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Quit Your Day Job: How to Sleep Late, Do What You Enjoy, and Make a Ton of Money as a Writer (Paperback)

by Jim Denney (Author) "I WAS NINE YEARS OLD when I wrote my first short story as a class assignment..." (more)
Key Phrases: basket accounting, collaborative writer, essential habits, New York, Stephen King, Harry Potter (more...)

4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

Review
"Follow Jim Denney’s suggestions and you will be well on your way to making the dream a reality." -- James Scott Bell, award winning novelist and Writers Digest contributing editor.

"Jim Denney has written a book that every writer and every aspiring writer should own. Extremely well-organized, up-to-date information." -- Deborah Raney, award-winning author of A Scarlet Cord and Beneath a Southern Sky

"Most career-bent writers are destined to struggle. Read Denney’s book and save yourself much of the anguish." -- Jim Frey, author of How to Write a Damn Good Novel

"Wow!The definitive primer on freelance writing. If you think the writer’s life is for you, you must read this book." -- Angela Hunt, author of The Canopy

Product Description
Resolution and perseverance are required to build a writing career and if you’re going to succeed, you don’t need the hype or hyperbole so often dished out in other writer’s guides. You need a candid, no-nonsense account of the daily grind of the writer’s life, with the potholes and pitfalls clearly marked. This book is your road map, written by someone who’s lived the writing life for years, with more than sixty published novels and nonfiction books to his credit.

And what a life! Big names like Stephen King, J. K. Rowling, Tom Clancy, Sue Grafton, and thousands of others not nearly as famous live it—why shouldn’t you? All you need is talent, courage, perseverance—and this book.

In Quit Your Day Job, Jim Denney lays out a sound, strategic plan for building a career as a full-time writer. This is not a book of fluff and glittering platitudes. Denney maps out the positives and the negatives of the writing life with gritty candor. Why? Because he doesn’t want your dream of full-time writing to become your worst nightmare. He wants you to succeed.

After you read Quit Your Day Job, you’ll be fired up and ready to take on the world. Devour this book—then hold on tight, because your life is about to change.

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Product Details

Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: Linden Publishing (November 1, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1884956041
ISBN-13: 978-1884956041
Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #131,068 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
I WAS NINE YEARS OLD when I wrote my first short story as a class assignment. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
basket accounting, collaborative writer, essential habits, reversion clause, working writer, option clause, transitional sentence, sub rights

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Stephen King, Harry Potter, Ros Jay, Writer's Market, Irene Kampen, Grub Street, Margaret Mitchell, Post-It Notes, Fat Trip, Lawrence Block, Piers Anthony, Robert Darden, Writer's Digest Books, Beatrice Gormley, David Brin, Dean Koontz, Harlan Ellison, John Steinbeck, Lord Byron, Publisher Number Two, The Grapes of Wrath, Dan Hurley, Gone With the Wind, Isaac Asimov

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 100 books:

The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition) by John Steinbeck on 4 pages
Clouds End by Sean Stewart on page 131, page 132, and Back Matter
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell on page 68, page 144, and page 193
Lost Laysen by Margaret Mitchell on page 68, and page 193
Books: The Culture and Commerce of Publishing by Lewis A. Coser on page 159, and Back Matter

See all 100 books this book cites

Books on Related Topics (learn more)

Getting Your Book Published for Dummies by Sarah Parsons Zackheim

Discusses:

The Marshall Plan For Getting Your Novel Published by Evan Marshall

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	89% buy the item featured on this page: Quit Your Day Job: How to Sleep Late, Do What You Enjoy, and Make a Ton of Money as a Writer 4.3 out of 5 stars (7) $13.45
	11% buy Writing for the Soul: Instruction and Advice from an Extraordinary Writing Life 4.6 out of 5 stars (20) $16.49

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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews

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4 star:		(2)
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4.3 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)

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32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Is it the topic or the writer?, May 17, 2005

By	absentee (Charlotte, NC USA) - See all my reviews

This books earns the four stars by being interesting and helpful. It's well-written (naturally!) and puts what could be very dry business information into a format that creative types will be able to stomach.

My biggest problem, the reason I can't give 5-stars, may not be the authors fault really. The title and the synopsis lead you to believe this book is going to provide practical, how-to information about becoming a writer that makes enough money writing. The reality is laid out quite early on in the book. The first step, the unescapable step, is poverty. And not just any poverty, but poverty that you buy in to with a small fortune. His map to success starts with saving up an entire year's worth of your current salary (!!!), then living like a pauper for 1 to 2 years. During that time, you may not receive enough correct feedback to discover if your books are not selling because you are a bad writer, or simply haven't sold YET.

Now granted, this could be the reality. Perhaps he is just telling it like it is. But really, does such a dire starting point merit such an upbeat title? How to quit your day job boils down to saving up enough money to pay your own salary to yourself for an entire year. Nice work if you can get it, but I don't know many people that can store up a years salary in any reasonable amount of time. Can you?

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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Mixed bag, February 24, 2005

By	Martin P. Eckert "PaulE" (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews

Quit Your Day Job! was a mixed bag of helpful insight and bland anecdotes. On one hand, he does give some helpful insights into the business aspect of writing, mainly how hard it is, and it's obvious that the "quit your day job" of the title means that you need to quit your day job to fully focus on being a writer. Denney tells you different functions of people in the writing-business world, but it wasn't anything I couldn't look up on the internet and find within five minutes.

On the other hand, Denney, like most writers that write a book about writing, gives vague and useless tips to actually getting published. He basically says, "You could do this, or you could do this. Both of them work for some people." Also, a third of the book is just anecdotes he quoted from other writers. I finished the book wanting more.

Sometimes Denney goes too far on the business tangent and makes writing feel like a cold, sterile occupation. He goes so far that he suggests that, to get the most for the money you're getting paid, don't write long words, like using big instead of gigantic. And he's dead serious.

Also, don't buy this book if you're trying to learn how to write. This is definitely about the business of writing. I would recommend Immediate Fiction, by Jerry Cleaver. Not only does it tell you how to write, it has a chapter at the end of the book about how to go about publishing your book. That one chapter was more helpful than this book.

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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For anyone considering any full time writing career, March 5, 2004

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

Quit Your Day Job! by Jim Denney is a no-nonsense instructional guide which is strongly recommended reading for anyone seeking to pursue writing as a full-fledged, moneymaking, professional career. From the seven essential habits of a working writer (such as "write daily" and "set ambitious but achievable goals"); to the do's and don'ts of submitting one's work; professional relationships in the writing biz; learning how to write as quickly as possible without undercutting quality; and more, Quit Your Day Job! is a superbly presented, quite accessible and thoroughly "user friendly", reference resource for anyone considering any full time writing career.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars The Business of Writing.
Quit Your Day Job is inspiring. I couldn't put it down.

Published on December 4, 2006 by Bookworm2

5.0 out of 5 stars Practical, Usable Help for Any Writer
Based on his 20-plus years experience as a writer who has supported himself and his family writing books from his home office, Jim Denney offers us, in his own words, "a... Read more

Published on March 1, 2005 by Truth Pursuer

5.0 out of 5 stars Quit Your Day Job
More Stars Please!! This is a 10 star book! Extremely educational and inspiring! It's a must read for anyone dreaming of a writer's career. Read more

Published on February 17, 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars I AM WRITING AGAIN!
I thank the tree who gave its life for this book! I couldn't read fast enough to soak in all the information. And this book is loaded with plenty. Read more

Published on January 1, 2004 by ringsaw

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