Get Your First Book Published: And Make It a Success

The official resource used by the AWP (Associated Writing Program) and the YMCA National Writer's Voice, Get Your First Book Published goes beyond the conventional advice for writers. The book includes hundreds of awards and publishers that are exclusively in the market for first-time authors or favorable to unpublished authors. Each award listing is complete with deadlines, names of previous award winners, advice from directors, and much more. Each publisher's listing represents large and small houses most interested in publishing first books, along with statistical information, previous first-time authors, and useful advice. The book also features the first-ever comprehensive national directory for chapbooks.

Inspirational as well as practical, Get Your First Book Published includes contributions from many of our most distinguished contemporary writers on how they got their first books published and the insights they've gained.

The book features ways to make your first book a success, and reveals the opportunities and resources available to writers to promote their work.

The title of this handy how-to manual might smack of hubris, but it is recommended by the Associated Writing Program, and the contents are part directory, part inspirational anecdotes. Drawn from responses of published writers to a questionnaire, the contents include writers' favorite first novels and their thoughts on their first books, addresses of publishers "favorable to unpublished first-book manuscripts," addresses for grants and contests for unpublished writers by state, and the obligatory chapters on negotiating contracts and publicizing one's debut novel. In tone and substance, this book is to unpublished writers what What Color Is Your Parachute is to the unemployed: comforting, inspiring, and possibly even useful. Shinder is a published writer (Among Women; Tales from the Couch: Writers on Therapy) who directs the Writing Program at Sundance Institute; Holman directs the Literary Horizons program for Poets and Writers, and Herman is the editor of Writer's Guide to Book Editors, Publishers, and Literary Agents. Recommended for public and academic libraries in spite of possible overlap with other directories. Robert Moore, Itworld.com, MA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.