For AWP 2018, I hired a team of writers to help me cover business-related sessions, as part of the launch for my newest book (official release date: March 16). Their blog posts are available over at the companion website for the book; here’s what you’ll find:
- Getting Published Is Just the Beginning: Financially Making It, Or Not, as a Full-Time Writer by Marie Myung-Ok Lee
- Insider Advice on Novel Publishing: Getting the Agent by Travis Kurowski
- Working on Writing While Working: The Life-Work-Art Balance by Travis Kurowski
- Breaking Down the Nonfiction Book Proposal by Travis Kurowski
- Finding Grants for Your Writing by Jennifer Baker
- Kickstarter’s Tips on Launching a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign by Jennifer Baker
- What Agents Want: An Extremely Important Relationship by David Morgan O’Connor
- From Thesis to Published Book: Keep Writing! by David Morgan O’Connor
- The Secret to Successful Author Events by Katrina Byrd
- Authors Helping Authors: How Banding Together Can Help Boost Your Book’s Visibility by Katrina Byrd
- Going Viral: Marketing and Promotion in the Digital Age by Katrina Byrd
Also, don’t miss my Q&A with the Chicago Manual of Style on the business of being a writer.
I’m very grateful to my AWP writing team for all their excellent work; here’s a little bit more about each of them.
- Jennifer Baker is the creator/host of the Minorities in Publishing podcast, social media director and writing instructor for Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, and she formerly served as panels organizer & social media manager for the nonprofit We Need Diverse Books. Jennifer is a contributing editor to Electric Literature and the editor of the forthcoming short story anthology Everyday People: The Color of Life with Atria Books.
- Katrina Byrd is a student in the Low Residency Creative Writing MFA Program at the Mississippi University for Women. Katrina is a writer and playwright who has received four artist mini-grants from the Mississippi Arts Commission. Follow her on Twitter at @ovenhot.
- Travis Kurowski is the coeditor of Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century and editor of Paper Dreams: Writers and Editors on the American Literary Magazine, which won an Independent Publisher Book Award and a Foreword IndieFab Award. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Mississippi Review, Ninth Letter, Little Star, Poets & Writers, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. He is an assistant professor at York College of Pennsylvania.
- Marie Myung-Ok Lee is a Korean-American author and essayist. Her stories and essays have been published in The Atlantic, Witness, TriQuarterly, The Kenyon Review, Slate and The New York Times. Lee has been a Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, and VCCA fellow has served as a National Book Award judge and has taught fiction writing at Yale University. She is a founder and former Board President of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and is an adjunct professor at Columbia University, where she teaches creative writing. Follow her on Twitter at @MarieMyungOkLee.
- David Morgan O’Connor is from a small Canadian village on Lake Huron. After many nomadic years, he’s based in Albuquerque, where stories and poems progress daily. His writing has appeared in more than 50 print or online publications. He reviews, interviews and blogs monthly.
Jane Friedman (@JaneFriedman) has nearly 25 years of experience in the media & publishing industry. She is the publisher of The Hot Sheet, the essential newsletter on the publishing industry for authors, and was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World in 2019.
In addition to being a professor with The Great Courses (How to Publish Your Book), she is the author of The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press), which received a starred review from Library Journal.
Jane speaks regularly at conferences and industry events such as Digital Book World and Frankfurt Book Fair, and has served on panels with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund. Find out more.