M. J. Rose Quotes
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When I was a kid, I read many of my mom's books. Sometimes, there were mysteries, but there were no delineations, and my mother never talked about book genres. Nor did we differentiate genres in school.
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If your mom is still around, you're so lucky.
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Recognize that the great majority of us aren't trained actors and entertainers. Usually, it's not our faces, our bodies, our personas or our stage presence that sells our books. It's our stories, our visions and our voices.
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Estimates are that in 2012, more than 32 million books were available - the explosion, thanks to the ease of self-publishing; 2013 could see even more titles grace our virtual bookstores! That means we are going to be awash in covers and titles, plot descriptions and characters.
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There's almost no author alive who isn't weathering the tumultuous changes in the publishing industry.
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In 1998, I self-published online in order to get a traditional deal.
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When I was in advertising, I did a great deal of work on television commercials. A co-worker and I wrote a screenplay, which led to a few more screenplays, and some were optioned by production companies. I was advised to move to California but didn't want to make the move. I decided to use another form of storytelling, so I wrote a novel.
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Nora Roberts, Stephen King, Lee Child and George R. R. Martin write wildly different books. Their writing, plotting and styles have little or nothing in common. But they all write books and characters that readers find appealing.
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'Power Play' is a morality tale for our post-Enron world and - not incidentally - wildly entertaining. Nothing wrong with that.
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MWA and The Author's Guild refused to accept me as a member.
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Twitter is worth it if you like tweeting. Same is true of Facebook. Or Pinterest. Nothing wrong with having a social presence.
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Don't spend more than 10% of your marketing/PR budget on a trailer. Trailers have to be marketed, too. So, far too many authors wind up marketing their trailers instead of their books.
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I think Paris smells not just sweet but melancholy and curious, sometimes sad but always enticing and seductive. She's a city for the all senses, for artists and writers and musicians and dreamers, for fantasies, for long walks and wine and lovers and, yes, for mysteries.
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When writers stop to sharpen pencils or get up and make coffee to procrastinate, they still stay in their heads with their characters. But when you zip over to read email or check your Facebook page, you get zapped out of the fictive dream. It's brutal on my writing.
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From the very beginning, I envisioned success as selling enough books so I could keep getting published and continue to write what I wanted to without compromising.
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Thriller novelists get asked - berated, sometimes - about whether their work glorifies bad behavior, even, exploits human tragedy for entertainment.
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A comprehensive marketing plan involves both online and offline efforts to use and broaden your existing platform to promote your book.
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As a general rule, when you comment on a blog, make it knowledgeable or witty and, most of all, relevant to that post - then, simply sign it with your name and your book title. Resist the urge to brag or sell your book.
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Buy other authors' books when you go to their events. Even if you aren't going to read it. Even if you are going to give it away. Even if you aren't interested. Not just for the author but for the bookstore. It's karma and just plain good manners.
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The most satisfying thrillers send ordinary people into battle against the forces of evil - otherwise known as greed, ego, rage, fear and laziness - and bring them out bloodied but whole.
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If I present a boring personal life to my readers, it's going to be harder for them to think of my novels as thrilling.
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They say every writer really just writes about one thing over and over. I guess my one thing is how the past impacts the present.
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When I do a workshop, there is always at least one author who comes up afterward and asks if I'll take a look at his or her book and consider blurbing it. For some reason, I can turn someone down in e-mail, but when he or she is looking me in the eye, I cave.
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From 1999 on - until 2003 - I covered publishing in a weekly column for Wired.com and wrote for several other publications - altogether writing over 150 articles.