How to Get your Book Published with Abigail Bergstrom
zoella.co.uk – Wednesday April 13, 2022
We caught up with Abi to talk all things book-writing and publishing. From this year’s book tropes and trends to cooking up her very own bestseller, how to find the right agent for you and the recipe for getting that elusive book deal...
Abigail Bergstrom is a literary agent, author and publishing consultant. She has worked in publishing for over a decade and is an expert in navigating the cross-section between digital and print, speaking at international conferences on the subject.
She’s edited some of Britain’s most prominent feminist voices, was nominated for Literary Agent of the Year in 2020 and was listed in The Bookseller 150 for shepherding over thirty titles onto bestseller lists and building some of today’s biggest book brands.
In short, dear reader, she’s one multi-hyphenate lady. Not only does she have a wealth of knowledge from the publishing field thanks to her time at Gleam Titles and heading up her own publishing consultancy Bergstrom Studio, she also knows a thing or two about what it takes to become an author, having recently published her first novel What A Shame.
We caught up with Abi to talk all things book-writing and publishing. From this year’s book tropes and trends to cooking up her very own bestseller, how to find the right agent for you and the recipe for getting that elusive book deal, if you want to break into the book industry and see your novel gracing the shelves of your local Waterstones, Abi is on hand to offer some invaluable advice on how to get your voice heard.
Ocean Vuong on Taking the Time You Need to Write
lithub.com – Saturday April 9, 2022
The Japanese have this idea of the color of a poem. Bashō talks often about the colors of poems. I think what he means by that is the moods and the tones, the sort of aesthetic principles of them. And I think that you can’t just sit down and write that, you have to really embody it. That’s the hardest part: figuring out what tone or what mood you’re writing towards. A lot of this has to do with the themes you’re working with, or the mode that you want to present. That takes sometimes weeks, months — years, really — to develop before language comes to fruition. Language has its own register, like music, and depending on the “octave” or the tone that you’re using, there are connotations, there are meanings, implicit in tone.
Think you can write a book? Here’s how to pitch, publish and push your career
nypost.com – Monday April 4, 2022
Everyone dreams of being an author. The pandemic has inspired many to start on these long-dormant passion projects. Or maybe just toy around with the idea but not, you know, take any tangible action in getting the proverbial pen to paper.
First, the good news: “If you want to write a book related to your career, this is a clear sign that you are ready to acknowledge your growth and achievement in life,” said J. L. Stermer, a literary agent who teaches “How to Get Published” at Gotham Writers Workshop, and is also president of Next Level Lit. “It means you have overcome challenges and found solutions that you are ready to share to help others on similar journeys. Your book establishes you as an expert in your field and can magnetize you to find new clients.”
It takes a lot of toil, but penning your own tome can help you get on panels, invited to podcasts and land speaking engagements.
Ahead, expert tips to go from a blank Google Doc to signing the title page.
How to start writing a novel – authors share how they did it
metro.co.uk – Thursday March 31, 2022
We’ve all got a novel in us. Or so the saying goes.
But for most people, even if you have the burning embers of an idea inside you – it can be hard to know where to start.
How do you find the time, the confidence, or the structure needed to actually put pen to paper, or fingers to keys, and actually start the process of writing your first novel.
Well – it can be done. Just look at all the books on your bookshelf or in your local bookshop. All of those authors were once beginners, and they all had to start somewhere.
Narrative Sleight-of-Hand: The Trick of Writing Multiple POVs
tor.com – Tuesday March 29, 2022
One of the traps I fall into most easily as a writer is the illusion that I know what I’m doing. I have a few novels under my belt, and have seen some success with them. Readers have occasionally marvelled at my artistry, or even proclaimed me wise. I, for one, am all too ready to believe the hype about myself.
That is, until I start writing a book that is too hard for me. Which is every book I write, somehow. I end up with two choices—abandon the hard book and write something easier, or abandon the notion that I have any idea what I’m doing.
I highly recommend the latter. It’s humbling, but frees me to look around and find help in unexpected places.
The Tricky Task of Writing a Villain
theatlantic.com – Sunday March 27, 2022
In literature, and in real life, many times the villain makes the story. But writing a nuanced account of these characters, whether in fiction or in nonfiction, can be tricky. In her book Putin’s People, Catherine Belton uncovers important details from Putin’s past and tells what we might consider his origin story. One evening in December 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a group of protesters started making its way to the KGB station in Dresden. Putin called for reinforcements, but none came. This was his turning point, Anne Applebaum writes, the moment that “marked the end of [the Soviet] empire and the beginning of an era of humiliation.” She describes his disdain for democracy as his answer to that “trauma,” but she’s clear that his success has “proved a terrible tragedy for the rest of the world.”
Pulitzer winner Anne Tyler on writing from black viewpoint: ‘I should be allowed to do it’
nypost.com – Tuesday March 22, 2022
One of America’s most acclaimed authors is wading into the culture wars, saying she believes she should be able to create characters from a diverse range of backgrounds.
Anne Tyler, 80, spoke out on the issue in an interview with the Sunday Times, stating, “I’m astonished by the appropriation issue. It would be very foolish for me to write, let’s say, a novel from the viewpoint of a black man, but I think I should be allowed to do it.”
Tyler — who won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel “Breathing Lessons” — also hit out at cancel culture.
“If an incredibly talented person has written novels in the 1930s or ’40s and all of a sudden it is discovered that there was something he said or did — even something as bad as sexual harassment — he should be condemned for it but I don’t see why you should withdraw his novels from publication,” she told the British publication.
‘It just exploded’: The Bad Guys author on writing ‘Tarantino for kids’ – and selling millions
theguardian.com – Tuesday March 22, 2022
Aaron Blabey decided to improve the boring books his son was bringing home: now his bestseller series is a starry Hollywood animation
What would a Quentin Tarantino film for children look like? Probably something close to The Bad Guys, a DreamWorks adaptation of a book series about a gang of criminal animals who, after a lifetime of heists, are tasked with doing good for the world in order to avoid prison.
It has a starry cast: Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron, Craig Robinson, Awkwafina, Richard Ayoade and Zazie Beetz, among others. But the man behind the series is Australian author Aaron Blabey, who has sold around 30m books: a staggering, mind-blowing figure. Speaking to Blabey ahead of The Bad Guys film release, even he still seems in shock about his own success.
The Best Sex Melissa Febos Has Ever Read
vulture.com – Wednesday March 16, 2022
The writer Melissa Febos draws from the raw materials of her life — including her work as a dominatrix, struggles with addiction, and relationship with her mother. In her fourth book, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, a blend of master class and memoir, she defends the aesthetic and social value of personal writing. Weaving together anecdotes and allusions to literary, psychological, and religious works, as well as advice she refined while teaching graduate workshops, Febos shows how treating sex writing as taboo upholds oppressive conventions. The best sex she ever read is this passage from the poet Eileen Myles’s novel Inferno about the protagonist’s first time sleeping with another woman. The scene euphorically breaks all the rules Febos once learned about writing sex: to avoid humor, certain words, and grossness.
How It Felt to Have My Novel Stolen
newyorker.com – Tuesday March 15, 2022
On the verge of selling my first book, I was scammed by a manuscript thief. My deepest insecurities about wanting to be a writer came rushing to the surface.
At 2:47 p.m. on September 20, 2020, I received what appeared to be an innocuous e-mail from my literary agent, Chris. Could I send over the latest version of my unsold novel-in-progress as a Microsoft Word file? “I just realized,” the e-mail read, “that I only have it as a PDF.” It wasn’t like Chris to misplace things, but the situation didn’t seem implausible. People switch computers. In-boxes get gnarly. I found an old e-mail with the Word file attached and forwarded it along.
At 3:44 p.m., another e-mail arrived: “Strange, I haven’t received anything now . . . can you resend please?” I re-forwarded the old e-mail with the Word file. At 4:03 p.m., I got another e-mail, which explained that Chris’s agency was in the process of switching servers, and perhaps this explained why my e-mails weren’t coming through. Could I try again, this time working around the problem by changing the .com suffix in Chris’s normal e-mail to .co?
Looking back, this is the part where I can’t quite understand my actions. Why didn’t I just call Chris and ask him what was going on? Here’s my best attempt at a defense. The night before, I’d been up several times, tending to my nine-week-old son, and never finding my way back to true sleep. I started on coffee sometime around dawn. When these e-mails came, I was a quivering zombie, incapable of real thought, looking only to move forward, dealing with whatever came up until the next time my son slept, when I could try sleeping, too. I was in no condition to think, only to do.
Not long after I sent the Word manuscript to the .co address, my phone rang. It was Chris. He’d been offline for a few hours, he said, so he was just now seeing that I’d sent him my manuscript twice that morning. Why, he asked, sounding more than a little bit stressed, had I done that, when he hadn’t asked me to?
I’d been scammed.
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