catebaum

About Cate Baum

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So far Cate Baum has created 396 blog entries.

How To Lose Word Count From Your Book – 10 Ways

Losing Word CountHow do you lose words from your book without destroying the story? Why is word count so important?

The length of your manuscript is a major factor in your journey to publication. Word count affects printing costs (and therefore profit) and reader feedback, story construction (even in a non-fiction book’s case) and sales. Publishers may ask for a shorter manuscript, so you might have to buckle down to this reality.

Accepted lengths of a book

Adult Fiction: 70,000 – 100,000 words (including Fantasy, yes!)
YA Fiction – 60,000 – 85,000 words

Non-Fiction: 50,000 – 75,000 words (less if with images)[…]

2020-10-23T05:56:52+02:00October 23rd, 2020|Categories: Features|Tags: |

Tough Luck Idiot: Memories of a Flipass Soul by Nik Graveson

Tough Luck Idiot by Nik Graveson

Nik Graveson’s rock ‘n roll ride as a musician and poet leads him into the underbelly of a life lived in the wreckage and back again in Tough Luck Idiot: Memories of a Flipass Soul. From the writer’s teenage years as he joins a band in ‘Noweheresville’ and experiments with drugs under the bleachers, to the obligatory musician’s pilgrimage to 90s Los Angeles, memories are laid bare in a brutally honest Molotov cocktail of a memoir. The story is hurled straight at the reader with a wry humor that makes it hard to resist Graveson’s gritty coming of age […]

2020-10-16T02:54:16+02:00October 15th, 2020|Categories: Editorial Reviews|

How To Get An Agent For My Book – Part Four: Finding Agents

The hardest part of your search for an agent begins: how to find the agents to write to. Seems easy, right? Just look up ‘literary agents’ on Google, make a list, and send your submission out to all of them? If you do that, you’re wasting your time and also your chances all in one go. Here’s everything you need to know about finding agents to submit to.

Setting Up Your Submissions Process

Research each agent you find. Start here at this agent database at P&W. Read their manuscript wishlists (#MSWL), and look at their social media. […]

2020-09-11T02:51:42+02:00September 11th, 2020|Categories: Features|Tags: |

How To Get An Agent For My Book – Part Three: The Book Sample

Here is a detailed guide to preparing your book sample for a literary agent.

Your book sample is obviously the most important element of your agent submission to be read after the letter and synopsis.

For fiction submissions, which is what I am talking about in this series, you need to read each agent’s requirement on the submissions page of their website.

(Non-fiction is completely different, and you should refer to Jane Friedman’s series on Non-Fiction and Memoir for this)

The vast majority of agents will want a sample attached to the email, and this is usually either thirty or […]

2020-09-14T07:56:07+02:00September 6th, 2020|Categories: Features|Tags: |

How To Get An Agent For My Book – Part Two: The Synopsis

Thousands of writers submit their books to literary agents every year, but only very few are chosen. Why is this, and how can you give yourself the best chance?

Part Two: The Synopsis

A synopsis is the second part of your submission to an agent in that if you nail your submission letter (discussed in Part One) they will next read the synopsis of the story of your book.

For this series, I am discussing fiction books, as there is a completely different type of synopsis for a non-fiction book, specified in detail on each agency website.

However, a fiction […]

2020-09-14T06:58:48+02:00August 25th, 2020|Categories: Features|Tags: |

How To Get An Agent For My Book – Part One: The Submission Letter

How To Get A Literary Agent 2020

Thousands of writers submit their books to literary agents every year, but only very few are chosen. Why is this, and how can you give yourself the best chance?

Part One: The Submission Letter

Literary Agents are jumpy as all hell. Slip up on one aspect of your submission and you’re written off forever. Sounds dramatic, but it’s true. Agents are like this because they get literally hundreds of crappy submissions every week. They can only sign one or two people a year. That is why you must follow their submission guidelines to the letter because they will probably only […]

2020-08-25T05:19:05+02:00August 18th, 2020|Categories: Features|Tags: , |

How To Rank Higher on Amazon Without Selling Books

Seems like a dream, doesn’t it? Rank highly on Amazon, but sell no copies of your book? This very simple method of moving your book into a much more prominent position with minimal effort is the perfect way to get seen and sold.

Drowning in your Category

So why is it your book has sold a few copies, and yet you are still in the weeds on Amazon in your category? Simply, there are too many books in your category to ever be seen. The most full categories in Amazon are typically Science Fiction and Fantasy and Romance, and all […]

2020-06-25T08:10:33+02:00June 25th, 2020|Categories: Features|Tags: , |

Five Most Common Mistakes Authors Make When Entering a Book Contest

After the SPR Book Awards each year we get together and analyze the judges’ comments. Here are 2019’s most common author mistakes that you might be able to learn from next time you take the plunge and enter a book contest.

1. Info Dumping

By far the most common issue this competition.

Too much dialogue

The biggest problem this year was the amount of dialogue used to tell a story. Pages of it, like a movie screenplay. You cannot tell a story without character development. This means we need to experience situations and know how characters feel about what […]

2020-05-20T09:24:04+02:00May 20th, 2020|Categories: Features|Tags: |
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