QueryTracker Blog

Helping Authors Find Literary Agents

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Books We Can't Live Without: The Business Version

Because we're great fans of books in general, the Query Tracker Blog is kicking off a Writer's Bookshelf series! Readers of the QT blog are encouraged to contribute, by the way. We'd love to hear your favorites.

My discussions with the QT bloggesses about fabulous writing books got me thinking. While writing advice can be life-changing, I have several nerdy favorites dealing with the business of authorship. Some of these titles have sustained me over the years, when there was nobody to ask. So here are our favorite practical titles.

And we'd love to know, what are yours?

The Writer's Legal Companion is a great tool for understanding exactly what a book contract is all about. Even if you have a lawyer look over your contract, it's still cool to actually know what your own Grant of Rights clause really says!

Making the Perfect Pitch is a paperback now available only from used book dealers, but it was incredibly valuable to me. It is a collection of essays written by agents who read queries all day long. Good stuff in there.

I have written before about the wonder that is The Naked Truth about Self Publishing. Even if you are traditionally published, there are tips and tricks in here that I haven't found anywhere else.

And if you find yourself doing a lot of your own PR, The Authors Guide to Working With Book Bloggers is invaluable. Like many of the other favorites here, it was written by someone who knows. In this case, the book blogger author surveyed over a hundred other book bloggers to better understand their needs.

What to do Before Your Book Launch is the work of two experienced fiction writers, M.J. Rose and Randy Susan Meyers. Get Known Before the Book Deal is meant to assist with platform building even earlier on in the process. Chuck Sambuchino's Create Your Writer Platform is another one in the same vein.

What are your favorites?

1 comment:

Her Grace, Heidi, the Duchess of Kneale said...

I'm fond of my Reverse Dictionary. You know what you want to define, but you don't know what the word is? That's when a Reverse Dictionary helps. (Patricide is the killing of your father. But what do you call it when you kill your grandfather?)

I also like the Dictionary of Emotions... (at least, I think that's what it's called. I'm not at home and can't actually look it up).

It's a dictionary that lists the outward physical signs of emotion. Frex, how would a character express anxiety? The tapping of a foot, a tight voice, nervous twitchings of fingers, sharp inhalations through the nose?