Film Courage: What are the most common questions you receive from new authors?
Anna David, Publisher, Author, Speaker, Podcast Host, and Television Personality: The most common
questions I get are how do I become a New York Times best-selling author? How do I
get my book in bookstores and how do I sell to a traditional publisher? Every day I'm probably
asked all three of those things and people are still caring about bookstores people are still
caring about bookstores because even though the bookstores are slowly going away everybody has
that experience of like going to a bookstore as a kid or whatever your your experiences are with
bookstores that there's something so gratifying about seeing your own work in a bookstore
what are the five biggest mistakes authors make when writing a book
the five biggest mistakes I'm sure I've made all of them number one not asking who your book is
for number two focusing on all the wrong things like the New York Times bestseller list number
three not bothering to find out if it's a book people want or if it's a book that if it's a topic
that even has a reading audience number four they think that because people have told them they're a
good writer that they should write a book and number five there's nothing unique about it
and people I think oftentimes School took a lot of the creativity out of us my favorite comment I get
from people when they read my books is I felt like I was hanging out with you I think a lot of people
they're trying to write in some writerly voice and what it's actually doing is making them very basic
and very much not sound like themselves what stops most new writers from writing their first book I
think what stops most new writers is this question of who am I to write a book why should anybody
care about what I have to say and I often tell people my life's not that interesting but I've
made it into eight books and hundreds of articles it's not about what it is it's about how it's told
which is why everybody may have a book in them but not everybody should write the book themselves if
you can get help from a professional writer do but I think it's like if somebody says who am I to to
put my thoughts out there who are you not to we live in a gatekeeper-free society now where nobody
has to tell us where the chosen ones like you can choose yourself so why not how does a first-time
writer find an editor for their book and how do they know that someone that's a match for them
I do I know almost no writers who've had success out of the gate with finding editors it is the
hardest thing because unlike say being a surgeon anybody can say I'm an editor so I have seen many
books many clients come to us and they say here's my book it's edited and we read it it's awful and
they say but I hired this editor and I say well did the editor had they worked on best-selling
books well I never asked well what was their experience what did and and they you don't know
what you don't know so when you're looking for an editor the first thing you should do is get not
necessarily references you don't need to reach out to the people but find out what books they
worked on if they said they worked on big books see if they're actually thanked in those books
if you can always give someone a sample give them five pages and most editors will do a sample so
you can get a sense of what they're going to do and you need to understand what editing
is there's a developmental edit which is chapter three belongs in chapter 10 chapter 4 should not
be there this doesn't make sense then there's a copy edit which is basically oh you spelled this
word wrong on this comma and that thing and then there's a proofread because even though the copy
editor is trained in copy editing he's still a human being so they're going to miss things we
actually do an audio edit where we have computer software that reads the book aloud because the
eyes fill in words that aren't there so you can literally five have experienced editors can look
and still like have a major word missing so they you definitely should not trust anybody who says
they're an editor and if you find a good editor hold on to them because they are hard to find
and what if you are continually told you should write a book why you have great stories but then
you say to yourself I don't know if I want to go that far with some of these stories
and then they say well but it'd be too interesting to you don't want to leave this out this is this
is the meat of your book. How do you reconcile that so you're told you should write a book
your story is so interesting but there's certain things you're squeamish about how far do you go I
a lot of people are nervous about telling certain parts of their story particularly
if they're running a memoir and it involves other people and this comes up all the time
and people will say to me oh I'm going to write under a pen name because I don't want
I think it really really clear a lot of us are constricted because our stories involve other
people and those other people may not want those stories out there or whatever it is
I think only do what you're comfortable with I have absolutely left things out because in
the end if the people are still live I don't think it's a good idea to put it out there but
the nice thing about the world that we live in today with the way publishing works you can
put it out there and if you go what I actually wish what I feel more comfortable now now people
are thinking me as a writer I want to take that back and add more remove it from Amazon remove it
from Ingram you can redo it and re-upload it and all the new copies will be that way and that's
one of the glories of not being traditionally published you can change your book at any time
what is a bizmoir? My book Make Your Mess Your Memoir I wanted to write a book about how to
write but I didn't feel like I had a full book in me and I thought I'm so I can't just tell people
what to do for 300 Pages that's so boring and I'm somebody who a lot of business books that I
read I get a lot out of them but I find them kind of boring and then there are memoirs I read where
I'm riveted by every page but I leave without any takeaways or anything to really do so I thought
what if I could combine them both tell my story that's the memoir part and then have four chapters
that are the business part here's how you can tell your own memoir and so I coined the term Biz Moir
it hasn't really taken off yet but maybe after this video it will why is non-fiction
or memoir more attractive to publishers than fiction I actually don't know that that's true
I don't honestly I don't know what publishers mainstream publishers want mainstream publishers
want what they already know is going to sell so it's not like if JK Rowling has a new fiction
that's very interesting they're just it's a business like anything else so I don't know
that non-fiction is more attractive to them than fiction but they just want what's successful.