Category: Publishing

The $50 Home Makeover out this week!

by Maria

This week was the official release of a book I’m so proud to have worked on—The $50 Home Makeover by Shaunna West!

The $50 Home Makeover

It’s a GORGEOUS book, all thanks to Shaunna’s stunning photography. She really has a talent for capturing bright light and pops of colors. She’s also an incredible businesswoman, who’s built her Perfectly Imperfect brand through her blog, online store, and her physical store in Alabama. If you’re not sure how to turn your creative passion into a career and eventually get a book deal, follow her!

She also had a lovely book launch party at her store (read about it here), which made me wish I could jet off to Alabama to buy pretty things in her shop and celebrate this fantastic book.

I acquired and edited this book when I was still an editor, and it’s exciting to finally see it in stores. There are a ton of projects I mentally earmarked to try when I was reviewing the page proofs.

I would love to try her idea for customizing affordable Ikea curtains, especially since we’ll need curtains when we move into our new apartment in September. All you do is buy plain curtains from Ikea and then fancy them up with a swash of gold paint. They look so elegant and timeless—like you spent big bucks on them!

The book also has a great tutorial for painting builder grade cabinets and making them look chic and expensive. And there’s an equally fantastic project for adding a pretty frame to a builder grade mirror, so that it has more personality.


BookLaunchPartyInvitationsPhoto by Shaunna West.

This is the perfect book if you’re feeling very stuck in your home and don’t have the budget or the time to take on big renovations. It’s amazing what a coat of paint and a few bucks can do if you have just the right inspiration.

Go pick up a copy of it, curl up on the couch, and start taking in all the pretty! You’ll be surprised how inspired and excited you’ll be to make your current home your dream home.

3 Strategies to Help Creatives and Writers Be More Productive

by Maria

writer productivity tips literary agent

I read an interesting essay this weekend about how the world is split into Makers and Managers, and why these two types of people work completely differently. The idea is that there are those of us whose job it is to make something—programmers, writers, creatives, artists, chefs, designers—and those of us whose job it is to keep the whole shebang running smoothly. (Here’s the whole essay; it’s written by Paul Graham, co-founder of the seed capital firm Y Combinator, found via The Nester.)

But I actually think more jobs fall right in between Maker and Manager these days. The job of an agent definitely requires a bit of Maker and Manager. We’re managing our author’s careers; we’re meeting with editors; we’re coordinating and mediating and generally making sure projects run smoothly. But we’re also creatives, particularly in the initial stages of a project, when ideas are still being molded and the proposal or manuscript is being revised and often rewritten.

I also thinks that most authors are all also part Makers and part Managers. Yes, a big part of their work—the writing—falls strictly in the realm of creative work. But the other stuff that’s just as important—the platform and brand building—requires managing designers and often employees, meeting with potential partners, crafting business plans, marketing, networking, etc. After all, an author who is building a platform is essentially a small business owner, and therefore wears many, many hats. And what does that lead to?

Hat hair. Oh, and burnout.

Read More

Read, Eat, Drink — Weekend Roundup

by Maria

A weekly round-up of books, news, thoughts, recipes, and miscellany for the weekend. 

Read: The Great Contraction.

Tuesday brought the announcement that Hachette Book Group (one of the Big Five publishers) will be buying the Perseus Books Group imprints, while the distribution arm of Perseus will be sold to Ingram. This follows news that broke in May that HarperCollins (another Big Five publisher) will buy Harlequin (most known for its series romance, but which also publishes fiction and nonfiction for women) from Torstar, the Canadian media company.

I think Dennis Johnson, co-founder of indie press Melville House, sums up the big picture best here:

“…It’s just another consolidation story, one that’s been predicted all along: More of American publishing is going to consolidate, not necessarily to fight Amazon but simply to survive in a marketplace that dictates consolidation, and has since before Amazon existed. American publishing, after all, has been consolidating slowly since the 1960s. It’s only accelerated recently, and now the other shoe will drop soon enough — HarperCollins merging with Simon and Schuster is the one most are predicting.”

For agents, consolidation means less places to sell books, since imprints within one house often won’t bid against each other in an auction. For writers, this means less competition for your book, which is never a good thing. This is especially important in the nonfiction realm, since Perseus is primarily made up of fantastic nonfiction imprints like Running Press, Basic Books, Da Capo, and others that will now come under the Hachette Book Group umbrella.

Of all the coverage since the news broke on Tuesday, this article is my favorite. It manages to capture that particular feeling and mood that washes over publishing people when news like this breaks. It’s one of quiet concern, contemplation, and increasingly shaky optimism.

********

Eat: Elk.

1-IMG_2132

Anyone who knows me knows that I get a great kick out of trying wild game. It was only a few years ago that I’d never even had a taste of venison, but now I’ve grown to love it in all its forms—steaks, pastrami, jerky, whole roasted loins, sausage.

Read More

Interview with Amy Newman

by Maria

Happy Day 7 of the World Cup!

In case you’re trying to distract yourself from the jitters of Brazil playing at 3 pm, head on over to Amy Newman’s blog for a quick interview with me. Amy was kind enough to feature me as part of her agent interview series, and she let me talk about how I got started in publishing and what I think it takes to succeed as a writer.

And I definitely encourage aspiring writers to sift through the other agent interviews on her site–Stephen Barr’s interview is particularly hilarious!