Writer's Digest University

With details of upcoming courses and more:

 

Last Call for Registrations!   You're an author on a tight budget. Or, maybe you've got some money, but you're tired of wasting it on marketing that didn't work. You've poured everything into writing your book hoping to move thousands of readers with your words. You've dreamed, hoped, maybe even prayed, that your book sales would take off. But, that reality has yet to come true. It doesn't seem fair for your dream to die just because you don't have thousands of dollars to spend on marketing. Is selling a lot of books only reserved for the elite authors with big budgets? No.   It's possible to sell a lot of books - even on a shoestring budget. Like any author, you want to sell enough books to entertain or educate a lot of readers. You want to make enough money to write another book - maybe pay off some bills or take an extra vacation. You want your writing to become sustainable. But, like too many authors, you might feel this way instead: You're tired of seeing your book's Amazon sales rank languish week after week. You're tired of searching on Google for free advice that doesn't seem to work. You're tired of paying other people to do a job that you could do better yourself. You just want someone to tell you what works and how to do it - at a price that doesn't break the bank. Selling books isn't a complex riddle that authors must solve. It's a step-by-step process that any writer can follow. Simply put, if you learn to excel at these three marketing skills, you will naturally sell more books: Connect with powerful book influencers Use email to create book sales that you control Advertise affordably on BookBub to avid readers in your genre Each one of these three tactics has the power to drive a lot of book sales. Combine all three, and you put yourself in a position of strength! Here's the best part… The first marketing tactic (influencers) is absolutely free. The second marketing tactic (email) costs less than $100 a month. The third marketing tactic (BookBub ads) costs less than $300 a month. Each tactic works for selling novels and nonfiction. Each tactic works for self-published and traditionally-published authors. Each tactic even works if you're a first-time author or an established writer. Not familiar with BookBub ads? They're easy to create and a lot less expensive than money-guzzling Facebook advertising. And, unlike Amazon ads which are only available to KDP or Advantage users, BookBub ads are available to all authors. You don't have to spend crazy sums of money to get crazy good results. Even on a shoestring budget, you can take your book sales to a higher level. Let one of the most accomplished book marketing experts in the industry show you the way. When you know what to do and how to do it right, then you become the hero of your own author story!   Watch a Preview:     This Thursday! April 22 - May 20   SIGN UP NOW!   Instructor: Rob Eagar   Learn from one of the most accomplished book marketing experts in America. For over 10 years, Rob Eagar has coached more than 800 authors, consulted with numerous publishing houses, and helped clients hit the New York Times bestseller list three different ways, including new fiction, new non-fiction, and backlist non-fiction. He even helped a book become a New York Times bestseller after 20 years in print!     Active Interest Media P.O. Box 20730 Boulder, Colorado, 80308 USA

  

Upcoming Boot Camp   How to Craft Query Letters & Other Submission Materials When your submission materials – a query letter, synopsis, manuscript, or book proposal – arrive in an agent's inbox, they land among hundreds of others. Get valuable agent feedback on your submission materials and more! April 20-23, 2021 HURRY, SEATING IS LIMITED!   Upcoming Webinar Writing & Selling the Historical Novel Writing and Selling the Historical Novel is a crash course jam-packed with advice from the start of your novel to the finish, from picking a concept with immediate appeal to pitching your finished product to the agents and editors who will take it to publication. April 29, 2021   LEARN MORE & REGISTER Featured Resources     May/June 2021 Issue   40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers   Sell Books on a Shoestring Budget   Build Your Novel Scene by Scene   Upcoming Webinar Social Media Bliss Just about every writer has a love-hate relationship with social media, and for some it serves as a serious distraction from important writing work. This class focuses on how to take a holistic and fits-for-you approach to social media that’s based on long-term reader engagement and sound principles of online marketing. May 13, 2021   SIGN UP NOW! Upcoming Virtual Conference   Short Story Virtual Conference Spend the weekend learning techniques for honing your craft skills, marketing your short fiction, editing, and getting the tools you need to advance your career as a writer from six different published authors, then (if you choose) submit up to 500 words of a short story to an editor for critique. May 21-23, 2021 LEARN MORE & REGISTER   Explore More Resources   Active Interest Media P.O. Box 20730 Boulder, Colorado, 80308 USA

Writer's Digest online writing workshops cover every aspect of writing, from how to get started all the way to getting your project published -- all from the comfort of your home! Click here to view the full course calendar >>   Courses Starting This Week:    Sell Books on a Shoestring Budget  Instructor: Rob Eagar You're an author on a tight budget. Or, maybe you've got some money, but you're tired of wasting it on marketing that didn't work. It's possible to sell a lot of books - even on a shoestring budget. Let Rob Eagar, one of the most accomplished book marketing experts in the industry, show you the way.   Fundamentals of Fiction Instructor: G. Miki Hayden Have an amazing story idea, but need to learn the basics of how to write a book? Creating a story that is dynamic and engaging takes a lot more than just setting aside an hour every day to write. This workshop will take you through all of the basics of writing a novel, including how important it is to choose a great setting, how to build characters, what point of view you should choose, how to write great dialogue, and more.   Writing the Personal Essay 101: Fundamentals Instructor: Gloria Kempton This course guides beginning and intermediate writers through elements of how to write a personal essay, helping them identify values expressed in their stories and bring readers into the experiences described. Writers learn how to avoid the dreaded responses of “so what?" and “I guess you had to be there" by utilizing sensory details, learning to trust their writing intuitions, and developing a skilled internal editor to help with revision.   Writing the Picture Book Instructor: Holly Adler Picture books are one of the most delightful—and important—genres in all of literature. In this course, you'll learn how to write a winning picture book narrative, envision it with illustrations, and put together a picture package that a publisher will really notice. Plus, you'll receive feedback on each assignment from your instructor and have the chance to participate in the peer critique section of the workshop with other classmates.   Form and Composition Instructor: Kelly Boyer Sagert Proper grammar, punctuation, and mechanics make your writing correct. In order to truly write well, you must also master the art of form and composition. From sentence structure to polishing your prose, this workshop will enhance your writing, no matter what type of writing you do.   Upcoming Webinars:   Writing & Selling the Historical Novel: From Idea to Publication with Gina Panettieri April 29, 1:00 PM EDT Writing and Selling the Historical Novel is a crash course jam-packed with advice from the start of your novel to the finish, from picking a concept with immediate appeal to pitching your finished product to the agents and editors who will take it to publication.   Social Media Bliss: How You Can Engage With Meaning and Without Losing Your Mind with Jane Friedman May 13, 1:00 PM EDT Just about every writer has a love-hate relationship with social media, and for some it serves as a serious distraction from important writing work. This class focuses on how to take a holistic and fits-for-you approach to social media that’s based on long-term reader engagement and sound principles of online marketing. Join popular WDU instructor Jane Friedman and sign up today!   Upcoming Boot Camp:   How to Craft Query Letters & Other Submission Materials That Get Noticed with Kimberley Cameron and Associates April 20-23, 2021 When your submission materials – a query letter, synopsis, manuscript, or book proposal – arrive in an agent's inbox, they land among hundreds of others. This WDU Boot Camp is designed to help you streamline your submission materials to stand out in a good way. Get valuable agent feedback on your submission materials and more! Seating is limited so sign up today.    Upcoming Virtual Conference:   Short Story Virtual Conference with SIX Award-Winning Writers May 21-23, 2021  Writer's Digest is pleased to present an exclusive virtual conference for short story writers! Spend the weekend learning techniques for honing your craft skills, marketing your short fiction, editing, and getting the tools you need to advance your career as a writer from six different published authors, then (if you choose) submit up to 500 words of a short story to an editor for critique.     Featured April Courses:   Build Your Novel Scene by Scene Instructor: Mark Spencer April 29 - July 22 If you want to learn how to write a story, but aren’t quite ready yet to hunker down and write 10,000 words or so a week, this is the course for you. Build Your Novel Scene by Scene will offer you the impetus, the guidance, the support, and the deadline you need to finally stop talking, start writing, and, ultimately, complete that novel you always said you wanted to write.    Advanced Poetry Writing Instructor: Kristina Marie Darling April 29 - June 10 Build your poetry writing skills by working with a highly accomplished poet! The workshop will consist of six one-week sessions, focused on individualized feedback and critique. Through detailed discussions of your own work, you will learn the kinds of questions editors ask of poems submitted to literary magazines. As a result, you will learn to revise and polish with an editor’s eye, gaining insight into how to craft poems suited for publication. You will leave this workshop with a folio of six polished poems, ideal for magazine and literary journal submissions, as well as personalized recommendations for publication and professional development.   Hate being tied to a schedule? Check out our affordable, Self-Paced Courses >> EXPERT INSTRUCTORS | CONVENIENT ACCESS INVALUABLE FEEDBACK   Active Interest Media P.O. Box 20730 Boulder, Colorado, 80308 USA . 3 Key Stakes That Drive Novels A hero who does not have many reasons to solve a problem will gradually become uninteresting. As the story grinds on, the reader will wonder, Why go through all that grief if you don’t have to? Why not just let someone else handle it? You don’t want that. You want your reader to hope hard or even cheer for your protagonist’s success, right?  (5 Moral Dilemmas That Make Characters and Stories Better.) Raising the stakes, whether they arise from internal forces or from external ones, makes your protagonist’s character interesting and her story memorable. Read the full article... Plot Twist Story Prompts: Under the Influence For this week's prompt, let a character fall under the influence of something or someone. This could be as simple as having a character get drunk or do drugs. Once a person does drugs, of course, they tend to act in different ways than when they're sober, which can move the plot in unexpected ways. (2021 April PAD Challenge: Day 19.) If the character often engages in this kind of behavior, it can move the plot in expectedly unexpected ways while developing the character. However, a character who does not usually imbibe or partake may have more startling and memorable impacts on the plot if they find themselves acting completely out of character. The results of which could be humorous or horrifically dramatic. But remember that there are other possibilities for coming under the influence as well. A character could come under the influence of a magic potion or spell. Or perhaps, they're influenced by popularity and/or being in the presence of a celebrity. And don't forget the possibility of mind control. Read More... This Week in Writing 4/19—Charles Darwin died 1882 4/19—Daphne Du Maurier died 1989 4/19—Octavio Paz died 1998 4/20—Bram Stoker died 1912 (10 writing techniques from Dracula) 4/21—Charlotte Bronte born 1816 4/21—John Muir born 1838 4/21—Mark Twain died 1910 4/21—Barbara Park born 1947 4/22—Henry Fielding born 1707 4/22—Vladimir Nabokov born 1899 4/22—Louise Gluck born 1943 4/22—Janet Evanovich born 1943 (Janet Evanovich quotes for writers) 4/22—Jane Kenyon died 1995 4/22—Thornton Wilder born 1897 4/23—William Shakespeare born 1564/died 1616 4/24—Robert Penn Warren born 1905 4/25—Sue Grafton born 1940 (W is for Writer) Robert Lee Brewer Robert Lee Brewer is a senior editor for Writer's Digest and former editor of the Writer's Market book series. He is also the author of Smash Poetry Journal and Solving the World's Problems. Find him on Twitter at @RobertLeeBrewer Active Interest Media P.O. Box 20730 Boulder, Colorado, 80308 USA          Last Chance: Agent Feedback on Your Submission Package!   When your submission materials – a query letter, synopsis, manuscript, or book proposal – arrive in an agent's inbox, they land among hundreds of others. This WDU Boot Camp is designed to help you streamline your submission materials to stand out in a good way. Get valuable agent feedback on your submission materials and more! Seating is limited so sign up today. Work directly with an agent from the comfort of your home!    Your Registration Includes: 60-minute online tutorial presented by agents at Kimberley Cameron & Associates Online Q&A session hosted by Kimberley Cameron & Associates Networking opportunities with your peers Feedback from an agent on up to ten pages or submission materials Get personalized feedback from agents with Kimberley Cameron & Associates! If your submission shows promise, they may ask you for additional pages.   Starts Tomorrow! April 20-23, 2021   LEARN MORE & REGISTER   Active Interest Media P.O. Box 20730 Boulder, Colorado, 80308 USA         Writer’s Digest Novel Writing Conference 2021 registration is now open!   The Writer’s Digest Novel Writing Conference—October 21-24, 2021 in Pasadena, CA—is your chance to acknowledge the importance of writing in your life. And whether writing is your passion or profession, a trip to the conference is a perfect—and purposeful—affirmation of your goals.    Writer's Digest Novel Writing Conference is hopeful we will be able to meet in-person this October. There is still a lot of COVID-related uncertainty in 2021 and WD wants to take the proper steps to ensure all of our speakers, attendees, exhibitors, and staff are as safe as possible. In addition to planning a virtual back-up plan, we will extend the same flexible cancellation policy for 2021 as we did in 2020, allowing attendees to cancel, if needed, once they’ve registered for a full refund. We are monitoring vaccination rates and state/federal travel guidelines very closely and will post updates on our website and via email.    Until then, registration is now open and we are working on some exciting programming for 2021! Be on the lookout for announcements in the months to follow. Register today for the best price.      Active Interest Media P.O. Box 20730 Boulder, Colorado, 80308 USA     Active Interest Media, P.O. Box 20730, Boulder, Colorado 80308, USA

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In this issue, learn how long a book should be, what a pantser is, eight tips for building your supportive writing network, on writing quickly and publishing slowly, and more!  How Long Should a Book Be? Word count for novels and books is something I don't think about too often until I travel to a writers' conference, and then someone asks a simple, innocent question: "How long should a book be?" With that in mind, I've tried to put together the definitive post on word count for fiction (novels, young adult, middle grade, children's books and even memoir). (20 Literary Agents Actively Seeking Writers and Their Writing.) The most important thing here is to realize that there are always exceptions to these rules. And man, people love to point out exceptions—and they always will. However, if there is one thing I remember from when my wife dragged me kicking and screaming to He's Just Not That Into You, it's that you cannot count on being the exception; you must count on being the rule. Aiming to be the exception is setting yourself up for disappointment. What writers fail to see is that for every successful exception to the rule (e.g., a first-time 175,000-word novel), there are at least 100 failures if not 300. Almost always, high word count means that the writer simply did not edit their work down enough. Or—it means they have two or more books combined into one. Read the full article... Craft & Business of Writing 8 Tips to Build Your Supportive Writer Network Writing is often a lonely activity and the support of a nurturing network can make the difference in how well and how long you persist. A writer needs connections at every level, from beginning writers to booksellers to experts in the industry. To achieve this goal, here are eight tips for creating this network. Read More... What Is a Pantser in Writing? I've been working as an editor with the Writer's Digest writing community for so long that I often take certain terms for granted. While they may have been new to me 5, 10, or 20 years ago, they're just the jargon I know by heart. But not everyone is familiar with the same jargon at the same time, so I'm going to start defining some of these terms for people who are still learning. (Note: I'm always still learning.) (What Is a Plotter in Writing?) In this post, I'm going to answer the question, "What is a pantser in writing?" Read More... On Writing Quickly and Publishing Slowly As an aspiring author, I spent most of my time and energy thinking about craft, and not much about promoting and selling books. This has been a shift as I’ve moved from being a writer to an author. In the past, I wasn’t very active on social media, so I’ve been scaling that learning curve in the months leading up to publication. Luckily, I’ve found some amazing author friends along the way, which has made this part of the journey fun. Read More... Send Your Work to 2nd Draft Critique Services! No matter your style or genre, Writer's Digest Shop offers a high-level view of your writing. After an evaluation of your submission, one of the professional 2nd Draft critiquers will provide feedback and advice. Click here to learn more >> 2021 April PAD Challenge: Day 15 Write a poem each and every day of April (or get started today). Today's prompt is to write a blank story poem. Read More... Robert Lee Brewer Robert Lee Brewer is a senior editor for Writer's Digest and former editor of the Writer's Market book series. He is also the author of Smash Poetry Journal and Solving the World's Problems. Find him on Twitter at @RobertLeeBrewer

Active Interest Media P.O. Box 20730 Boulder, Colorado, 80308 USA

A Special Offer from our Trusted Partner Dear Writer, What are the hottest markets for working writers right now? If you say romance, you’re wrong. And it’s not mystery… sci-fi… or even YA. Sure, all together those are billion-dollar genres. But you can do better. MUCH better. The red-hot markets I’m thinking of will hit a total of $656 billion in spending this year. $656 billion. That’s more than 200x bigger than romance, mystery, and sci-fi combined. Which is why I’m shocked so many authors still overlook these powerful, high-paying markets entirely. Especially with the royalty streams, retainer payments, and high per-project fees available. You could pocket $250… $500… $1,000… or even $2,000+ per assignment in up-front fees and collect thousands more in royalties on the back end (per month!). Plus, since the typical author is still fixated on the traditional publishing scene, stepping into these overlooked markets means you earn these high rates without subjecting yourself to ruthless competition at every turn. In fact, you may be surprised at just how eager businesses in these markets are to meet you, work with you, and partner with you for the long term. That’s why… even if you love your current genre… I encourage you to carefully read the special report I’d like to send you. It’s free. Inside, I’ll tell you about nine of the hottest markets for talented writers. Where they are… how to break into them… and even more about what you can expect to pocket when you publish. Click here to get the report — and every market detail — right now. There’s a saying in the writing industry… go where the money is. This report shows you where. To your success, Rebecca Matter American Writers & Artists Institute (AWAI) Active Interest Media P.O. Box 20730 Boulder, Colorado, 80308 USA     Win $5,000, a feature about you in Writer's Digest and so much more! For 90 years, Writer’s Digest has honored new and up-and-coming writers in many genres or categories. And it’s that time again—we’re looking for writing that strikes and grabs us, that we can’t put down. We’re looking for standout writing in any and all of the following categories: inspirational/spiritual memoirs/personal essays print or online article genre short story (think romance, thriller, mystery, sci-fi, etc.) mainstream/literary short story rhyming poetry non-rhyming poetry script (think stage play or television/movie script) children’s/young adult fiction With so many options, we’re sure something you’ve written or are writing will fit in. And we’ve seen a wide range of winners in the past several years. Just be sure to check our website for entry details—we have strict word count restrictions for each category. So, how will this competition help you? That’s easy. The grand prize winner will receive $5,000 in cash, a trip to the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference, and an interview for a feature article in our magazine. First place winners in each category receive $1,000, second place winners in each category win $500, and on and on! Ready to be the next Writer's Digest Annual Competition winner? Enter by May 7 for the best price! LEARN MORE Active Interest Media P.O. Box 20730 Boulder, Colorado, 80308 USA