by Jamie Chavez | Oct 29, 2016 | The Book Biz
When I clicked on this blog post from literary agent Janet Grant and read … Nonfiction Book Structure = More Than a String of Blog Posts … I stood up and cheered. Because, yes, she’s said a mouthful. You cannot just cut and paste together your blog posts and call it...
by Jamie Chavez | Jul 4, 2016 | The Book Biz
The title of a book is a big deal. It’s the first thing readers see, so it’s an important marketing tool. But there’s no magic formula to creating a good title. Whether fiction or nonfiction, the title should be catchy, interesting, unforgettable; it should get the...
by Jamie Chavez | May 13, 2016 | Books You Might Like
I have started reading, and liking, fiction. This was not the case a year and a half … ago. Aside from a handful of short story collections (Carver, Canin, Moore) and an isolated novel here and there, my post-college reading-for-pleasure era has been marked by a...
by Jamie Chavez | Apr 10, 2016 | The Book Biz
You know what I mean. A friend of mine—a professor of English lit at a local university who is just weeks away from having her first book (traditionally published nonfiction) in her hand—recently asked me about traditional publishing as opposed self-publishing. It...
by Jamie Chavez | Mar 3, 2016 | The Writing Craft
Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon. … But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves...
