to Evaluate Potential Editors
When we’re ready for professional editing, we want to make sure our editor is good, especially if we’re opening our wallet. Here are some tips, questions, and processes that will help us evaluate editors for our needs.
Featured Post
Introducing the Beta Reading Worksheet!
When we first start seeking or giving beta reads, we might not know what kind of feedback is possible or appropriate. To help us, here’s a listing of ideas of the many aspects beta readers can use for evaluating a story.
Featured Post
5 1/2 Steps for Making Feedback Work for Us
Feedback can be essential for helping our writing improve. But being confronted with our writing’s weaknesses is hard, so here are ways to tackle criticism.
Posts about Self-Publishing
The Self-Publishing Your Story category of Jami's blog is filled with self-publishing insights, tips, and techniques.
Sample topics:
* Jami's Fiction University guest posts about Indie Publishing Paths
* cover artist and editor selection advice
* formatting issues
* creating print versions, etc.
Below, check out the tag's featured posts, as well as some of its latest posts.
For more posts on this topic, click the button at the bottom of this section to explore the whole tag, and find more posts like discovering if we self-reject and exploring our entrepreneurial side.
Featured Post
Self Publishing? Where Should We Start?
My series about Indie Publishing Paths at Fiction University has highlighted some of the choices we have to make as self-published authors, and now it’s time to summarize everything we’ve learned in a step-by-step plan.
Featured Post
The Risks of Offering a Freebie
A common suggestion for how to attract readers is “offer a freebie.” However, there are risks to that strategy that we should be aware of before we can make an informed decision.
Featured Post
Formatting: From Manuscript to a Print Book with MS Word
Holding your book in your hands can make “being published” feel real, but self-publishing in print can require us to make countless decisions. Let’s walk through the process.
Featured Post
Picking Editors: What Kind Do We Need?
What type of editors are most important for our success? Let’s take a closer look at the types of editing and when we might (or might not) need that type of editing.
Featured Post
Self-Publishing: Prioritizing Fast, Cheap, and Good
All writers, especially those who self-publish, have to decide: Are we writing and publishing just for ourselves? Or to get customers (readers)? Depending on our answers, we can prioritize “fast, cheap, or good.”
Posts about Branding & Selling
The Selling Your Story and Branding tags of Jami's blog are filled with tips and advice on how to make our story appealing to others, such as with a synopsis, blurb, or branding ourselves and our work.
Sample topics:
* writing pitches and back cover copy
* importance of book covers
* writing a successful synopsis
* creating reader expectations
* using book tours, etc.
Below, check out featured posts, as well as some latest posts, from both tags.
For more posts on these topics, click the buttons at the bottom of this section to explore each tag, and find more posts like discovering what makes our book unique (and how we can use those unique elements for marketing) or recognizing what our brand promises to readers.
Featured Post
What Does It Mean to “Write to Market”?
The advice “write to market” often causes a strong reaction. What does it mean? Can we benefit from writing to market without selling out?
Featured Post
Branding 101: Defining Our Brand
In our writing career, tangible lessons are often easier to learn, but branding can be intangible. How can we use tangible ideas to define our brand?
Featured Post
The Ultimate Guide to Pitch Writing
No matter how we publish, we need to introduce our story to potential readers and interest them enough to want to look closer. Whether we’re pitching and querying agents or enticing readers with back-cover blurbs, we need to grab their attention.
Featured Post
Branding 101: Do You Have a Tagline?
Taglines are like the phrases on a movie poster: short, intriguing, punchy, attention-getting. In addition to taglines for our writing, we might also want one about us and our author brand.
Featured Post
Recipe for a Successful Synopsis
It’s easy to get wrapped up in our story’s subplots and twists and turns, but this recipe can cut through that confusion so we can complete a short, clear synopsis.
Posts about Career Planning
The Career Planning for Writers and Social Media and Authors categories of Jami's blog are filled with insights, tips, and advice about goal planning, social media, and our online reputations.
Sample topics:
* deciding on your goals and priorities
* writing and entrepreneurship
* platform building and ownership
* connecting with the writing community
* developing our website, etc.
Below, check out featured posts, as well as some latest posts, from both categories.
For more posts on these topics, click the buttons at the bottom of this section to explore each category, and find more posts like deciding on our long term plan (maybe by completing a writing-focused business plan) or if we're an artist-author or a professional-author who wants to quit the day job.
Featured Post
How Can We Discover Our Vision and Goals?
Having goals helps us determine the right path, but we might not know what our goals are. How can we learn what matters to us, our vision and goals?
Featured Post
Social Media: Make It Fun!
After a month of using Instagram, I might be an Instagram convert. What made me decide I actually liked Instagram is at the heart of what social media should always be: Fun!
Featured Post
How Do You Define Success?
Our definition of success will affect our happiness. So let’s walk through how we might define our success—as well as what it means if we haven’t yet “succeeded.”
Featured Post
Working for “Exposure”? Get the Most Out of It
We’ve been discussing when we might be willing to be paid in “exposure.” There are valid reasons for deciding that more exposure will be good for our long-term plans. However, we’d want to make sure that exposure actually materializes in a helpful way and works hard for us.
Featured Post
When Do Writers Need a Business Plan?
When we’re first starting out as writers, creating a business plan might be the last thing we want to do. However, a business plan can be anything we want it to be. In truth, there are far more non-business things we could include in a “business” plan than we might assume.
Additional Career & Publishing Resources
Other Favorites in Career & Publishing Topics
Jami's blog has hundreds of posts about preparing our author career for success, so she couldn't limit herself to just the Featured Posts in the above sections. Here are a few more favorite posts on the topics of working with editors, branding, and goal and career planning that she couldn't resist highlighting.
Other Helpful Tags in Career & Publishing Topics
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