The good news about getting a contract for a nonfiction book is that you don’t have to write the book to sell it. You just have to write the proposal. The bad news is that often authors spend four or five months figuring out what the proposal is. Where agents earn their commission is helping […]
By Will Schwalbe — Email is great for minor apologies – especially when you think your transgression might not really need an apology at all. A classic is the, “I’m so sorry I didn’t spend more time with you at my party” kind of apology, which is usually greeted with the classic, “Don’t be silly, […]
I’m not a perfectionist. In fact, when I painted my walls I didn’t paint near the windows because I didn’t want to do the detail work. When I accidentally address an envelope upside down, I don’t get a new envelope. You know what? Doing those things hasn’t made my life any worse. It hasn’t made […]
You need to be nice at work. This doesn’t mean holding the door. Well, it does, but you need to do more than that. You need to do high-profile, from-the-heart niceness. People who are popular at work do better at work. Yes, it’s true, the popularity contest never ends. So why not try cupcakes? Wait. […]
By Ryan Healy — Unless you are a professional athlete or working on Wall Street, an entry-level salary is not very exciting. When you couple this with the fact that the average college student graduates with tens of thousands in student loan and credit card debt and the cost of renting a place in any […]
A few months ago, I saw Guy Kawasaki’s blog post, 10 Ways to Use LinkedIn, and it made me realize that you can use LinkedIn for a lot more than just networking. For example, journalists can get value from LinkedIn both as a research tool and as a tool for career development: Here are ten […]
A lot of people who would like to start a business think the task is too daunting. But following a passion is not as high risk as you may think. Conventional wisdom about entrepreneurs being big risk takers and living on the edge is not all that realistic. In fact, there are ways to minimize […]
I met my husband when he was in film school at UCLA. He was doing quirky video art instead of mainstream feature films, which made me think he’d be good to date. So when he was interviewing people for a video about memory, I was happy to participate. I tried to be really charming in […]
This list is from my agent, Susan Rabiner. I love Susan because she just sold my second book proposal to the same editor who bought Barack Obama’s book. Susan also represents the author who just won the Pulitzer Prize for biography. So you can be certain that following Susan’s advice is a good idea if […]
So here I am in NYC, doing my book publicity stuff. I had grand plans for posting on the blog last night and today, but my Internet connection is terrible. As in, nonexistent. And it was going to be be the first weekday in months that I haven’t posted. I started feeling withdrawal. So I […]