1) Keep it short and sweet

No matter how enthusiastic your fans are, typical book-reading audiences will start to tune out after 8-10 minutes of uninterrupted speech. Try to keep your reading around that time length so that you don’t end up losing the interest of your audience. The goal is to leave the reading with your audience wanting more, not having them leave feeling like they got way too much. Plus, the longer you drone on after your audience has lost interest, the more you look like you just enjoy hearing yourself talk (and that doesn’t bode well for book sales).

2) Choose the right passage

In addition to timing your book reading correctly, you’ll need to select the perfect passage to read from. This could be the beginning of your book, but it could also take place somewhere in the middle as well. Choosing a portion of your book for a book reading is a very difficult art. You want to choose a part that is heavier in action than exposition because that will hold the listener’s interest more, but you also don’t want to choose any parts with major spoilers because that may dissuade the audience members from purchasing your book post-reading. While attempting to avoid that faux pas, try to choose a part that feels as though it has a beginning, middle, and end within your story. Something that has action, good prose, a little bit of a character arc, and perhaps ends on a juicy cliffhanger to leave your listeners wanting more.

3) Practice & Prepare

A lot of authors approach book readings without much prep work other than choosing a passage. They think ‘Well, I can read so…’ and then they don’t prepare whatsoever. But you’d be surprised at the unexpected nerves that set in and the stuttering that can come from simply being out of practice at reading in a public setting. It’s crucial that authors practice reading their passage repetitively, alone and in front of family/friends, to get their rhythm down and help eliminate some of the hiccups that can occur in a reading.

Not only should you practice though, you’ll also need to be fully prepared for the reading. Call the venue and have them walk you through the activities of the day- Are they doing a Q&A after the reading? Are they doing a signing or meet & greet after the reading? Obviously, in the case of the latter, you’d need to come prepared with books and pens to sign copies and/or sell copies.

4) Be positive & humble

Nothing will put an audience off quicker than you coming out on stage with an arrogant attitude, acting like your words are prophetic. No matter what level of success you’ve attained with your work, readers want their authors to be humble and kind. And, if you’re looking to build up success, having humility will allow you to build good relationships where readers are rooting for you to succeed. These are the kind of supportive readers that will pass along recommendations to their friends, post about you on their social platforms, etc. because they genuinely want to support you.

In addition, you must have a positive attitude. Even if you are a huge introvert and doing book readings are the bain of your existence, your audience doesn’t want to hear that (even if you say it as a joke). They’re excited to see you in this platform, they don’t want to hear you complain about how much you hate it- this will put a damper on the whole event.

5) Be concise when answering questions

Doing a Q&A can be a fun way for readers to get to know you on a more personal level. If every answer you give is super long-winded, however, they’ll wish they never did. Not only will readers become discouraged from asking questions if every answer is ten minutes long, but time may run out without you getting to every question. If you think you’ll struggle giving short concise answers to questions, do some research beforehand. Look up some common questions at book readings and watch some youtube videos as well. Write down some of the most repeated questions and come up with concise answers that you’re also satisfied with.

6) Network & Promote Yourself

As we stated previously, a book reading is an amazing opportunity to establish personal relationships with some of your readers. Don’t be afraid to mingle during the signing portion or even after the event is over. These types of relationships are the ones that really work hard to help build up your career.

If you’re attempting to establish a social media presence for yourself as an author, it would be helpful to bring along a friend or fellow author to take videos and photos of the event. Doing a book reading establishes legitimacy for you as an author and that is great content to help build up your author pages.

The post How to do a Book Reading appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

1) Choose your audience

As we examined previously, one of the first steps to writing a cookbook is choosing your theme. Cookbook writers make the mistake of trying to make their cookbook as ‘general’ or easily accessible to anyone as possible. The problem with this method is a cookbook that is for ‘everyone’ is just going to get lost in the mix. A famous chef could pull off a more general theme because they already have name recognition, but generally readers in this genre are looking for cookbooks that match with specific needs they have. Maybe they’re a vegan but they’re looking for less complex quick recipes or they’re a Mom looking for some date night dishes that feel fancy but don’t take too much time. Cornering the market on more specific needs may feel like it’s limiting your audience, but it’s actually assuring that you gain a loyal following.

2) Skill Level

The next aspect to consider when writing your cookbook is your reader’s skill level. Do you want to make a cookbook for master chefs who want to challenge themselves? Or perhaps a book for people wanting to teach themselves how to cook from the… oven up? Putting yourself in the minds of your readers is a very important step in creating a cookbook that is a perfect match for your target audience. If you’d like to include recipes for an array of cooking skill levels you can, but keep in mind it may be helpful to break these up into sections in the table of contents. This way when a reader opens your book, they can flip right to the recipes they can handle.

3) Shopping

Another important thing to keep in mind when considering your audience is where they’ll be shopping. Some cookbook recipes are more regional, looking to attempt to bring recipes from the south all across the country or something of the like. If you’re attempting a cookbook like this, you’ll need to keep in mind that people in other states or other parts of the world may be shopping at entirely different stores than you do. This means there may be some specific ingredients that will be more difficult to find for them than it would be for you locally. So, as you’re writing, it’s important to research the ingredients you’re including and, if need be, including possible substitutes for that ingredient if it will be difficult to find in other areas of the world.

4) Budget

Money, money, money, must be…. yummy? Not quite, but budget is important to consider as well. If you’re writing a book of recipes that happen to be super simple with inexpensive ingredients, taking ‘on a budget’ onto your title will definitely draw more readers to your work. If your recipes are more complex and could be expensive, it may be helpful to consider adding little footnotes giving people who are on a budget tips on how to find less expensive versions of certain ingredients. This will end up making your recipes accessible for both readers who want something more high-end and something more budget-conscious.

5) Time

Finally, when putting yourself in the minds of your food fanatics, consider their time. How much time will they need to set aside to cook these recipes? An hour? Two hours? If your recipes tend to take longer, who will have time to cook longer recipes each day? Stay-at-home parents? Retirees? Considering the time needed for recipes could simply allow you to narrow down a possible target audience to tack onto your book title. Quick Recipes for Moms on the Go, A Stay-at-Home Parent’s Guide to Nutrition-Packed Meals– narrowing down the target audience using time will allow your book to pop up in those specific searches.

If you’d like to allow your book to be more accessible to people with varying degrees of cooking time, consider adding longer or shorter recipes to give your readers an array of options. Similarly to the skill level, this could be another manner to arrange your recipes in your table of contents. This way, your readers can easily flip to a recipe they have time for instead of having to spend an hour flipping through your book that they could’ve spent cooking their new favorite meal.

The post Writing For Your Audience: Cookbooks appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

As writers, it can be extremely difficult to keep ourselves inspired in our writing every day. There are, however, tools you can utilize in your day to day life that can add to your level of inspiration and perhaps even improve your writing:

Pinterest

One way to help inspire your writing is to create a Pinterest board for your book. You can pin images that encompass certain settings that you’re working on writing, images of people or fan art that look like your characters, or even mood boards that capture the overall aesthetic of your book. These will not only help you be more descriptive with your scene-writing but combing through your Pinterest board or adding new pins is a great way to feel inspired and get new ideas for your story.

Instagram

As we’ve discussed previously, the author/book-loving Instagram community lovingly titled ‘bookstagram’ is a great resource for book promotion as well as promoting yourself as an author. In addition, it can be an awesome source for writing inspiration. Rather than opening your Instagram in the morning and combing through photos of friends/relatives, following bookstagram accounts allows you to see cozy and gorgeous book photos first thing. These accounts will even post long captions describing either what they’re reading or writing with advice and questions you can participate in. There are also stunning book fan art accounts on Instagram as well, where you may either find a drawing that looks exactly like a character your writing or the art may inspire you to pick up a new book.

Aesthetic Household Items

In addition to items based on your favorite book series, there are also aesthetic items you can add to your home to inspire your writing. For example, the literary shop Leaf & Lore came out with a line of candles specifically for writers which include scents meant to inspire you to write certain settings/characters. Some scents include Haunted Library, The Magician, The Enchantress, The Lonely Tower, and many more. Lighting a candle and filling your room with the scent of a haunted library as your character walks among the ancient stacks of books will provide an extremely immersive experience for both you and, in turn, your readers.

Web-based Writing Challenges

Participating in collective writing challenges held through digital platforms is another excellent way of engaging with other writers and helping to inspire each other. The most prominent example of this taking place is through Nanowrimo, the writing challenge held for National Novel Writing Month in November which challenges writers to complete a novel in a month. The program allows you to engage with the community, talk about challenges and triumphs that you face along the way to completing your manuscript. The program itself will also send you daily inspiration to help you keep your progress going and keep you inspired.

Tracking Your Reading Progress

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: reading is crucial for your writing. When you’re a writer, it’s important to keep up with your reading- especially in the genre you’re working within. You can use tools such as Goodreads to keep you on track with your writing. Goal-oriented people will love Goodreads because it allows you to set a writing goal for the year and track your progress book by book. You can also rate and write a review on books you’ve read and engage with other readers in the community. If you sign up for their emails, Goodreads will send you additional suggestions on reads you may like based on books you’re currently reading. Who knows, they may help you find your new favorite book (besides your own, of course).

Create a Book Playlist

Similarly to creating Pinterest boards, curating a playlist for your book can be another way to help immerse you in a sensory experience that will get you excited for your writing. There are a few different ways you can do this as well. You could create one all-encompassing playlist for the entirety of your book and build it in order based on the feel of each scene. Or you can make specific playlists for specific scenes in the book as you’re writing them. Maybe your character is having an important or emotional conversation with a friend or there’s a really romantic scene between your character and their love interest or even a character’s death scene. Having a playlist of songs curated for these moments/scenes can set the mood for you when you’re going to write them or even make it easier to get back into the writing if you stopped part of the way through creating them.

The post Tools to Inspire Your Writing appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

1) “If you’re only going to write when you’re inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you will never be a novelist — because you’re going to have to make your word count today, and those words aren’t going to wait for you, whether you’re inspired or not.”

Novel writing is a long and arduous process and if you’re constantly waiting for inspiration to strike, you’ll never finish your book. Gaiman encourages writers to write even when they aren’t inspired- set a daily word count goal and make sure you meet it every day. Eventually, you’ll stumble your way into inspiration.

2) “Tell your story. Don’t try and tell the stories that other people can tell. Because [as a] starting writer, you always start out with other people’s voices—you’ve been reading other people for years… But, as quickly as you can, start telling the stories that only you can tell—because there will always be better writers than you, there will always be smarter writers than you… but you are the only you.”

Although you should absolutely read other writers that you look up to or admire, it can be easy to accidentally take on their voices instead of your own- especially when you’re a new writer. Try your best to learn to distinguish your own voice and figure out what’s unique about it. Because that’s a large part of why people will read your books.

3) “Write more. And remember that everyone who writes anything good wrote a lot of bad stuff first. You are learning, be kind to yourself, just as you would be kind to anyone learning to do something hard, like juggling or ballroom dancing or surgery.

Learn from your mistakes, and get better, and one day you’ll write something you won’t loathe. (Also, it’s fine to dislike something you’ve written. But don’t dislike yourself for having made it.)”

This last line here is especially important for writers to keep in mind. Writing can be a constant uphill battle with your own self-esteem. It’s extremely difficult to critique your writing without also critiquing yourself since they’re so closely attached. Don’t hate on yourself just because you wrote a bad line- every great writer has written plenty of them.

4) “On the whole, anything that gets you writing and keeps you writing is a good thing. Anything that stops you writing is a bad thing. If you find your writer’s group stopping you from writing, then drop it.”

If you find yourself in a writing slump, try to identify what’s causing it. Eliminate the cause as best as you can because the writing should come first. You may think that writer’s group you joined will help you stay on task, but if it’s only making you more nervous since you have to share your writing with others then it needs to go.

5) “Show [your story] to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that it is. Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”

Unless your friends are editors, they have no business ‘playing editor’ with your manuscript. What Gaiman is saying here is that, when you’re having friends examine your work, you want them to be doing so from a reader’s POV. If they identify an area where they feel something is ‘off’ or didn’t quite make sense, you should reexamine that area. If they were confused, other readers likely will be as well. But once they step over the line and start bossing you around about your work without the expertise of an editor- simply tune them out.

6) “If you like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien, don’t read big Tolkienesque fantasies – Tolkien didn’t read big Tolkienesque fantasies, he read books on Finnish philology. Go and read outside of your comfort zone, go and learn stuff.”

Although we’d still advocate for brushing up on authors you want to emulate, Gaiman makes an excellent point here. Most great fantasy/sci-fi authors found inspiration for their world-building from mythology or something outside of that genre. It could jump-start some inspiration if you branch out and study some history, philosophy, or anything outside of the genre you’re working within.

The post Neil Gaiman’s Writing Tips appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

1) Don’t Dumb Down Your Writing

People often make the mistake of assuming YA books need to be dumbed down for a younger audience. But, in reality, all YA really means is that you have a teenage protagonist. Of course, there are a few restrictions on cursing and any explicit/sexual content, but aside from that, it’s like writing any other novel. And, because of the growing popularity of YA books in the adult community, you want to appeal to a wide age range amongst your readers. Therefore, when you’re going into writing, don’t worry about dumbing yourself down or editing your language (unless you have a potty mouth).

2) POV

The trickiest part of YA writing is putting yourself in the mind of a teenager. When choosing a POV, for example, if you choose the third person past tense you can’t write from the perspective of an adult looking back on the naivety of their teenage years. Although that would likely be much easier, that’s not a perspective that will appeal to teenage readers. They don’t want to read about an adult who’s already developmentally light years ahead of them; they want to read about someone who has characteristics they recognize and struggles/insecurities which they can relate to. And the adults who read this genre want to feel like they’re putting themselves back into that mindset as well.

3) Write Like a Teenager, Not Like a Stereotype

Along those same lines, one of the biggest mistakes you could make as a YA writer is making your teenage character a reflection of how you now feel about teenagers. Typically, once we’ve all passed that phase in our lives, we look back and think of our teenage selves as naive, foolish, or even downright annoying. And that feeling may even extend to modern teens in general. But, at the time of your teenage years, the experiences that you have and the mistakes you make are real, emotionally charged, and important to you. You have to put yourself back in that mindset, the one where a boy you like saying hi to you is the most important thing that happened to you that day. The one where someone making fun of the shoes you wore made you question your worth as a person. Because if you write a protagonist who is just yelling at people, being moody, and making stupid decisions that the much smarter adults warn her against…approximately 0% of teenagers will relate to that character.

4) Avoid Tropes and/or Put a Unique Spin On Them

For those unfamiliar with the genre, here are a few YA tropes that are very common among all facets of the genre (YA sci-fi, YA fantasy, YA contemporary, etc). The first is Insta-love, which is when your protagonist sees their love interest for the first time and gravity shifts and the world turns differently and everything changes in that single moment and…blah, blah, more gushy stuff. This is a trope you should avoid at all costs. While it may seem romantic initially, it’s also incredibly unrealistic and won’t align with anything a reader could relate to. Love is something that happens over time–use scenes throughout the book to build it up. Another common trope, especially among YA dystopian books, is the reluctant hero/chosen one. The protagonist is the only one who can save everyone, but he/she just wants to be a normal high school student… There are several other tropes you’ll find throughout YA (enemies to lovers, love triangle, dead/missing parents, etc). We’re not suggesting you avoid these tropes completely, but if you’re going to use them at least give them their own spin so readers don’t find them so predictable. Except for Insta-love–avoid that like the plague.

5) Avoid Archetypes

Another common mistake among YA writers is creating archetypical characters instead of unique individuals. We’ll say it again for the people in the back: teens are not stupid. They’re intelligent with growing minds. Making your characters simple and stereotypical isn’t going to make them easier to relate to. People aren’t as simple as ‘the bully’, ‘the nerd’, ‘the tough girl’, ‘the jock’, ‘the popular girl’- and teens are more aware of that now than ever. They, as well as adult readers, want to see authentic, three-dimensional, complicated characters because that’s what people are actually like in the real world (and in high school too).

6) Avoid Slang

Another thing teens can smell from a mile away? Pandering. The most obvious sign of pandering in teen/YA writing is if you try to use slang that you feel like they’ll understand. Don’t say that party was LIT, or those tacos were FIRE because, very quickly, teens will start to feel like they’re reading a book meant to mock them rather than relate to them. You need to adapt your voice to that of a teenager but remember: teens don’t speak an entirely different language.

7) Learn by Reading

As with any genre, one of the best tools for perfecting your writing is to look to other writers as examples. Checking out successful writers of Teen/YA books will help you learn what you’re doing right, what you’re doing wrong, and even what your book may be missing. To help you get started, we’ve compiled a list of some of the top Teen/YA books from different decades throughout history. How many have you read?

The post Genre Focus: Teen and Young Adult appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.