Blogger: Rachel Zurakowski
Location: Books & Such main office, Santa Rosa, Calif.
Professional Tools
Writers need to keep up on the publishing market; a variety of tools help the author to be knowledgeable and “in-the-loop,” as they write and submit projects. These are the professional tools.
1) Research Books & Subscriptions: Keep up on the book market so you can know what’s selling and also what’s happening at the different publishing houses. Books like Sally Stuart’s Christian Writers Market Guide or Robert Lee Brewer’s 2010 Writers Market are tools that help authors to keep current on the happenings in the industry. Magazines like Christian Retailing or Publishers Weekly are full of information and insight into book publishing and into what’s hot right now.
2) Microsoft Word: Word is the standard for publishing these days so learn at the least how to use these features: page numbers, headers, page breaks, fonts, text size, envelope and label printing, double spacing, track changes, comments and charts. It’s also nice if you can learn to save your Word document in the universal “.doc” format instead of the Word 2007 “.docx.” Those who haven’t upgraded Word to the newest version can’t open the “.docx” documents.
3) Writers’ Group Registrations: Staying current is made a little bit easier when you have a large group of authors keeping you up-to-date. Groups such as American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW), Romance Writers of America (RWA), The Writers View and more are great tools to help you with the market. Make sure you don’t let these groups distract you from your goal, however. It’s easy to get carried away with chatting about writing, but then you don’t actually write your manuscript.
What tools do you use to keep up-to-date with the book market?
I try and stay up on the market by reading industry blogs along with following some group emails on ACFW/RWA. It seems to help.
Great post!
This might seem a little obvious, but Amazon is a great place to see what’s selling and to read comments from readers. Granted, some of the comments are fanboy fluff, but many of them are well written, competent reviews.
I read blogs like this one. 🙂 There are several blogging editors and agents.
I also use Google alerts. You can put in any key words. I have mine set so anytime Google picks up an article or blog post on children’s publishing or children’s authors or children’s books, they send me a link.