M. J. Rose Quotes

There are many traditionally published authors who have hated the cover their publisher‘s decided on. Or the title or the marketing or the advertising. But there was nothing they could do about it.

In ‘Power Play‘, Finder uses the thriller structure to make pointed observations about gender in the workplace, the corporate caste system, and the true nature of risk in the global business environment.

I grew up in New York, and for the first ten years of my life, we lived across from the Metropolitan Museum. When I was an adult, I moved back to that neighborhood and lived there again.

An author’s ability to bring a marketing synopsis to the table – along with a great manuscript – makes a difference in what books get picked up. This is true for both fiction and nonfiction titles. You need to show your publisher what you‘ve got in your marketing arsenal.

Don’t spend more than 10% of your marketing/PR budget on a trailer. Trailers have to be marketed, too. So, far too many authors wind up marketing their trailers instead of their books.

Vera Caspary wrote thrillers – but not like any other author of her time, male or female. Her specialty was a specific type that she pioneered – the psycho thriller.

Books on their own aren’t insanely expensive compared to other things; three large cappuccinos cost more than a paperback, and two and a half gallons of gas cost more than a paperback.

I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of reincarnation. I learned that many brilliant people were interested in reincarnation, including Carl Jung. I’m a big Jungian. So I began writing novels involving theories integrating past and present, even if the past element in the novel took place 500 or 1,000 years ago.

Don’t send out a newsletter just to send out a newsletter. One newsletter a year that is really interesting is more beneficial than 12 that are boring. If you write two or three boring newsletters in a row, your readers will start to think you write boring books.

Your agent should be invested in the success of your book past the contract stage. After all, if it sells well, she’s going to be getting 15 percent of every dime you make. She can be your best advocate in fighting for your book – not just with editing and the cover, but with marketing and sales as well.

Don’t use your advance to buy an antique sports car, diamonds by the yard, or a bottle of wine from Thomas Jefferson‘s cellar instead of investing in your book.

I’ve always felt writing is an art. Publishing is a business. I felt strongly if I was going to write, I would write what I wanted to, and if the ‘market’ didn’t respond, there was nothing I could really do about it.

In 1998, I self-published online in order to get a traditional deal.

There’s almost no author alive who isn’t weathering the tumultuous changes in the publishing industry.

Do send out a newsletter when you have a new book out or are going on tour. Also list relevant event dates and notifications of contests you are running.

I always miss my mom. Mother’s Day would be just one more day I’d feel her absence but for the relentless commercialization. Thanks to that, this day is even harder to deal with.

Recognize that the great majority of us aren’t trained actors and entertainers. Usually, it’s not our faces, our bodies, our personas or our stage presence that sells our books. It’s our stories, our visions and our voices.

You can write the best book you can, and that might still not be enough. Appeal isn’t something that most writers can’t strive for or identify. It’s something even the best agents and editors can’t always identify.

Sometimes what you mustn’t do is just as just as important as what you must do.

Thriller novelists get asked – berated, sometimes – about whether their work glorifies bad behavior, even, exploits human tragedy for entertainment.

Nora Roberts, Stephen King, Lee Child and George R. R. Martin write wildly different books. Their writing, plotting and styles have little or nothing in common. But they all write books and characters that readers find appealing.

I just want to sit in my room and write books.

It’s so easy to look foolish online.

Buy other authors’ books when you go to their events. Even if you aren’t going to read it. Even if you are going to give it away. Even if you aren’t interested. Not just for the author but for the bookstore. It’s karma and just plain good manners.

I think the most important thing we as writers can do is figure out how we define what success will mean to us and focus on that.

When I was a kid, I read many of my mom’s books. Sometimes, there were mysteries, but there were no delineations, and my mother never talked about book genres. Nor did we differentiate genres in school.

As a self-published author, you have the choice. Embrace the power to create a book that is truly yours. Don’t be a whiner or a copycat.

MWA and The Author’s Guild refused to accept me as a member.

Ask your agent to set up a meeting with either your editor or the marketing department of the house or both so you can find out what they’re doing, what they aren’t, and what you can do to help.

I know one writer who has been subscribing authors without their permission and sending out what she thinks are helpful advice sheets, but they come off as if she’s a know-it-all. She thinks she’s marketing herself and her work. All she’s really doing is turning readers off.

Twitter is worth it if you like tweeting. Same is true of Facebook. Or Pinterest. Nothing wrong with having a social presence.

The biggest mistake is to assume that another writer’s successful strategy will work for you, too. Publishers‘ marketers – and even freelance publicists who cost mega bucks – tend to do the same basic things for all books.

Social media buzz can lead to huge successes when people spread the word about something they love and want to share. But authors creating their own buzz? Making their own noise? It’s hard to make a lot of noise on our own about our own work. Except, sadly, negative noise.

You shouldn’t talk about yourself all the time – most of us aren’t for sale. Our books are. Talk about them. It’s not a question of whether or not you’re fascinating on a personal level – it’s that your trivia and trials might not have any connection to the tone, tenor and sense of your books.

I’m realistic about my career as a novelist. I’m certainly not a superstar and far, far from a household name, but I feel successful.

‘Power Play’ is a morality tale for our post-Enron world and – not incidentally – wildly entertaining. Nothing wrong with that.

When writers stop to sharpen pencils or get up and make coffee to procrastinate, they still stay in their heads with their characters. But when you zip over to read email or check your Facebook page, you get zapped out of the fictive dream. It’s brutal on my writing.

I’ve had a dozen novels published and have made far more than a dozen mistakes. Which is why Randy Susan Meyers and I wrote a guidebook to help authors avoid making our mistakes.

I began tailoring my books to cater to one or another universe of readers. I found it incredibly boring; and frankly, it felt stultifying. I’d previously been in advertising. I felt if I was going to create something to fit a specific market, I might as well have stayed with advertising.