Writing Successful Self-Help and How-To Books - Hardcover

Stine, Jean Marie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1630262595 ISBN 13: 9781630262594

Publisher: Trade Paper Press, 1997

Synopsis

If you follow only a third of Jean's advice, you'll have a successful book. --Jeremy Tarcher, Publisher Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc.

""After Jean reworked my first draft, paperback rights sold for $137,000."" --Timmen Cermak, M.D., author of A Time to Heal: The Road to Recovery for Adult Children of Alcoholics

Mastering the craft and understanding the mechanics of writing self-help and how-to books is the key to getting publishers to take notice of your work. Now, in the first guide to writing self-help and how-to books, Jean Stine offers an insider's view of this growing genre. Her easy-to-follow program takes you step-by-step through the complete writing process. You'll learn the importance of:
* Structure and Style
* Clear, easy-to-understand exercises
* Creating catchy and compelling titles, subtitles, and chapter headings
* Using lists, charts, and graphs to maximum effect
* Checklists and other interactive elements
* Writing a proposal that sells
* Negotiating permissions for quotations, photos, and illustrations
* Preparing your manuscript for presentation to a publisher

About this title

Review

Jean Marie Stine has created perhaps the ultimate how-to book: Writing Successful Self-Help and How-To Books. Among the many editorial positions Stine has held in her 15 years as an editor (and sometimes ghostwriter) of self-help and how-to books is editor in chief at the esteemed self-help publisher Jeremy P. Tarcher. She edited more than 50 self-help titles, including Women Who Love Too Much and Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. If an author's qualifications, as Stine says in her book, are of utmost importance for a book's credibility, she is supremely qualified to write such a book.

Writing Successful Self-Help and How-To Books is less about writing than about every other element that goes into making a successful self-help/how-to book. Since "publishers," as Stine says here, "buy 90 percent of their books based on proposals," she addresses in detail every element of the book proposal, from overview ("mak[e] your book sound like a must-have") and analysis of the competition to sample chapter and annotated table of contents. Her insider information on everything from title creation--"the right title alone," she confides, "can make your book a success"--to the importance of including interactive elements such as checklists, quizzes, and exercises is invaluable. Still, for the beginning writer--and Stine seems to assume that the reader of this book is an expert in a field other than writing--there is surprising little, given the book's title, about the writing process itself. --Jane Steinberg

From the Publisher

A prolific writer and editor of over 50 self-help titles, Stine presents proven strategies for producing self-help and how-to books with the distinguishing qualities that editors will find hard to resist. Covers everything from how to write a winning proposal through writing the manuscript. Guides writers through the basic components of a successful self-help and how-to chapter including style, case histories and exercises. Includes shortcuts used by pros to effortlessly deal with references, bibliographies, permissions and illustrations. An industry insider shares her expertise in the first book on writing for this growing market

Edition details

• Publisher: Trade Paper Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1630262595
• ISBN 13: 9781630262594
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 206