Imagine two chefs. One is a world-class culinary ninja who has logged thousands of hours in the kitchen. The other, for the sake of this parable, is me, who has logged about 43 minutes. We’re given the exact same recipe for pecan pie and as much baking time as we want. Whose pie would you […]
Earlier this year I coached Gary Neal Hansen through the process of writing a book proposal (See here for a post that will take you to the whole series.) It was a great experience. As a way to wrap things up, I asked Gary to write a guest post on the main things he’s taking […]
Earlier this year I coached author and professor Gary Neal Hansen through the process of writing a book proposal. We covered every element of a typical nonfiction book proposal except the writing sample. This post will cover the writing sample. (To read the rest of the series, visit here.) Gary sent me his writing sample […]
Recently my six-year-old son won a slinky from Chuck E. Cheese. It wasn’t long before we tried to do what they do in the commercials. That’s right—we headed for the top of the stairs. We tried. And tried. At best the slinky walked down a step or two, then died. Dead slinky. “Dang,” I thought, […]
I’ll never forget the first time I went to Times Square. My friend and I were just out of high school. We went to New York to see as many Broadway shows as we could fit into our three-day weekend. Arriving in the evening, we checked in, threw our bags in the room, and ventured […]
I couldn’t be happier to be interviewing literary agent Esther Fedorkevich of The Fedd Agency. Esther is a first-generation American, the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants born in Argentina and China — and she has that indefatigable immigrant spirit in spades. After breaking records selling Bible studies for Lifeway and then working for The Lampo Group, […]
Last fall I attended the inaugural ReWrite conference, a writers conference headed up by literary agent Esther Fedorkevich. It was one of the best writers conferences I’ve attended because of the quality of the speakers, the intimate atmosphere, and the access attendees had to great writers, editors, and agents. Author-in-his-own-right and moderator Jim Henderson interviewed […]
Earlier this week I was listening to a conversation between Michael Hyatt (@MichaelHyatt), author of Platform, and Stu McLaren (@StuMcLaren), a startup entrepreneur. At one point in the discussion Stu emphasized the importance of knowing your audience’s pain. What is your audience’s need? What is the problem your audience has that you can solve? And […]
I’m very pleased to be guest posting at literary agent Chip MacGregor’s blog today. The title of the post is “How to Be a Christian Author without Embarrassing God.” Here’s how it starts: Tony Campolo wrote a book a while back titled Following Jesus without Embarrassing God. In it Campolo challenged Christians to let go of practices […]
At writers conferences I often receive questions like these: Will publishers be interested in my book if it’s already been self-published? (Answer: Yes, as long as the self-published version sold well.) I need to be published to get an agent; I need an agent to get published. What gives? (Answer: Do something to get […]
