“Ask An Expert: Lucinda Halpern”
Lucinda was recently profiled by Publishers Lunch in a piece called “Ask An Expert: Lucinda Halpern”. Besides giving her usual valuable insight on querying and platform-building, she spills some behind-the-scenes secrets about her career in publishing as well as what she has learned as an author that she didn’t know before as an agent:
You began in publishing as a publicist. How much thought and effort should authors put into promoting themselves, from querying through publication? What if they just want to write?
There are some very successful authors who can hide themselves away in the cabin retreat or the proverbial ivory tower and focus only on the internal act of writing. Last I checked, those authors included Barbara Kingsolver, Donna Tartt, and Elizabeth Strout, some of my favorites. However, they established themselves long before public promotion (reliant on the individual) vs. press promotion (achieved through a third party) was required to introduce oneself to a wide audience of possible readers.
Maybe the first thing to understand is that the act of writing is not the act of publishing. When you write, you connect with yourself. When you publish, you connect with others. Promotion is a secondary, if not full-time job, and needs to be from the start, for nonfiction writers in particular, and long before you’re approaching agents. Here’s the encouraging news. If you love to write, you can repurpose that content—for your blog, newsletter, social media feed, etc.—effectively doing both the writing work and the promoting work at once. GET SIGNED covers the “how-to” of this in depth. If you see “promotion” in that new light, perhaps you’ll feel more inspired to do it.
You can find the full article here.
Order your copy of Get Signed by Lucinda Halpern for more advice on how to get published!
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