Input needed! How can I help on your writing journey? ✏️
Discover more from Chapter Break
Input needed! How can I help on your writing journey? ✏️
Hello, wonderful subscribers!
First of all, thank you so much for allowing Chapter Break into your inbox. We’ve quickly grown to nearly 6,000 subscribers, which is far beyond what I thought was possible. I’ve had so much fun interviewing best-selling authors and prominent literary agents over the past months, and your positive feedback and success stories have been so rewarding to hear!
Many of you have inquired about additional content to support you on your book writing and publishing journey, which led me to brainstorm possible ideas for a premium newsletter (in addition to the current free version). You all know what you need best, so I’d love if you could provide your thoughts on what type of content you would want to see in it.
To provide more context on the ideas above:
Answers to subscriber questions: Premium subscribers would have the ability to submit specific questions about their situation/story (e.g., “What genre would you consider a book about XYZ?”), and I would write up a response (almost like an advice column!).
Writing prompts and exercises: This would include super tactical resources for you to immediately apply to your manuscript — think worksheets, templates, checklists (not unlike my Story Self-Assessment that many of you have used!).
Specific editing examples: I would provide a piece of text and discuss my feedback on how I’d guide the author to revise it, so you can see more hands-on editing samples.
Roundup of resources: This would be a list of writing resources from across the web that I’ve found useful — think articles, videos, books, podcasts, etc.
Please let me know what would be most helpful to you by voting in the poll! If you have another idea unrelated to the above, don’t hesitate to leave me a comment or respond to this email.
I’m excited to continue growing this incredible community and find new ways to support you. It’s truly an honor to be a part of your journey!
Your friendly neighborhood book editor,
Alyssa
Input needed! How can I help on your writing journey? ✏️
Not sure if this would be better for a video or newsletter, but I am curious about the steps that come after the book deal. It seems that a lot of publishers are putting a significant portion of a book's marketing on the author. I'm all for doing what I can to make my book a success and I understand most people in publishing are being stretched too thin. But at what point is it no longer worth working with a traditional publisher? How much of our own marketing are we expected to do? What can we do to prevent our books from failing when publishers put us on the back burner in favor of one of their already established authors?
At the stage I am now, rewriting, I'd like to see more editing examples znd ways to analyze a Big Five author's prose. The words that became the final result after writing... self-editing... agent rewrites... editor rewrites... second reads.. and more. Why were these words the best to get that deal signed, auction started, book published, and reader hooked... ?
Also...after watching DOZENS of your videos, more of your heartfelt encouragement. For me, by far the one thing you've said that STICKS OUT is "Keep going!" You said to "Keep going if you want to be published by The Big Five". The way you said it with such passion and conviction reminds me of when I wanted to drop out of college and my now husband said "You have to FIGHT!" Needless to say, I'm happy I finished college, got my degree, and have a great job that allows me to write... etc... etc...
So, just more of that cheerleading PLEASE!
Kindest regards and gratitude,
Xavier