Customer Reviews

Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer

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Booklife is really the first book that addresses the two main challenges facing modern writers: balancing self promotion and the craft of writing.

The first half of the book - Public Booklife - covers online forums like blogging, social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, and how publishing actually works, all of the practical aspects of writing as a career. The second half - Private Booklife - is about how to become a better and more satisfied writer, with the benefit of the author's own (fascinating!) creative methods as well as insightful essays from other authors.

"Web-entrepreneur" Jeff VanderMeer has *25* years of experience (whoa) in publishing as a writer, editor, reviewer, high-profile blogger ([...]), and a whole lot more. He's absolutely the right guy to help writers understand how to become more successful while maintaining integrity and vision. He covers the best ways to use the Internet to increase your profile, the mysteries of the publishing cycle, how to work with publicists effectively, how to create an identity that is in sync with the quality and character of your writing, the process of establishing long-term writing goals, and how to maintain enough personal space to nurture your creativity, and much more. Plus VanderMeer's writing style is enjoyably infused with his humor and genuineness.

This book is an absolute must for any writer hacking their way through the jungle of modern publishing. Check it out.

Booklife is an informative guide for creating a successful and balanced writing life. VanderMeer breaks the book into two sections: Public Booklife, covering marketing elements, and the Private Booklife, focusing on the writing process - while emphasizing the importance of creating an authentic balance between the two.

The first section delves into online platforms and media opportunities including blogs, social networking (Twitter, FaceBook), book trailers, reviews, podcasts, and dedicated book / author websites, and provides insights to select the most effective and honest strategy. VanderMeer recommends setting goals and outlines how to create detailed plans. In part two, he discusses writing and revision, how to deal with rejections, and setting work schedules. This well-organized, thoughtful book concludes with more than 100 pages of appendices filled with information from and about agents, booksellers, editors, publicists, and published writers.

This is the first time I have ever reviewed a book on Amazon. I have been teaching writing for almost twenty years and have been collecting books about writing for much, much longer. Booklife has easily leapt into my top five and is probably one of my top two recommendations for writing books. Some of what you will read here is advice I myself have given in the past, the rest is stuff I wish I'd had the perspicacity to say. But I don't need to now. I'll just tell people to buy Jeff VanderMeer's new book.

Just like the name of this book states, the focus and the examples are on writing and books. However, Booklife works as a practical guide also for anybody building their career in the networked online world. VanderMeers book fills the void of scarce ideas and advice on how to keep the public career self and private self separate but mutually supporting - without getting bitten in the behind later by the public self.

VanderMeer writes with a warm and gentle voice, and emphasizes the importance of honesty, to one self and to others. Even if you are not a writer or don't even aspire to be one, this book can give you fresh ideas for your chosen path. And also very interesting insight into the world of book publication.

BOOKLIFE serves as a much-needed corrective to the sad "market your book like a carnival huckster" approach too often found in books of advice for writers these days. Instead, it challenges you to treat the long view of your career with reverence, to write AND market with honesty, and to commit yourself to the literary culture (whether in genre fiction or beyond) in which you hope to exist. The book is savvy about Web2.0 marketing and the way that the book business and freelancers need to understand all things in the trade as well as online, true -- and that may very well be its selling point as a "survival guide" -- but even more, it's a testimony to the commitment that Vandermeer has to what he has been doing for over twenty years as an author: writing with conviction and refusing to dumb down for the sake of the lowest common denominator that sometimes, unfortunately, drives the mass market. No matter what genre you write for, if you are a freelance writer who is in it for the long haul -- rather than putting all your eggs into a one-book-wonder-basket -- then this book belongs on your shelf, nestled between Bruce Holland Rogers' WORD WORK and David Morrell's LESSONS IN A LIFETIME OF WRITING. And make sure that shelf is an arm's length away from your keyboard. For life.

I've read lots of books on writing and this is one of the best.
There are lots of books that cover the techniques of writing, but this is one of the few books I've encountered that deals with both the professional and personal sides of the writing life itself.
The sections dealing with goal setting and with new media (blogging, Twitter, YouTube) are particularly useful.

Writing used to be all about putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). In the 21st Century, there are so many other things for a writer to consider. This book aims to answer some of those questions.

Every published writer needs some sort of Web presence. Will yours be a static website to which you post every week or so? Will yours be an active blog to which you post every day, along with daily Facebook updates, and a couple of tweets daily? Choose which is best for you; every minute blogging or tweeting is a minute taken away from writing. Isn't writing the most important part of all this?

Create checklists and stick with them. For instance, write an entire short story, edit it, and get it ready for mailing, every month. As soon as a story is returned from Magazine A, get it in the mail to Magazine B as soon as possible (the next day, if possible). How do you juggle a full-time job with a writing career? Few writers can make a living from writing. If writing is important enough to you, you will make time for writing (even just an hour a day).

Most writers will have to handle their own marketing and publicity. How good are you at reading a selection from your novel (no more than 15 minutes long), then answering questions from a live audience about it? If you have a hard time with that, then concentrate on podcasts and posting to other people's blogs. Again, choose which is best for you. Along with seemingly every other business book written in the 21st Century, the author stresses the power of networking. That person you casually meet at a literary convention may be a popular blogger, or know a magazine editor who would be interested in a submission from you.

On the personal side, the book looks at the process of editing and revising your stories, and how to re-charge your creative batteries.

This book will not help you get that first novel sale (there are plenty of other books available for that). But when you get that first check from a publisher, one of the first things you should do is buy a copy of this book. It will be of immense help in answering that eternal author question, "How do I get people to buy my book?"

This was a very positive push for anyone who wants to write and has cold feet. Like me. There is information on two fronts: what kind of PR and online social networking you should do, and what kind of personal schedule you should aim for. I appreciated all his insight and reflection on what it takes in this computer age to blend print on paper, and print on line, and still exist in your head, Excellent advice, great book.

This book covers an amazing amount of ground, from big topics to small, and everything in between. As someone who had to figure out a lot of things for myself (when I started out writing a few years ago), I can appreciate the massive amounts of accumulated experience collected in this book, and I would recommend it to any writer, but especially those who don't have the benefit of a formal support structure, like a writing group or writing program. Even those parts that weren't applicable to my circumstances were enjoyable; in the solitary act of writing, it is nice to be able to open this book to almost any page and feel like you are having a conversation with a really smart, really helpful writer.

Jeff VanderMeer is a writer who's done a little bit of everything, whether it's publishing compelling fiction, editing his own anthologies (as well as co-editing with his wife, Anne), going on book tours for author appearances, or presenting writer workshops around the country. He's the sort of guy who has a lot of say about writing and publishing and advice he can offer just about any level of writer. Fortunately, he's done just that in his new book, Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st-Century Writer.

Booklife is a book for any kind of writer whether he's someone who's never published anything and is looking to make it in the business, or whether she has a few books under her belt and is looking to make it really big. Booklife has a little something for every type of writer. The book is divided into two parts: Public Booklife, which covers how to present both yourself and your work as a writer, how best to organize and carry out successful signings and book tours, and - most importantly - creating and managing your goals so you can really make it as a writer. The second part, Private Booklife, covers some of the mechanics of writing, how important feedback is - and not just from friends and family, and using some of the lessons from the first part of the book in different and constructive ways to make your writing the best it can be.

And it doesn't all end when you reach the last page of Booklife, there is the booklifenow.com website, filled with helpful articles, tips and strategies, updated three times a week, and affiliated with Publisher's Weekly Booklife portal. Booklife is not just a book, but a whole package experience that gives you ideas and suggestions to help you achieve your goals; it's not necessary to do every thing this book tells you; it's up to get what you want out of it, which depends on how much work you put into it. But Booklife will certainly help you along the way to becoming that bestselling writer you've always dreamed of.

Originally written on December 11th 2009 ©Alex C. Telander.

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