The Ultimate Niche Product

Books are the ultimate niche product. And they’re getting “nichier” every year, according to a number of people I heard and talked to at the Independent Book Publishing Association’s Publishing University 2015. Peter Hildick-Smith of Codex-Group opened Pub U 2015 with...

Editing Harper Lee

By now, anyone who pays any attention to the world of words knows that Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, is releasing a new book. The stature of To Kill a Mockingbird, which was published in 1960, can surely be measured by the number of news outlets around...

Finding Help in a Festival of Choices

In 1996, my husband and I took our four-year-old son to the first-ever Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. The main draw for us was a chance for our son to get to meet some of the characters from his favorite PBS shows—none of us remember now which ones. The event,...

Can Editors Find Love?

A few months ago, I wrote the Top 10 ways to Make Your Editor Love You. It only seemed fair to write the flip side, giving editors some tips for How to Make Your Author Love You. The tips for editors were published in the September/October issue of The Freelancer, the...