Check out my post on "GOLD NUGGETS ABOUT AGENTS, EDITORS AND CONFERENCES" http://lmpreston.blogspot.com

This past weekend my stint as a volunteer for the MWA writer’s conference ended. I’d volunteered to help out with the recruitment of agents, and it morphed into becoming the only person…

Hey there world!

Worry about whether my Ning groups will still be around after the change in May has beset me. I guess I haven't ever been the most active person, but that doesn't mean I am not lurking. I am. I also worry about how much people will lose touch with one another if their Ning goes away.

Too much worrying for Tuesday.

You may not yet have heard of Amy Hunington, but something tells me you will. I posted info about her deal here a few months ago. But here is info about her deal in her own words (including the actual query letter), from her blog.

How It Happened: The Scoop On My Book Deal for SLEEPWALKING

I know I’ve only given you, Chitlins readers, the bare-bones story of how I got a three-book deal for SLEEPWALKING. Since I didn’t actually put pen to paper-contract until three…

"A successfully self-published book can propel you down the road to a book contract at a commercial publishing house," say Alan Rinzler on his blog. Read an excerpt from his article titled: How Self-Publishing Can Lead To A Real Book Deal below. Click read more link for entire…

Alan Rinzler profiles author Kristen Tracy on his blog.

She grew up in a tiny Mormon town in Idaho (pop 841,) she writes poetry, reads kids’ books and says she avoids the internet as much as she possibly can.

Kristen Tracy sold her first book in 2006 to Simon and Schuster. The title was Lost It, a…

Shelf wars: What authors need to know about bookstore visibility from Alan Rinzler's Blog

Picture this: An irate local author can’t find his latest title on the neighborhood bookstore shelf. So he slips into the storeroom, grabs his books from the back stock and heads straight for the store’s most exclusive patch of real estate - the front table - where he elbows aside the bestsellers and drops his…

Hey everyone.



So I've been having a good think about this Feature for a while now, and it was Missie Summers over at The Unread Reader

that got me really working on this post. I know there are alot of you

that enjoy reading VERY MUCH. So who out there enjoys writing their

own stories?? I know I…

check this out on my blog: http://lmpreston.blogspot.com

Many writers begin writing for the joy of the writing experience. They have no true idea of where the end of the road leads to. It is…

A few months back I posted a forum question here at YALitChat asking if folks thought it was worth it to attend a writers conference. The responses were mostly an enthusiastic endorsement for going. So I thought, yeah, why not? Let's just see what it's all about.

Well, I shopped around for a conference that would work for me travel-wise and settled on the Backspace Writers Conference in NYC, May 27-29. I saw attending as a present to myself, since my birthday…

by Calvin Reed at Publishers Weekly 4.7.2010

The continuing prevalence of pale, sexy vampires (and the rise of related comic sub-genres), the growth of teen-focused dystopian fiction and the transformation of the children's publishing niche into a big advance—along with big financial pressure—publishing category, were just some of the topics covered by a panel of agents at Publishers Weekly's "Beyond Twilight: What's Hot in the Teen Market in Publishing and Hollywood."…