FundsforWriters - December 3, 2021 - Marketing to Build and Maintain an Income Stream

Published: Fri, 12/03/21

VOLUME 21, ISSUE 49 | DECEMBER 3, 2021

Message from Hope

Believe it or not, my Christmas shopping is done! When I'm between books, it's amazing at the work I get accomplished.

During my running around getting shopping done, I ran into one of the local town's administrators, an up-and-coming lady who works hard for the town of Chapin, and she asked about the new books. She's a fan, and she's had me on her podcast. Even invited me to judge the Labor Day parade in the past.

She asked a question not often asked of me. "How many books are you working with in your head?"

"Usually, three," I said, not taking me long to put a number to the answer. "One about to come out, one in editing, and one being drafted."

She marveled at that, not understanding how you keep the stories straight. I had to think about that, then realized that these books are very real worlds to me. The characters are almost visual, their histories almost existent. In fact, with the Slade books, some of the early scenes were taken from real life, and sometimes I have to think twice before realizing what was real and what was fiction to fill in places.

"I'm bored right now," I said. "I'm in between books. I often give myself a month off, but I believe I'll be jumping back into a new one sooner than normal."

Yep, I fell asleep this week telling myself to do what I love to do . . . work a scene, practice dialogue, outline a chapter. I then woke up, got in the shower, and analyzed what percolated during the night.

Carved out half a chapter and came up with a title. Back in the saddle again.

C. Hope Clark
Editor, FundsforWriters
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TOP SPONSOR

The J. Anthony Lukas Prizes Honor the Best in Nonfiction Book Writing.

Named for the Pulitzer Prize-winning author J. Anthony Lukas, these four awards recognize the serious commitment to research, social and political concern, and literary grace that mark the best nonfiction books. Now accepting submissions through December 9, 2021, at journalism.columbia.edu/lukas--no entry fee for the Work-in-Progress Awards!

EDITOR'S THOUGHTS

JOURNALING

I tremendously admire people who regularly journal, and those who have journaled since they were young amaze me most of all. I love journaling, but I do not do it. At lest not often. I think a lot depends on how you want to use journaling, or why you feel the need to journal.

I, for one, write for pages when I journal. I've spend hours journaling, only to get weeks or months into one and rip it up for the trash. To me, journaling is being raw and real with deeply felt feelings. And when I think about being gone one day and my family reading them, I worry the words will alter their opinion of me, hurt their feelings, or realize they didn't know me at all. Yeah, I'm talking that raw. The feelings we all feel when we know nobody else can hear our thoughts.

There are five cases in which I journaled and kept the words. They are in my hope chest and on my book shelf.

1) A daily journal limited to five lines per day that I kept in middle/high school for several years. I haven't even read them since I wrote them, but they are stored in my old hope chest. I'm sure they are full of angst and childhood spin on the times.

2) A journal kept for each of my sons. The one for my oldest son was begun the summer before his senior year in high school. I wanted to record his last year through my eyes. When he went to college, I handed it to him through tears. It impacted him enough such that he journals still to this day. The journal kept for my youngest son, also for his senior year, I also did with a scrapbook to go along with it. His was a roller coaster year, and it contains the fun and the strife. He doesn't journal, but he is a superb writer.

3) Two journals in this case . . . one for each of my grandsons, which I started when they were born and carried through to when they were one. I intend to give those to them when they turn eighteen.

4) The week of 9-1-1 I kept a journal of what happened and how it made me feel. That I kept, recognizing it's importance to my offspring one day.

5) I gave myself and each of my sons a five-year journal one Christmas, in which you only pen four to five lines about the day. Two of us followed through.

Journaling is important. If you can do it without throwing it away, do so. Frankly, for Christmas I asked for another five-year journal. I believe there's a reason we journal later in life. We recognize what matters, what is frivolous, and we don't burn so many bridges in them. Maybe I'm ready to do another one.

1156328 © Dana Rothstein | Dreamstime.com

SUPER SPONSOR

www.chopeclark.com

HOPE'S APPEARANCES

March 12, 2022 - Grand Rapids Regional Writers Group, Zoom, "The myths and facts of grants for writers"

Email: [email protected] to schedule events, online or otherwise. There's starting to be life out there!

SUCCESS QUOTE

"Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy."

– Anne Frank

SUccess Story

Hello, Hope,

Thanks to your newsletter, I was reminded of the rolling calls for different Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies. The latest, published November 2, 2021, contains Story #24 by me! I'm honored to be part of Tough Times Won't Last But Tough People Will.

What a journey it's been. In November 2019, I suffered a brain aneurysm rupture that brought my life to a screeching halt. After an ICU stay, several surgeries, rounds of physical therapy, and recovery at home, I regained enough strength to return to work, and then to write about the experience. It was cathartic to do so, and this latest Chicken Soup collection was the perfect match for my 1,200-word reflection entitled "What Does Love Look Like?" It also published on the two-year anniversary of my survival. What timing!

I am grateful for the opportunity to share this, and thank you for the continued encouragement to write. We all have stories to tell, and we all have very different reasons for writing. I appreciate you bringing readers, writers, and publishing outlets together through your newsletter.

Audrey Wick
Twitter @WickWrites
Instagram @WickWrites

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If you have a success story you believe was prompted by FundsforWriters, please share with us! Send to [email protected]

Featured article

Marketing to Build and Maintain an Income Stream

By Jessica McCann

It doesn’t matter if you’re a freelance journalist, corporate ghostwriter, romance novelist, or free-verse poet, to build and maintain an income stream from your writing, you must proactively market your brand or service. The tools for doing so are always evolving. Twenty years ago, the key advice was to maintain a website and mailing list. Fast forward 10 years, and the purported must-have was an active blog. Now, the push is for social media.

Marketing eats up time that could otherwise be spent writing. And adopting new tools and abandoning the old doesn’t necessarily save time. Thankfully, an effective middle-ground exists.

Invest in online real estate, and make sure all roads lead home.

Paying for a domain, web hosting, and email marketing software is a wise investment.

“Email marketing is a core component of any digital marketing campaign and one of the least expensive, most effective ways to get your message out there,” Gadjo Sevilla wrote in PCMag’s “The Best Email Marketing Software.”

Why spend any money when you can use social media for free? Because “free” still comes at a cost.
Few social media platforms allow you to export a list of followers, so your connection to that audience is fleeting. It’s like reciting poetry from someone’s front lawn. The property owner can kick you off if he doesn’t like your poems, and the crowd will move on.

Author Katrina Shawver learned that the hard way. Her award-winning nonfiction book – Henry: A Polish Swimmer’s True Story of Friendship from Auschwitz to America – attracted a large international Facebook following. One day, Shawver posted a historical photo of Germany invading Poland in 1939. The tech giant’s algorithms flagged the post for “violating community standards,” despite its historical accuracy and relevance to Shawver’s work. Within weeks, Facebook shut down her author page.

“Facebook kicking me out was a wake-up call,” Shawver said. “Don’t take any social media for granted. Don’t expect it to be there tomorrow. Always drive people to your website.”

Social media can help you find the people who pay for writing – avid readers, website editors, anthology publishers, communications professionals. Maintaining a website and email list provides a dependable home for that writing audience and a reliable means of communicating with them long-term.

Maximize your reach with a presence on as many platforms as possible. For each one, create a landing page that entices followers to visit your website and sign up for emails. (This SmartBlogger post on effective email-list incentives has ideas.) Use landing-page analytics to see from where your audience migrates and to hone your social media activity.

Be consistent with messaging and efficient with time.

Actively post on only a couple of your favorite or most productive platforms, Shawver recommends. In the others, pin a post that says something like, “I’m on a Twitter hiatus to focus on writing my next book. Want to be the first to hear how it’s going? Subscribe to my newsletter!”

Use scheduling software to simplify your social media communications. Create messages at a time convenient to you, and schedule them to post at different times across multiple platforms. (Read a review of top software at Influencer Marketing Hub.)

Connect your website to all your accounts so blog posts are automatically shared.

Use a password manager. Access all your online accounts through one site with a master password to save time (and make your online data more secure in the process). (Read about password managers in PCWorld.)

No matter what your genre or publishing goals, investing time and resources to market your brand is the key to building and maintaining an income stream. If you’re strategic, you can efficiently leverage new tools to build upon time-tested ones.

NOTE:
Be wary of tying your writing income exclusively to free social media. You need solid real estate to ground your audience. (Image by Comfreak from Pixabay.)

BIO – Jessica McCann has earned a living as a freelance writer and editor for 30 years. She’s an award-winning novelist and creative nonfiction author. Sign up for her free email newsletter and monthly giveaway for readers and writers at https://jessicamccann.com/monthly-e-news-and-give-away/

COmpetitions

MISSISSIPPI REVIEW
http://sites.usm.edu/mississippi-review/contest.html
$18 ENTRY FEE. Deadline January 1, 2022. The annual contest awards prizes of $1,000 in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Winners and finalists will make up next summer's print issue of the national literary magazine Mississippi Review. Contest is open to all writers in English except current or former students or employees of The University of Southern Mississippi. Fiction and nonfiction entries should be 1,000-8,000 words; poetry entries should be three to five poems totaling ten pages or less. Please attach as one document.

PRESS 53 AWARD FOR SHORT FICTION
https://www.press53.com/award-for-short-fiction
$30 ENTRY FEE. Deadline December 31, 2021. The Press 53 Award for Short Fiction is awarded annually to an outstanding, unpublished short story collection. This competition is open to any writer, regardless of his or her publication history, provided the manuscript is written in English and the author lives in the United States or one of its territories. The winner of this contest will receive publication by Press 53, a $1,000 cash advance and fifty copies of the book; all prizes will be awarded upon publication.

DORSET PRIZE
https://www.tupelopress.org//dorset-prize/
$30 ENTRY FEE. Deadline December 31, 2021. Winner receives a $3,000 prize and a week-long residency at MASS MoCA worth $1,500 in addition to publication by Tupelo Press, 20 copies of the winning title, a book launch, and national distribution with energetic publicity and promotion. The Dorset Prize is open to anyone writing in the English language, whether living in the United States or abroad. Submit a previously unpublished, full-length poetry manuscript with a table of contents. There is no mandatory page count. We suggest in the area of 48 to 88 pages of poems.

POETRY SOCIETY OF AMERICAN POETRY AWARDS
https://poetrysociety.org/awards/annual-awards/2022-poetry-society-of-america-awards
Deadline December 31, 2021. Awards are open to Poetry Society of America members for free. The fees for non-members are: single poem awards $10, multiple poem awards are $15. Seven categories with prizes ranging from $250 to $2,500.

BOULEVARD SHORT FICTION CONTEST FOR EMERGING WRITERS
https://www.boulevardmagazine.org/short-fiction-contest
$16 ENTRY FEE. Deadline December 31, 2021. Winner receives $1,500 and publication in Boulevard. For a writer who has not yet published a book of fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction with a nationally distributed press. Limit 8,000 words. All entries will be considered for publication and for payment at our regular rates.

C. MICHAEL CURTIS SHORT STORY BOOK PRIZE
https://www.hubcity.org/cmc-short-story-prize
$25 ENTRY FEE. Deadline December 31, 2021. Submitters must currently reside in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia or West Virginia, and must have no more than one previously published book. Prize includes $5,000 and book publication for a debut book of short fiction.

ACACIA FICTION PRIZE
https://www.kallistogaiapress.org/acacia-fiction-prize/
$25 ENTRY FEE. Deadline December 31, 2021. All who enter will receive a copy of the winning collection. Please submit a collection of any combination of short stories, flash fiction, or novellas totaling between 40K and 75K words. Winner will receive $1,200, publication by Kallisto Gaia Press, 20 copies of the collection, and up to 20 ARCs to be sent to reviewers and award sponsors chosen by the winner.

SAGUARO POETRY PRIZE
https://www.kallistogaiapress.org/saguaro-poetry-prize/
$25 ENTRY FEE. Deadline December 31, 2021. Submit 28 to 48 pages of contemporary poetry, not including title page and Table of Contents. Winner will receive $1,200, publication by Kallisto Gaia Press, 20 copies of the chapbook, and up to 20 ARCs to be sent to reviewers and award sponsors chosen by the winner.

LEIBY CHAPBOOK CONTEST
https://floridareview.cah.ucf.edu/submit/chapbook-contest/
$25 ENTRY FEE. Deadline December 31, 2021. Winners receive publication and $1,000 (upon publication). Second-place winners receive tuition for the Sanibel Writers Conference, and possible publication of a selection in The Florida Review or Aquifer: The Florida Review Online. Submit up to 45 pages. Any combination of long or short stories, essays, or flash fiction or nonfiction–as well as graphic narrative–will be considered. All submissions will be considered for publication in The Florida Review or Aquifer: The Florida Review Online.

SISKIYOU PRIZE
https://siskiyouprize.com/
$25 ENTRY FEE. Deadline December 31, 2021. The Siskiyou Prize is open to published books and unpublished, full-length prose manuscripts with environmental themes, including novels, memoirs, short story collections, and essay collections. Manuscripts should be approximately 40,000 to 90,000 words (i.e., please do not send novellas or individual essays or stories; please also note the contest is not open to poetry or children’s books).Winner will receive a cash award of $1,000 and a two-week residency at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology during the 2022-2023 residency season. All unpublished manuscripts submitted to the prize will be considered for publication by Ashland Creek Press.

TARTT FIRST FICTION AWARD
https://livingstonpress.uwa.edu/htm%20(web%20pages)/tartt_first_fiction_award.htm
NO ENTRY FEE. Deadline December 31, 2021. Winning short story collection will be published by Livingston Press at the University of West Alabama, in simultaneous library binding and trade paper editions. Winning entry will receive $1,000, plus our standard royalty contract, which includes 60 copies of the book. Author must not have book of short fiction published at time of entry, though novels are okay. In keeping with Tartt’s biography, we are looking for an author who has yet to publish a fiction collection. Manuscript length 160-275 pages. Winner must be an American citizen; work must be in English. Style is open.

GRANTS / FELLOWSHIPS / CROWDFUNDING

NEW HAMPSHIRE ARTIST ENTREPRENEURIAL GRANT
https://www.nh.gov/nharts/grants/artists/artistentre.html
Deadline February 4, 2022. Artist Entrepreneurial Grants recognize the importance of the creative workforce to New Hampshire’s economy. Artist Entrepreneurial Grants support opportunities that will benefit artists’ careers and small businesses, including the development of business skills, participation in programs to raise the level and quality of their art, and participation in programs that will bring their art to the widest possible markets. Funding requests may be made for $250 - $1,000.

PUBLIC ART LEARNING FUND
https://www.nefa.org/PublicArtLearningFund
Deadline December 13, 2021. The Public Art Learning Fund provides grants of $500 to $2,000 to support professional development opportunities for New England artists to strengthen their public art practices. Applicant must be an artist who resides full-time and makes work in one of the six New England States (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont).

FREELANCE MARKETS / JOBS

QUIRK BOOKS GHOSTWRITING
https://www.quirkbooks.com/page/submissions#
We have a creative tradition of coming up with offbeat, high-concept ideas and finding the right authors to execute them, which has led to some of the most successful books in our company's history and long-term partnerships with our authors. If you're interested in becoming the author of a Quirk-generated idea, you can send samples following the guidelines below. If an editor likes your sample, they'll reach out to you with details on how to audition for their specific book idea.

Idea #1: Quirk Books is seeking writers to audition for an adult mystery/thriller novel centered around multi-level marketing schemes. Writers with keen observation, biting humor, and a grittier sensibility are desired. Please email [email protected] with the subject line "MLM novel audition". In the body, include a brief cover letter telling us a little bit about yourself, previous writing experience or publications (if applicable), and your interest in the project. Attach approximately 25 pages of previously written sample material in the genre.

Idea #2: Quirk Books is seeking writers to audition for a YA mystery/thriller set in the world of social media influencer culture. Writers who tend towards dark humor and social commentary, and who are fascinated by social media and the influencer industry, are encouraged to apply. Please email [email protected] with the subject line "YA influencer novel audition". In the body, include a brief cover letter telling us a little bit about yourself, previous writing experience or publications (if applicable), and your interest in the project. Attach approximately 25 pages of sample material in the genre.

CHRONICLE BOOKS - FREELANCE AND GHOSTWRITING
https://www.chroniclebooks.com/pages/submissions
We often hire freelance writers for book projects, particularly in humor, pop-culture, or other specialized categories, and occasionally for non-book formats with written content, such as decks, guided journals, or other gift products. If you are interested in being considered for contract writing work on our projects, please send your website portfolio address to [email protected]. Please particularly call out any writing with a long-form focus, and if you have a particular field of experience or are passionate about a particular topic, please share that with us!

Publishers/agents

HUB CITY PRESS
https://www.hubcity.org/publishing
Hub City Press publishes books of literary fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, regional nonfiction, nature, and art. Hub City is a small press, publishing six to eight titles per year. In general, our publication schedule operates at least 12-18 months in advance of release. If you would like us to consider your work, please send us a one-page query letter about your manuscript and 10 pages of your manuscript. Submissions are open in March/April and in September/October. At specific times we may be open to only specific genres. Please check our Submittable page to see what we are currently looking for.

QUIRK BOOKS
https://www.quirkbooks.com/page/about
Quirk Books publishes a highly curated list of entertaining, enlightening, and strikingly unconventional books for adults and children in a number of genres and categories.

8TH HOUSE PUBLISHING
https://www.8thhousepublishing.com/submissions
What we like at 8th House: modern, radical, enduring, insightful, inventive. Whether it's an essay, a philosophy tract, or a novel, a book of verse, send us a sample of your work (two to three chapters and a full table of contents) along with a query letter to: [email protected]

BLACK AND WHITE PUBLISHING
https://blackandwhitepublishing.com/pages/submissions
For nonfiction submissions, we currently accept one-page proposals. Please email [email protected]. We are pleased to receive proposals for the following genres of nonfiction: celebrity memoirs, sports books (with a particular focus on the UK and Ireland), lifestyle, humour, gift and activity books, food and drink titles, Scottish nonfiction, Irish nonfiction, nature and wild places.

CHRONICLE BOOKS
https://www.chroniclebooks.com/pages/submissions
Chronicle Books publishes a wide range of nonfiction books on our adult trade list, in categories such as cooking, fine art, design, photography, pop culture, fashion, beauty, home décor, personal relationships, and more. We also publish innovative formats, such as interactive journals, decks, games, stationery, and much, much more. Please note: We do not acquire adult fiction. Chronicle Books also publishes an eclectic mixture of traditional and innovative children's books. We are looking for projects that have a unique bent—be it in subject matter, writing style, or illustrative technique—and that will lend our list a distinctive flair. We are interested in fiction and nonfiction books for children of all ages, as well as board books, decks, activity kits, and other unusual or novelty formats.

JOFFE BOOKS
https://www.joffebooks.com/submissions/
Joffe Books is one of the UK’s leading independent publishers of excellent commercial fiction, especially crime and mystery fiction. We are renowned for working closely with authors from across the world to create fantastic books and turning them into bestsellers. We accept submissions from agents, previously published authors (including self-published authors) with long backlists, first-time writers with only one book under their belt, and anyone in between. Our favorite genres are crime fiction, mysteries, psychological thrillers, cozy crime, police procedurals, chillers, suspense and domestic noir. We will also consider women’s fiction, historical fiction and romance novels, including WWII romances and sagas.

KENSINGTON BOOKS
https://www.kensingtonbooks.com/pages/imprints-publishing-partners/
The Kensington imprints are where we publish a wide range of commercial fiction including mystery and romance in multiple formats.

Citadel Press - Kensington’s imprint for exciting and informative nonfiction.

Dafina - Our imprint focusing on commercial fiction and nonfiction that centers on race and identity.

John Scognamiglio Books - The imprint for character-driven novels selectively chosen by editor-in-chief John Scognamiglio.

Pinnacle - The Kensington imprint for action and adventure titles including westerns and thrillers.

Lyrical Press - Lyrical Press is a digital first imprint that offers readers a prolific catalog of titles ranging from sweeping historical romances and edgy erotic titles to chilling thrillers and cozy mysteries. Lyrical Press offers an exciting way to meet your next favorite author in every fiction genre.

Zebra - Kensington's flagship imprint publishes nationally bestselling women's fiction, romantic suspense and bestselling historical, paranormal and contemporary romances.