Category: Uncategorized

I am interested in becoming an editor or ghostwriter. I have now started reading a book that was published without being edited, and in desperate need of a ghost writer. These writers all had valuable ideas, but no support or advice for how to make it a well written book. I want to help. How do I become qualified or listed, or whatever I have to do to break into this area?

Technically, this is outside the scope of this blog, but I decided to address it because published authors are frequently approached about ghostwriting books for other people.

If you’re interested in having your own career as a published author, I’d suggest staying away from ghostwriting and concentrating on your own stories. However, some excellent writers struggle with new ideas but are great at shining up the work of others and receive lots of personal fulfillment from doing so. If this is the case, then ghostwriting and/or book doctoring might be something for you to consider.

In ghostwriting, generally you write the entire book from someone else’s outline and research notes; they put their name on the cover and you are listed briefly in the acknowledgments. Sometimes they’ll give you credit on the front, as in “by Jane Doe, with Sue Smith.” (You would be Sue Smith.)

A book doctor takes a nearly complete manuscript and fixes it, often rewriting major portions. Credit and acknowledgments are the same as with ghostwriting, but since the author wrote the first draft of the book and you are merely polishing it, they rarely give you credit on the front cover.

Qualifications are: you need to be a good editor/writer, able to fix the words of others without obscuring their original voice. Create a bio listing your writing credentials or industry experience. Put together a portfolio of your work to show people.

Pricing varies widely for these services. Do some Googling and then decide what you’re worth. In the beginning, the first time you work with a new client, you should be willing to do one chapter free to show them what they can expect from you. After you have several published books, you can show those as samples.

As to how to “break in” to the business, you most likely will not be hired by a publishing company unless you know someone in the biz who is willing to give you a chance. Also, a publishing company would hire you as an editor for an hourly rate, which is going to be much less than freelancing as a ghostwriter.

You will most likely be working with non-fiction first-time authors or experts in a particular area who do great workshops and presentations and need a book to extend the reach of their message. Set up a website, get business cards, spread the word that you’re open for business. You’ll get your first few clients based on the strength of your personality and confidence. After that, they will (hopefully) start referring their friends and colleagues to you.

I’ve been getting several spam comments posted lately, some with viruses attached. Most of them I’ve caught within minutes of them posting, but some I haven’t.

Although I hate to do this because it’s so annoying, I’ve turned on the Word Verification feature for commenting. Hopefully that will do the trick.

I had a one-on-one session with the visiting agent. She said she liked the pages I showed her and asked to see more, once they were written. This will take a month or so. In the meantime, should I write a brief thank-you note, mentioning the project and thanking her for her time? Or don’t agents and editors like to use their valuable time reading thank-you notes?

Personally, I like a very expensive box of dark, chewy chocolates and a dozen roses.

Seriously, on the one hand, it’s nice to make a personal connection and treat agents as if they were real people, in which case, Miss Manners would suggest that a short thank you note would be in order here. On the other hand, let’s say this agent saw 50 people over the space of a conference, that’s 50 thank you notes she’ll have to open and read—and if she’s really, really busy…

I’m assuming you gave her a gracious thank you during your session so I’d say wait and include a brief thank you as the first paragraph of your cover letter when you send your manuscript, along the lines of “Dear Ms. Whosit, Thank you so much for visiting with me in a one-on-one session at the LDStorymakers conference in March 2008. I made the changes you suggested and enclosed are the additional pages you requested I send. . .” Or something like that.

What is the place of poetry in the LDS market? Is there any hope of selling a poetry collection to any publisher? If so, what kind of poetry would be of interest?

Poetry is a hard sell in any market, unless your last name happens to be Dickinson or Frost or . . . Even Carol Lynn Pearson, the LDS poet, doesn’t sell much poetry.

The only way you’re going to sell a book of poetry to an LDS publisher is if it’s a gift book, a children’s picture book, or part of an anthology (like Especially for Mormons)—but even those are tough sells.

I’d suggest sending your poems to magazines. The Ensign and New Era publish poems. There are also lots of Christian magazines looking for poetry. Check the 2008 Writer’s Market.

It was suggested by a reader that I do a regular post here about the LDS Fiction blog. So far for 2008, we have 24 new releases by LDS authors. I think that’s pretty impressive. Please go take a look. Let me know if I’ve missed any.

Starting this Friday, I’ll post an update listing the new titles that have been added during the week.

I’d also like to do something to encourage you to go over to that blog and look around, leave comments, and rate the books you’ve read. Since most of the comments over there are anonymous, we can’t do a monthly comment contest like we do here. I was thinking about a weekly post offering a free book if you left a comment on that post within a specified time period. Like the contests on this blog, the book prizes would need to be supplied and shipped by authors and publishers.

If you’re interested, send me an e-mail with LDS Fiction Prize in the subject line and the title(s) of the books you’re willing to offer as prizes.

What type of information/milestones do you tend to convey to the author? What’s the minimum (or happy medium) that authors should expect?

This varies between publishers, but here is our usual communication schedule:

• Receipt of mss—if an author has included an e-mail address.
• Rejection/Readers—4 to 6 weeks later, we send a rejection; We usually do not contact them to let them know it’s moved on to other readers.
• Acceptance—up to several months later, phone call; we give them an estimated publish date, but also make it clear that the date is subject to change. There’s also some back and forth about the contract.
• Rewrites—an ongoing process until the mss is ready for typesetting. There may be weeks between contact.
• Proofs/Cover Art—sent when ready for final approval. We have a firm release date at this time.
• Books arrive—shipped to author when they arrive in the warehouse; books usually arrive in stores around the same time.
• Promo/Marketing—Between the time the books go to press and when they arrive in the bookstores, we contact the author several times to plan promotional activities.
• Life of Book—We contact the author at various intervals to let them know about ads or other promo things we’re doing; if their book is getting special notice or press; if ther’s something we want the author to do. We also send sales reports and royalties (depending on publisher, royalties are yearly, twice a year, quarterly, monthly).
• Next Book—The better the book is selling, the more often we contact the author. After a few months, we start asking about their next book.

Do you have suggestions for ways authors can improve communications with their publishers?

Hmmm, do you mean how can you communicate with them? Or how do you get them to communicate with you?

Some publishers/editors are lousy communicators—they rarely return phone calls or e-mails, and when they do, they don’t give satisfactory answers. This stinks. It shouldn’t happen. Communicating with the author is part of their job and they should do so in a professional and timely manner. If your publisher/editor is a bad communicator, there is probably nothing you can do about it. Sorry.

Some authors have unrealistic expectations of the time a publisher/editor can spend with them. I have authors who call once or twice a week and want to spend an hour talking about the problems they’re having with their current work in progress. This is very inappropriate and, I confess, I often duck their calls. I have others who call regularly to see if the edit is done, how many pages have been typeset, if the files are at the press yet… This is inappropriate too.

But assuming you are a professional and realistic author and you’re working with a professional and responsible publisher/editor, just ask them what their expectations are. Do they prefer phone calls or e-mails? What is their average response time? What types of communications do they want from you? (Example, I want to know when my authors are doing marketing/promo activities so I can help support those.) If both parties are reasonable, it shouldn’t be too hard to work something out.

Hello LDS Publisher Readers,

I’m writing from a new group blog called Mormon Renaissance (www.mormonrenaissance.org) that focuses on improving the craft, critical discernment, and the quality of Mormon artistic efforts. In a recent post, I discussed the idea of Mormon literature as an aesthetic that spreads across multiple genres, rather than limited to a single genre. In continuing our discussion of this issue, we’re thinking about a follow-up series of guest posts by Mormon authors on how they can write something uniquely Mormon without betraying the expectations of their genre. If you are a published Mormon author from any of the following genres and are interested in writing a few paragraphs on how your genre fiction can also be “Mormon” fiction, please send me an e-mail:
Science fiction/fantasy
Romance
Mystery
Historical Fiction
Literary Fiction

Liz Busby
lizbusby [at] byu [dot] edu

The national market has the NYT Best Seller list to acknowledge fiction titles that are selling like hotcakes. The LDS market has no equivalent. (The LDSBA used to do a Top Ten list, but they don’t anymore.)

While I can’t really reproduce an NYT type best selling list [because 1) publishers aren’t going to easily divulge that info to me, and 2) I don’t have time to collect it], with your help we can create a cumulative best-seller list.

Although copies sold is more often an indicator of marketing than quality, if a book sells over 10,000 copies, that’s saying something. While good books may be overlooked because they weren’t promoted effectively, a bad book can only get so far on hype.

With that in mind, we’d like to acknowledge top selling LDS fiction over on the LDS Fiction blog. For these purposes, LDS fiction is defined as books published for the LDS market by LDS publishers.

We have four categories we’d like to recognize:

Bronze—sold 10,000 copies* or more.

Silver—sold 25,000 copies* or more.

Gold—sold 50,000 copies* or more.

Platinum—sold 100,000 copies* or more.

If you are the publisher or the author of an LDS fiction title that has hit any of these sales levels and is still in print, please e-mail the following info: Title, Author, Publisher, Release Date.

*All combined printings and formats for the title, books and CD sales.

How common are advances in the LDS publishing world? And how is an advance calculated?

LDS advances are less common than in the national market. Some publishers never give them, others give them according to their own set of criteria. Some only give advances after the first book. I can’t give you exact numbers. We usually offer an advance in the three digits. Sneer away, but it’s all we can realistically offer.

Some publishers have a standard advance they offer based on the type of book—fiction might get $X while non-fiction gets $Y. Others offer an advance based on the number of books they expect to sell in the first few months. This is all guess-work on the part of the publisher because the advance goes into the contract before they get pre-orders and reviews back.

I get the newsletter from the Nelson Literary Agency and frequently read her blog. It’s always got good info and I recommend it to all writers who intend to publish someday.

Her February newsletter there was an article from her assistant, Sara, that talked about issues surrounding e-mailing queries. (Scroll down to the cream part.) I thought it was very good and I’ve had the same issues.

Other recent posts on Kristen’s blog that I think you should check out:

New Rules for Promotion (about websites) which links to this post, also about websites

YA Top 25 (things they see too often in YA submissions)

Daily Digest Reading (a list of recommended reading for those who are serious about publishing in a national market)

I had another post scheduled for today, but this question came in this morning and I had to bump it to the front of the line. (The line of questions, btw, which is getting shorter and needs to be pumped up by you dear readers…)

I have recently begun reading more LDS fiction, and I have found some works that I really enjoyed. I look forward to meeting the authors and sharing my appreciation in person.

However, I have also started several books that have been thrown across the room in frustration and then abandoned. I wonder just what I should do when given the chance to meet one of these authors. Do I avoid them? Pretend I’ve never read their book? Lie about my opinion? Or just present them with the brutal truth?

You must certainly find yourself in similar situations on occasion. How do YOU handle them?

You have no idea how often I find myself in these situations because I socialize with many authors and publishers, and I am really, really picky with fiction. Plus, being an editor by trade, my eye picks out all the mistakes. I can’t stop myself. Even in mostly perfect books, I find things I would do differently (ergo, “better”). So I try to avoid that conversation entirely and when a friend asks, I say, “Well, you know me. I don’t like anything…”

This is really tough. Especially if they are one of the better selling LDS authors who churn out title after title and actually make money for their publisher. Apparently someone (many someones) is reading and enjoying their work so they’re not going to listen to anything I say.

However, over the years I’ve found many diplomatic ways to say positive things without lying about my true opinions. Things like, “I’m so glad for you, that your books are selling well…” or “You’ve got a great cover on that book…” or “What an interesting concept. Books that address that topic are really needed in the market…” 99% of the time, that suffices. And it’s also true.

If pushed for an opinion, which I rarely am, I tell them that I can’t really offer an opinion on books published by my competition, as that is a conflict of interest. You may not have that as a out but there are any number of ways you can answer that question diplomatically. Simply smiling and nodding works well in a group situation. I never, ever, ever would give anything but superficial comments to an author in a public situation.

On the rare occasion, if an author approaches me privately and assures me they want my honest opinion, I will give it to them. I start small, with typos and things like that. If they respond maturely, then I move on to plot holes. If that goes well, then I give them the dirt, no holds barred—but I also point out the things they did well.

On the other hand, if I’m doing a book review, then I feel an obligation to the reader, the person who will be spending their cash on a book. Then I tell the honest truth, pulling no punches. But that, too, can be done in a kind and respectful way.

Which kinds of books do you prefer: character-driven or plot-driven?

Yes.

Depends on the type of book you’re writing. You can find examples of both in every genre; every book needs both solid characters and an interesting plot. If I had to choose, I go for the character because I need to care what happens to them.

Which genres sell best in the LDS market?

1. Historical

2. Romance

3. Suspense

Although sometimes 1 and 2 switch positions.

The link to Chris Bigelow’s sales numbers for Zarahemla titles (found in Tuesday’s comment trail) doesn’t seem to be working. Try this.

Can you define an LDS horror novel?

No. But I’ll know it when I see it…

Seriously, LDS horror—as in demons, vampires, zombies, monsters, and such—is an oxymoron of sorts. Like LDS fantasy, horror presents some unique issues for LDS publishers. As a people, we don’t really believe in those things. That doesn’t mean we don’t read horror or fantasy, but many LDS readers become seriously uncomfortable when those fictional elements are combined in a story with LDS theology and practice. Personally, I’d have a problem with the Laurel class president spending her nights slaying vampires, or a priest becoming a werewolf on occasion, although I have no problem with those things happening in Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the Twilight series.

Another issue is that in many horror stories (and movies), evil wins. It can’t be stopped. It can’t be beaten. This is contrary to what the gospel teaches. I don’t like that message in non-LDS books and movies, I certainly wouldn’t tolerate it in an LDS setting.

Has it been done? Has someone successfully combined horror and LDS elements? Sort of. On a national level, Orson Scott Card wrote Lost Boys which is about ghosts and an LDS family. Also, Unseen Odds by Shirley Bahlmann has some spooky stuff from LDS history, but I’m not sure I’d call that horror. (Readers, help me out here. I’m not a huge reader of horror, so I might be missing something.)

Will there ever be an LDS Stephen King or Dean Koontz? Highly likely.

Will their books be published by LDS publishers? I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see. I just know that I won’t be taking that risk anytime soon.

As if I don’t already have enough to do…

I am really excited about the newly announced Whitney Awards finalists. I have not personally read each of the finalists, but I’m planning to do so as fast as I can. I’m very interested to see if I agree with the Whitney committee on what makes a good book. I look forward to seeing the winners in March.

This effort is really inspirational, in fact, it inspired a new blog:

LDS Fiction

This is an interactive, reader-participation blog that allows you to comment and rate individual books.

Any book that is eligible for the 2008 Whitney Awards can receive a spotlight post on this new blog.

Please help me get started on the 2008 list by sending me book referrals as they are released.

I will continue to post the list of eligible books in the sidebar here as well.

Thought I’d address a few things that popped up in the comments.

From Vanity Press:
How would you classify iUniverse?
Same as the others, in general. If I decided to go that way, however, I’d probably use lulu.com, because they are upfront about being a print-on-demand service and don’t pretend to be a real publisher.

The point was made that there is a way to use these services correctly. Absolutely! But you have to know what you’re doing and have realistic expectations. These types of presses are great for, say, people who do lectures and seminars on a small interest topic or who have an online customer base or some other way to drive customers to the sites. For example, someone like Hope Clark, or someone who tours and does lectures on a specific health issue, or a private school who publishes their own curriculum…basically, someone whose information has a limited audience, but who can push people interested in that topic to their website.

just clearing Dr. Phil’s name on this one here…
Didn’t mean to imply that he put any stock in the $3 million dream. But he did refer to them as a “publisher”.

*Industry buzzwords. Does LDS Publisher wish to address them sometime?
Like what?

From Contemporary/Historical Label Researched:
The problem with trying too hard to make a story contemporary is that in just a few years, it falls into the “fuzzy” space.
The life span of your average novel is 2 to 3 years, so most of the time, a contemporary novel will go out of print before it goes out of date.

From Where to Get a Review:
Will Utah papers do an article/review if you aren’t a Utah resident?
Depends on the book and the publisher. Talk to your publisher about it.

For a local paper, do you contact the editor and ask for someone to do an article/interview or write one and submit it yourself?
Find out who writes the book review columns. Find out if the paper has guidelines for what to send. (Some do, on their website.) Send them a copy of the book and press release that has enough information that they could write the column directly from that. Some papers will use your release verbatim, with their byline. Others will cut and paste as they want. (If you really want them to love you, send them the info in both hard copy and on a CD in Word and as a text file.

The other day I knocked off work early, went home and watched a Dr. Phil re-run. The story was about a mother and daughter feuding over publishing rights to a book. The mother claimed that the daughter took her real-life story and was planning to publish it as if it were her own, and was refusing to share the expected $3 million royalty. The daughter said that her publisher was initially very excited about the book and thought it would be a best-seller, but had now declined to publish the book due to the conflict with the mother. The publisher had a rep in the audience and got to put in her two-cents worth—along the lines of, yes, we would have published it, but not with this battle going on concerning ownership of the rights.

This is all very sad, but not my point.

My point is: the “publisher” was Publish America.

And everyone, including Dr. Phil, was talking about them like they were a REAL PUBLISHER!

I was shocked!

Publish America is not a real publisher. They are a vanity press. They do very little editing, no marketing, they print on demand (which isn’t all bad, but…), their books are overpriced, bookstores won’t stock them, and if you ever, ever try to use them as a credential with a real publisher, they will laugh you out of their office!

Two other companies that frequently show up as credentials in queries I receive are Author House (at least they admit they’re a vanity press) and BookSurge (owned by Amazon).These are not real publishers either. Do not use them as credentials when approaching a real publisher unless you’ve sold over 2,000 copies of your book. 9And in that case, don’t mention that you “published” through these companies, just say that you self-published and your book sold X number of copies. This will tell the publisher that 1) you wrote well enough to sell to more than your circle of family and friends, and 2) that you know how to market yourself and your book.)

I know how hard it is to have a good novel and receive rejection after rejection. Companies like this play on that heartache, promise you the moon, but they do not deliver. Stay away from them. Like the plague. Like a very bad plague with a 99.9% mortality rate.

Once again, I want to remind everyone of a wonderful site, Preditors and Editors. If you’ve found a publisher via the Internet (rather than a legit Writer’s Guide), do your research before signing up with them.

Reading pitch critiques over at the BookEnds Agency blog, Jessica voiced concern about a story set in 1974. “It’s not a time period that’s considered historical and not one I’m sure would be of interest to [the YA] age group.”

My MS is also set in the recent past, because to me that’s just when the story takes place. Perhaps I’m just waxing nostalgic.

Does time period really matter? Does something have to be either contemporary or historical? Would it make sense to try and justify setting this story in 1989, or should I just give all of my characters cell phones and iPods and forget about it?

You’re writing for teens. They live in the NOW. They want to imagine themselves as the main character. Do you know any teens who want to imagine themselves as their parents??

The easy sale is going to be something that is clearly historical or clearly contemporary. When you’re writing within the past 50 years, the line between the two gets fuzzy. Fuzzy lines means it’s going to be hard to sell your story to an agent or publisher, and even harder to sell it to the reader. There are notable exceptions that deal with the recent past, such as The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton about teens in the 50s, first published in 1967, and Stephen King’s The Body/Stand by Me set in 1960, published in 1982.

The setting is determined by the story. Ask yourself why you’ve picked this particular time period. Would/could your story be just as strong if it was happening today? If the answer is yes, hand out the cell phones and make it an easier sale.

This is a learning blog. It’s important to remember that. What that means is that at some point, I might use YOUR mistake as a teaching tool for others, including yourself. Such is the following.

I am posting the query verbatim because rarely do I get such a shining example of so many things done wrong. Unfortunately, however, I frequently get queries that contain one or more of the mistakes found in this one.

[E-mail query sent simultaneously to 24 different publishers]

Subject: Scipt submission?

To Whom it May Concern:

I am the author of a script for a children’s book I am interested in publishing. I would like to know if your respective companies handle this type of work. I will send the script when I am satisfied of a good fit between my book and the publisher.

Never, ever, EVER send an e-mail blast to multiple publishers. If you want to query several publishers at the same time, send them each their own individual e-mail, addressed only to them.

Do your research! Of the 24 “publishers” this e-mail was sent to: 3 are not publishers, 9 do not publish children’s books, 2 were for people at the same company, 1 is out of business, 1 does not accept unsolicited manuscripts, 1 does not accept e-mail queries, 5 I’ve never heard of/websites are “parked”. Only 4 out of the 24 would be appropriate places for this author to query.

Subject: Scipt submission? Be very careful before you click send. Proof and reproof. If, by some chance, a mistake like this happens to you, do not bother resending the same e-mail with the word corrected. (The author did.)

To Whom It May Concern. This is part of your research. Find out who the editor is and send an individual e-mail to an individual person.

I am the author of a script for a children’s book… A book is called a manuscript. A script is a play or screenplay. What did you write? A book or a play? I am not being picky here; I really don’t know. I would guess it’s a book mislabeled as a script, but I’ve guessed that before with queries using similar phraseology and been wrong.

I am interested in publishing. Does this mean you want to us to publish your book or you want us to help you self-publish your book? If the latter, are you querying us for printing services or asking if we would distribute your book after you’ve printed it? Again, I’m not nit-picking; I really am not sure. I’ve guessed both ways in various queries and been wrong multiple times.

If you want us to publish your book, say so. If you want us to distribute your book, say so. If you want to self-publish, you should contact a vanity press or a printer, not a publisher.

I would like to know if your respective companies handle this type of work. What type of work? Children’s books? Or self-published works? The answer to your question should be covered in your research. You should already know if we handle the type of work you’re talking about, whatever it is.

I will send the script when I am satisfied of a good fit between my book and the publisher. No. This is not how it works. Your research should have already satisfied you that we would be a good fit for you and your book—that we accept children’s books, that your topic is something we are interested in, that your writing style/technique/theme is something we would consider. You discover this by visiting our website to 1) read our guidelines, and 2) see what we’ve published previously. Most of the publishers this e-mail was sent to would not be a good fit for this book.

After you are satisfied that the publisher is someone YOU would want to work with, then you send the query and/or manuscript according to the guidelines listed on the publisher’s website. The publisher then decides if THEY think you are a good fit for them.

My guess is this e-mail was ignored and immediately deleted upon receipt by most, if not all, of the recipients. If the author was lucky, they may have received back a polite, formulaic rejection but I seriously doubt anyone would take the time to explain why they were rejected.

Bottom line: No serious publisher would respond in a positive manner to this e-mail because they would immediately know that this author had not done enough research to understand even the basics of how the business side of publishing works. It would require way too much work on the part of the publisher to bring the author up to speed. Also, the attitude of the last sentence would throw up lots of red flags—this author is going to be difficult to work with and will probably fight me every step of the way. Not worth the trouble.

There were 27 entries to our Christmas story contest. 27! That is just amazing and I’m very happy that so many of you decided to participate.

However, it does create a bit of a scheduling dilemma for me. Since it will take quite some time for me to give each of these entries a serious read and to prepare my comments on each one, I will not be answering any questions here until after the contest is over and I’ve commented on each post.

Also, there’s my “day job” and that whole Christmas thing which seems to be taking up a bit of my time…

But please, keep coming back to read the comments of others. And just because you’ve cast your vote, that doesn’t mean you can’t comment on the other stories. Tell us what worked for you, what didn’t work, what you might have done differently. (But be nice.) Remember, each comment gives you an entry into the December book contest.

You do not need a blog to submit a story for the contest, nor to vote for a story, nor to comment on any post. You don’t even need a Google ID, as this blog accepts anonymous comments.

Also, someone already voted. Voting does not start until December 16th. Please wait until all stories have been posted. Please read all of them. Then cast your vote.

So far we have 9 stories. I will be posting two a day until they’re all up. There is still time for YOU to send me that story you’ve been working on…

Also, the December Comment Contest has begun, so start chatting.

Where do you go if you have a project and you need someone to “write for you”! I have looked everywhere and I can not find anywhere to find a good LDS author to help me out. any suggestions?

The technical term for what you’re asking for is ghost writer. Good ghost writers are hard to find because good writers are usually busy writing their own stories. You’re also looking at a substantial investment. Most ghost writers charge by the page. Experienced ghost writers charge between $50 to $100 per page, or more. Some ghost writers are willing to work for the lion’s share of the advance and/or royalty. It really is not feasible to hire a ghost writer unless you’re a celebrity or politician, someone who’s guaranteed book sales because of their personality.

Generally, when a ghost writer is required, it’s the publisher who sets up the relationship. They find a writer they know and trust and have them work with the “author”. In the LDS market, the only time I know of this being done is when General Authorities need help with a book.

Now, if you’re talking about writing your memoirs or family history and need someone to help with that, consider finding a college student with reasonably good skills who might be willing to work for a lot less.

Anyone else have an idea on this?

I’m looking ahead to the day that I will have a published novel. I know that you recommend having a website. My name as I plan on using when I publish is already taken as a website. I’ve thought of using my middle name, something that doesn’t have my name in it, etc. What is your thought on what is best for naming a website? I would think using your name would be the best, but if it’s not available, what are some other ideas to think of?

Wait until your book has been accepted and then talk to your agent/publisher about it. That may sound like a lame answer, but really, it’s the best one. When you’re ready to publish, your publisher and/or agent will do some checking on your name. If it’s the same as someone else who writes in your genre, they will suggest other options—using a middle name, maiden name, initials, pen name. If you do need to use a pen name, they can help you choose one that will give you some marketability or exposure.

Also, website ownerships come and go all the time. Even if it’s taken now, it may be available in a year or two. In the meantime, I suggest doing something free, simple and professional, like a blog. If you don’t want to post to a blog, you can adapt that format to make a more “static” site that you don’t have to post to. You can also join a free social networking site and create a profile that looks very nice. There are lots of options out there other than a traditional website.