From now through August, Swenson Book Development LLC offers a special package for editorial feedback on the first ten pages of your manuscript. I want to read what you’ve been writing. One of the most frequent requests I get from writers is a simple answer to the general question: is this any good? In order to answer any questions about a manuscript, you need to read it. Writers can ask their friends, family, and fellow writers to read their work and gain valuable feedback from doing so. But I know why they ask me. I’m a professional. Typically I do not offer such quick assessments as I spend considerable time screening clients who come largely by word-of-mouth referrals. Ten pages however, is a common request for writers seeking literary representation or applying for juried residencies, workshops, and fellowships. Because I believe these valuable opportunities are part of developing a writer’s career, I am willing to help new and emerging writers with editorial feedback on the first ten pages of their manuscript for a flat rate of $100 during August 2018. Getting editorial feedback on ten pages can provide you with advice to apply to the remainder of your manuscript pages. Consider it a future cost-savings on editing. Self-editing is a skill that can be honed by working with an editor and learning to improve your own copy. Many writers think an editor isn’t helpful until you have a full manuscript. This isn’t true except for saving money on proofreaders and…

Where should your book be reviewed? What literary journals and magazines should you submit excerpts or adaptations to? Which bookstore events will be worth your while? Are there podcasts or radio interviews you should book to promote your new release? These and other questions you may have when you begin to put together a marketing strategy are not easy to answer. Studying your comp titles can help. If you are preparing a book proposal, you will need to put together a list of comparable or competitive titles. These are books that are similar to yours in that they are competing for the same readers. And these authors have successfully found their audiences so it behooves you to study their efforts. Start by looking at the comp titles’ product pages on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Indiebound. You’ll notice there will be short excerpts from reviews and blurbs from those who have endorsed the book. This will help you grow a list of places where you might get your book reviewed. While publishers may send out advance review copies to Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, or Shelf Awareness, they need you to tell them where else galleys should be sent. If you are writing for children or young adults, should your book be reviewed at The Horn Book? School Library Journal? Where else? See where the books on your comp title list have been reviewed. If you’re a female author with a book that interests women readers, do you see your comp titles…

Amidst the nervous titter of soon-to-be graduates, I could feel the excitement boiling under the clean, black robes at Lawrence University’s graduation ceremony. This year’s commencement speaker was Lan Samantha Chang. An Appleton WI native, Chang is the author of Hunger, All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost, and Inheritance. Hunger is a novella and collection of short stories, published in 1988. Chang’s prose follows the intertwined loves and lives of immigrant families, influenced by her own experience as the daughter of two Chinese immigrants. Hunger was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and PEN Center USA-West’s annual literary award and has been praised as “a work of gorgeous, enduring prose” by the Washington Post. Currently, she is the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop Program Director and the May Brodbeck Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Chang used her experience of choosing a career path as the basis of her commencement address, leveling herself to the recent graduates by counterbalancing the fear of the future with calm support. Lan Samantha Chang recalled her own experience, sitting at graduation, wondering how to answer the dreaded question: what are you doing next? “I have no idea.” Her father pressured her to become a doctor, a path she pursued instead of fulfilling her “impractical” dream of being a writer. At 25 years old, with $35,000 in student loans, Chang finally decided to follow her own path, not what her parents thought best for her. “What I truly wanted to do was impractical,…