Everyone has a story to tell. Sometimes that story can make a fantastic book. If you’re writing a memoir, one of the greatest challenges you face isn’t writing the story, but the feedback you receive after others have read it. When the stories are personal, any negative feedback can feel like a punch to the gut.
For this reason, many fantastic memoirs have been written, but never published. If you’ve written your memoirs and would like to see them in print, then here’s how to publish them so people besides your family and friends will be able to give them a good read.
Today, with modern technology anyone can publish a memoir, distribute paperback or hard cover versions to their family and friends, post their book on Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com, and have any orders printed and fulfilled as they come in, for less than a thousand dollars. There are a variety of reason why you should consider publishing a memoir. Usually, an agent and author will work for months to put together a 30–50 page proposal that lays the book out in detail. The agent will then get on the phone and call a carefully assembled list of editors (the submission list) and will describe (sell) each one over the phone on the strengths of this particular memoir. Brooke’s expertise is in traditional and new publishing. She is the former Executive Editor of Seal Press and currently sits on the boards of the Independent Book Publishers Association, the Bay Area Book Festival, and the National Association of Memoir Writers. She blogs actively on Huffington Post Books and SheWrites.com. Today, with modern technology anyone can publish a memoir, distribute paperback or hard cover versions to their family and friends, post their book on Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com, and have any orders printed and fulfilled as they come in, for less than a thousand dollars. There are a variety of reason why you should consider publishing a memoir.
#1. Esp guitar serial number decoder. Give your memoirs one more once-over to correct anything.
There are three factors that make up a good memoir today. The voice you use in your story must be distinctive. The events of your life, the characters you’ve included, and the key scenes with the right voice will stand out. You’re not just telling people about yourself. You’re creating a memorable event for a reader so they can’t put the book down.
This means there must also be a premise to your memoirs. They must stand out from all of the other life stories that have been written in some way. Make your story unique and compelling.
Then you need to have a platform. There must be some way for a reader to be able to draw a connection to you. This doesn’t mean you have to be famous. You just need to have some life component that has common ground with the reader, like where you work, where you live, or even the hobbies you enjoy.
#2. Put as much focus into your query letter as you do into your memoirs.
Whether you’re contacting a literary agent or you’re contacting a publisher directly, the query letter must be as fresh and unique as your memoirs. Put your personality into that letter. Make it come to life. Be aggressive and confident, but don’t be egotistical and arrogant. Create a short description of your memoirs so that it makes people pay attention to what you’ve written because they’ve gotten a sense of who you are and want to read more.
#3. Never assume that people know who you are.
Even if you are famous, there are going to be people who don’t really know who you are. Remember: everyone who has written a memoir feels like their story is interesting and deserves to be published. People don’t know your background. People might not want to hear a detailed description of everything that has happened to you. Give your queries some definition by inserting the same kind of story arc that you did within your memoirs.
#4. No one wants to know to whom you’ve given your memoirs.
Autocad architecture 2015 full crack. When making a query to a publisher, don’t discuss who has read your memoirs already. Many will talk about how the local book club has reviewed their story or how a teacher is using the memoirs for students. Publishers don’t know these people. They don’t know that you’ve actually given your memories to these people. It has no meaning to them and could cause them to reject the idea of publishing a memoir.
#5. You’ve been rejected by a traditional publisher… now what?
You’ve written query letters to an agent or a publisher and received dozens of rejection letters. Now what? You can decide to self-publish your memoirs. Assuming the above steps have already been taken, this process is about as easy as finding the right publisher to meet your needs. You’ve got several options available to you today. From print-on-demand to boutique printing, you can put your memories into print in a way that allows you to sell things on your level.
Wikipedia has a comprehensive list of companies that are engaged in the self-publishing business. You can also search for local companies or publishers that specialize in printing memoirs if you prefer.
#6. Finalize your plans.
Whether you get a publishing deal or you decide to self-publish your memoirs, the final step of the process is to finalize your book. Go through all of the proofs to sign off that everything meets your standards. Give your story another edit if you can [or request the publisher give it one] to limit typos that might be present. Clear your schedule so that you can begin promoting your book. Coordinate with your publisher to attend events as needed.
Publishing your memoirs, after all, is just the second step in the process. Writing your memoirs was the first step. Selling your memoirs is the final step.
Knowing how to publish a memoir means writing a good query letter if you approach literary agents or publishers. It means having a polished story. It means finding a self-publisher that meets your needs if that is the path you wish to walk down. When you follow these steps, you’ll be able to put something into print that many are going to enjoy reading.
WANT MORE?
Ever wondered how to write and publish a memoir? This video will provide 5 tips on how to write a memoir about yourself and get published. If you’re attempting to get your memoir picked up by a traditional publisher, there’s a formula you’ll need to consider to catch their attention. This video will share what all new memoir writers need to consider.
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Video Transcript for How To Write And Publish A Memoir
Hi aspiring writers! Writing coach Stefanie Newell and this is The Life Of A Writer channel. Today’s video How To Write A Memoir and Get It Published.
Self Publishing A Memoir
So in today’s video I’m going to be sharing five tips that will help you to get your memoir picked up by a traditional publisher. If you want to learn how to connect with readers and sell more books make sure to subscribe and get new content to your inbox every Tuesday.
So while this video is geared towards authors or new authors that are looking to traditionally publish make no mistake that the tips that I’ll be providing in this video will be beneficial to all memoir writers. So let’s get right into it!
How To Write And Publish A Memoir – Tip #1
Tip number one, be clear on your target audience and we talked about this briefly in a previous video. I’m going to link that video in the description box below but the reason why it’s important to be clear on your target audience is because you want to write a book that your target audience wants.
You don’t want to just share all of these different details and this is not what the genre or the demographic of people that you’re writing for are in need of. That’s really important!
Again if you’re trying to capture the attention of a traditional publisher being clear on your target audience is not an option you want to make sure that you know exactly who your target audience is. So of course you’re gonna go through the basics of you know there’s this age range, there’s this gender but you need to know way more than that about your target audience.
So how do we learn about our target audience? That’s often a question that’s asked. You have to immerse yourself in the genre that you write in. So if you write memoirs go on Amazon look at other memoirs look for it in memoirs that are similar to the type of book that you’re writing.
I often recommend to my clients that they go and look and read the reviews of books that are similar to the book that they’re trying to write because there are so many clues as to who is a part of your target audience down in those reviews.
You will learn so much about the people, what their interests are, what their likes are… Again the more you can learn about your target audience the more you can write with them specifically in mind.
Tip #2
Tip #2 Consider other commercially successful memoirs! And we kind of talked about this previously, but the reason why this is so important is because there’s so much information that can be found in other books that are already out on the market and doing well.
So what I want you to do is to consider three to five books that are similar to the book that you are writing or the memoir that you’re writing. So you want to go on Amazon look for books that are similar as far as themes are concerned as far as target audience concerned and you want to actually read those books if you can.
If you don’t have time to read those books you know you can go and do the look inside feature on Amazon and read you know just a few pages to get an idea. But really and truly you want to read as many of those memoirs as possible.
The reason why that’s important is because number one like we said they are commercially successful. These are books that people are actively going out and purchasing because there’s something in it that people want to know about and if they’ve been traditionally published already the likelihood that you’ve written something that’s similar to this book tells you that you may have a chance at having a book that’s also commercially successful.
So again some of the things that you’re looking for in these books you want to look at their writing voice, you want to look at how they introduce themselves to their readers, you want to look at how transparent they were, did they connect with you as the reader? And all of those things will help you when you begin writing your own manuscript.
Tip #3
Tip number three be honest and don’t embellish your stories. So I don’t know how many of you guys remember an author by the name of Frey he wrote a book called A Million Little Pieces. He was really kind of brought to the forefront by Oprah Winfrey and then it later turned out that a lot of his memoir was embellished.
And the reason why you don’t want to embellish your story is because you want to have credibility. If you are looking to have a career in writing, even if you’re not looking to have a career in writing, you don’t want to ruin your credibility by embellishing a story.
You are not obligated to share your life story, but if you do decide to share your life story you want to be as honest and as transparent as possible and you want to be credible. So that’s really going to be important tip.
Self Publishing A Memoir Book
How To Write and Publish A Memoir – Tip #4
Tip number four find a literary agent that handles memoirs. So this is going to be important because again in order to be traditionally published you have to have a literary agent.
They’re kind of the gatekeeper between you and the traditional publishing company so you don’t want to just query any agent. That’s not what you want to do. As you did in a previous step you were looking at some commercially successful books… look at those books and see if those authors are sharing who their literary agents are. If they are, see if those literary agents are accepting queries and that will give you a starting point.
I’ll also put down in the description box a website that you can use to find literary agents but again you’re not just querying any agent. You want to make sure that you’re querying agents that are looking for memoir writers.
Down in the comment section share with me the traditional publishing companies that you would love to be signed to.
Tip #5
Tip number five is to write an engaging story this is so important so whether you want to be traditionally published or self-published it really doesn’t matter an engaging story is important. Most of you who are watching my videos are going to be first-time writers who don’t have an audience so an engaging story is important because you are trying to get readers to connect with you and they don’t know anything previously about you.
So an engaging story, by having a strong introduction, a strong middle and a strong close will draw the reader in and keep them interested.
As always all of my social media links will be in the description box below if you’re looking to hire me as your writing coach you will find that information there as well and I look forward to talking with you in my next video.
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