tck publishing

Welcome Friends, Writers, and Authors,

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Today I have a featured guest article from my friend Tom Corson-Knowles, CEO of TCK Publishing who shares some amazing advice and tips on becoming a more seasoned writer. I enjoy visiting his helpful website as he shares so much it keeps me coming back often and learning more about writing, authoring, selling my books and I can pass it on book marketing tips to all my author friends and clients.

Authors, make sure you check out his upcoming 2019 “TCK Publishing Readers Choice Awards” and enter your book! There are fabulous prizes and it helps get more exposure to your book! So let’s all learn some tips on becoming Better Writers! …

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“Writing professionally is a full-time job with part-time hours and never-ending responsibilities.”
Most professional writers don’t actually spend 8 hours writing each day, but that doesn’t mean they’re not working.

If you want to become a more productive writer, you have to learn to manage your work, your life, and your mental and physical wellbeing. You can’t sustain high levels of creativity and productivity as a writer without working on yourself.

Here are the 10 things that helped me become a more productive writer, and I hope these tips help you too.

1. Schedule Your Work

You have to make time in your schedule for writing, marketing, and business time.

Don’t let a day go by without writing and working on your career. Even if it’s just 15 minutes here and there it adds up. The work habits you build will determine your success or failure.

Every day you skip your writing work, you bring yourself closer and closer to failure, anxiety, stress, and the really bad habit of procrastination that dooms far too many writers’ promising careers.

2. Study

Learn everything you can about writing, publishing, and marketing. Ignorance is not bliss. It will ruin your dreams.

Check out the best books on writing.

Learn how to improve your readability.

Understand how to do market research for writing and learn more about your customers and readers.

Every day, study so you can learn a little bit more about the incredible art of writing.

3. Make Mistakes

You’ll learn more from your mistakes than just about anything else.

Be bold. Get rejected. Publish crappy articles and books (at first).

You learn as you go and you have to be willing to fail or you’ll never learn what you need to learn to succeed.

The only difference between you and the most successful writers in the world is they’ve made more mistakes than you have. Learn from your mistakes and keep going.

4. Get Rid of Bad Habits

To become a successful writer, I had to get rid of my addiction to video games, binge-watching TV series and complaining. I also had to develop new habits like working out, taking walks, meditating, and asking for help. I had to ask hundreds of people for help along the way. I never could have done it alone.

Bad habits and addictions will destroy your creative output. You need every extra hour you can get to take care of yourself and focus on your writing career.

If you waste that time on bad habits, you’ll be shooting yourself in the foot.

5. Build Relationships

Meet other writers and creative people with big ambitions and good work habits. Just being around people who published 1, 2, or more books since you started yours will motivate the heck out of you.

You’ll see that other people are succeeding and you’ll be inspired to work extra hard to make your dreams come true.

6. Ignore the Noise

Don’t waste time with complainers, energy vampires, or depressed people. Their energy will infect you. It’s nearly impossible to create while depressed or stressed.

If you find something or someone in your life is distracting you from being productive, happy, and fulfilled, deal with it now! Putting it off will only make you feel more stressed, anxious, and depressed. And if that’s how you feel day after day after day, chances are you’ll never become a highly productive writer.

7. Manage Your Emotions

Writing is painful as hell. You will feel miserable sometimes. You’ll be scared, angry, hurt, feel emotions you haven’t felt or haven’t wanted to feel for years. It’ll open up parts of yourself you never imagined we’re there. Embrace it. Get help. See a therapist. Talk about your feelings and problems.

8. Take Care of Yourself

You are your biggest obstacle to success. You have to learn to work harder on improving yourself than you do at your writing career.

When you work on improving your life, even if it’s just a little bit, it’ll help you become more creative and productive.

Take that walk around the block. Eat healthier. Meditate. Get rid of bad relationships. Make your relationships better. Reduce your stress.

Small things may not seem that important but they can make all the difference in the world over your lifetime. Creating is hard enough without adding 10 more problems to your life.

Solve the little problems and becoming a more productive creator will be a lot easier.

9. Add Value Always

Focus on adding value not making money.

Your readers need your help. Your job is to help them, no matter what kind of books you write. Your story and the message could change their life. It’s your job to do the best you can possibly do to help your reader. Nothing else is as important to your career as helping your readers.

When you have a big decision to make about the direction of your work, the title for your book, or any other creative decision, ask yourself:

“What’s best for my reader?”

Whatever the answer is, it’s almost always the right choice. Do what’s best for your reader. Add value to their lives. If you do that well enough, everything else will work out.

10. Experiment

If what you’ve been doing hasn’t been working, it’s up to you to change it. Do something different. Try new things. Experiment. Play like a kid. You are smart enough to figure it out if you really want to become a successful and productive writer.

Believe in yourself, believing in your dreams, and believe in your work.

You can do it if you’re willing to do the right thing day after day after day.

That’s how you build a successful life and a successful writing career.
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If you liked this post, please visit my friends from TCK Publishing as below are some other articles you might love:

last month I was invited by my dear friend Marilyn Davis to write an article for her fabulous writers’ website “TwoDropsofInk” titled; Authors: Book Promote Like a Pro!
In my article, I clarified the differences between literary agents, publicists, and book promoters…

how to get a literary agent contract

Literary Publicist

Literary Publicist: Is a person who publicizes, especially a press agent or public-relations consultant. They are an expert in current or public affairs, and an expert on federal or international law.

Literary Agent

Literary Agent: Is a person who represents writers and their written works to publishers, theatrical producers, film producers and film studios, and assists in the sale and deal negotiations of the same.

Literary Book Promoter or Marketer

Literary Book Promoter or marketer: Is a person who promotes, especially as an active supporter, advocate, or paid publicity organizer to promote one’s work through various forms like press releases, through social media, and more. That is what I do

So now that we know the differences, I came across another fantastic article on TCK Publishing about: How To Get A Literary Agent. When I got my email newsletter from them, it had a great article and guide on how to go about this. So I emailed “The Guy,” Best Selling Author, Tom Corson-Knowles to ask if I could share some of this article and HOPE writer’s that you will go read the rest and view The Guide he was kind enough to share with us on their website within the article here: “How To Get A Literary Agent”.

In the weird, wonderful world of publishing, there are a few key figures that everyone knows about: publishers, editors, and literary agents.

But do you really know what those folks do all day?

In an age when anyone can upload a file and start selling their book on Amazon in a few clicks, why do these old-school roles still matter? How do they add value to your publishing journey?

Let’s take an in-depth look at the literary agent, one of the key figures in the traditional publishing industry. We’ll check out what they do every day to help you and your book succeed, what it might cost you to work with an agent, and how you can find an agent.

We’ll also talk with publishing industry experts and agents themselves about what to do—and not to do—if you want to work with an agent, and how to get the most out of your relationship.

Let’s get started!

What Is a Literary Agent?

No matter what creative industry you’re talking about—film, TV, books, music—there’s usually someone called an “agent” working in it.

That’s because, when you get right down to it, creative people want to be creating, not worrying about business matters. But the businesspeople who put that creative material out to the public want to make sure little things like deadlines are met, and that contracts are signed, paperwork is filled out, and so on.

So a kind of go-between developed between creative professionals and business types: the agent.

Agents are kind of like business managers for creatives: writers, actors, artists, musicians, and so on. They handle all the nitty-gritty details so that you can get on with the important work of creating.

What Does an Agent Do?

Agents do a lot of things that authors can do for themselves, but that takes a lot of time and effort to keep on top of.

The key part of any agent’s job is getting their clients work. They negotiate deals like publishing contracts or speaking gigs, keep track of licensing arrangements, and coordinate payment from all those different deals.

But agents do far more than just making deals!

Literary agents, in particular, often partner with the authors they represent to improve a manuscript, working together on edits and development to refine the book until it’s sure to knock the socks off a publisher.

The agent also puts together a query and pitch package for the book to submit to publishers, helping put the manuscript’s best foot forward and show exactly why the publisher should pay top dollar for that book.

A great pitch package is more than just a summary of the book. In nonfiction, it includes a summary of every chapter and its content, a basic marketing plan, an examination of other comparable books on the market, and more.

Basically, it’s a mini-business plan for your book…and that takes a lot of work to put together! Agents know the style, format, and content that will appeal to a busy acquisitions editor and they can put together a package that’ll impress.

“Former agent Elizabeth Evans (now an independent editor) says, “It’s not often discussed in the publishing process, but I think an important part of being a good agent is understanding how to help a writer create his or her most powerful work.”

A Day in the Life of an Agent

Agents spend most of their time reading submissions and sending notes on the books that come across their desks. They field dozens, if not hundreds, of queries every week and have to quickly evaluate whether the book is ready to publish—and whether it has market potential.

If something interesting and well-written comes across their email, they’ll request the full manuscript to review, to make sure that the writing through the whole book lives up to the promise of the query and the sample pages.

When a book really hits home, they’ll offer to represent the author—you!—and then start the process of working with you to refine the book, create a pitch package, and find a publisher.

If you’re lucky, the agent will be able to start an auction for the rights to publish your book, getting several interested editors at different publishing houses to bid on it. The combination of the most money and the best terms and marketing support wins!

Once the book is under contract with a publisher, the agent’s work doesn’t end! Now, your agent will help coordinate edit timelines, marketing support, book tours, and more.

They’ll also keep track of contract details and collect your royalties on your behalf.

Once the book is published, some agents will also help sell subsidiary rights, which are other ways to make money off your writing. Some agents represent subsidiary rights themselves, while others have someone in their agency whose entire job is to handle subsidiary rights.

These rights include film or TV options, foreign translation rights, audiobook rights, and more.

All in all, subsidiary rights can add up to a lot of income for you as the author! But making all those deals can be very time-consuming, so it’s really handy to have an agent pursuing all those options on your behalf.

An agent’s day varies constantly, but on an average day, your agent is probably:

Calling editors to discuss possible projects
Checking royalty statements for accuracy
Making notes on a client’s new marketing plan
Scanning Publishers Weekly to see what’s been selling
Writing a query for a new book
Responding to pitch emails
Fielding phone calls and emails from clients
Taking notes on client projects
Reading new manuscript submissions (often after standard working hours!)

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There is so much more to learn from this fantastic and helpful article!
I thank TomCorson-Knowles for letting me share some of this with all my writer and author friends here. Please stop by and read the rest of how to get the very BEST AGENT possible and to see if you need one!

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“CAT LYON’S Reading and Writing Den” ~ See How I can Promote Your Books!
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