William Greenleaf's Blog
January 17, 2021
Five Things Authors Can Do to Support Their Marketers
Even during difficult times like these, your marketing team is working hard to get your books into readers’ hands. Read on for some tips on what you can do to support your marketer, now and in the future.
As our marketing teams continue to explore this new book publishing landscape, authors continue to be crucial partners. Here are five things you can do to give your team an edge on marketing your books.
Questions about this topic? Call me at (505) 401-1021 or send me an email at william@wgreenleaf.com. I’m in my office most weekdays from 9 to 5.
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Writing Contests
Here’s information about some legitimate writing contests. Click on the links for more info.
Fiction ContestsAWP Prize for the Novel
Eligibility: All authors writing in English regardless of nationality or residence
Prize: $2,500 + publication by the New Issues Press
Entry Fee: $30
Deadline: February 28, 2021
Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction
Eligibility: All authors writing in English regardless of nationality or residence
Prize: $5,500 + publication by University of Massachusetts Press
Entry Fee: $30
Deadline: February 28, 2021
Fund for Investigative Journalism Grant
Eligibility: Journalists with a letter of commitment from a publication for a specific story
Prize: up to $10,000
Deadline: February 8, 2021
Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award
Eligibility: Early-career, creative nonfiction writers
Prize: $12,500
Deadline: February 16, 2021
AWP Prize for Creative Nonfiction
Eligibility: All authors writing in English regardless of nationality or residence
Prize: $2,500 + publication by the University of Georgia Press.
Entry Fee: $30
Deadline: February 28, 2021
Molly National Journalism Prize
Eligibility: Journalists with a piece published in a U.S. based pub in 2020
Prize: $5,000
Entry Fee: $50
Deadline: February 28, 2021
Philip Roth Residence in Creative Writing
Eligibility: Writers working on a first or second book of fiction or creative nonfiction
Prize: 4-month residency at Bucknell’s “Poets’ Cottage” and a stipend of $5,000.
Deadline: February 1, 2021
Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship in Creative Writing
Eligibility: Writers working on their first books of fiction or nonfiction
Prize: $42,745 + travel + health insurance
Deadline: February 15, 2021
Sustainable Arts Foundation Award
Eligibility: Writers with at least one child under the age of 18.
Prize: $5,000
Entry fee: $20
Deadline: February 26, 2021 (application available on February 1, 2021)
Questions about this topic? Call me at (505) 401-1021 or send me an email at william@wgreenleaf.com. I’m in my office most weekdays from 9 to 5.
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September 4, 2020
Political Releases, Led by Brian Stelter’s ‘Hoax,’ Drive US Nonfiction Book Sales
Bill's Blog
Political Releases, Led by Brian Stelter’s ‘Hoax,’ Drive US Nonfiction Book Sales
Publishing Perspectives
That already tight relationship between politics and books is getting only more intimate this autumn, as the US general election season seizes the attention of millions, in the States and elsewhere. With 69 days to go to the November 3 vote, the popularity of politics-related books in the US market was noted last week by NPD Books’ Kristen McLean.
For the week ending August 15, she has spotted adult nonfiction again inching upward—this time by 0.6 percent—not least because Simon & Schuster’s Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man by Mary L. Trump, the niece of Donald Trump, hit 1 million print unit sales in NPD’s BookScan.
Questions about this topic? Call me at (505) 401-1021 or send me an email at william@wgreenleaf.com. I’m in my office most weekdays from 9 to 5.
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Fact Checking Is the Core of Nonfiction Writing. Why Do So Many Publishers Refuse to Do It?
Bill's Blog
Fact Checking Is the Core of Nonfiction Writing. Why Do So Many Publishers Refuse to Do It?
Emma Copley Eisenberg discusses the dangers of authors being forced to hire their own fact-checker out of pocket. If they do so at all.
hence I set out to write my first book, I wanted to write a book that examined the very nature of facts and how we turn them into stories. To do this, I knew, I would have to get every fact that was verifiable correct. The more you want to ask the big, shifty questions, the more your foundation must be rock solid.
Fact checking is a comprehensive process in which, according to the definitive book on the subject, a trained checker does the following: “Read for accuracy”; “Research the facts”; “Assess sources: people, newspapers and magazines, books, the Internet, etc”; “Check quotations”; and “Look out for and avoid plagiarism.”
Questions about this topic? Call me at (505) 401-1021 or send me an email at william@wgreenleaf.com. I’m in my office most weekdays from 9 to 5.
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August 28, 2020
A Look at New Bookstores
Bill's Blog
A Look at New Bookstores
Publishers Weekly
Some say bookselling is a recession-proof business. It also requires a great deal of optimism. The past six months of pandemic have put an inordinate amount of pressure on bricks-and-mortar stores, with many forced to linger in lockdowns and suffer the loss of customers and their connection to their communities. Some have shut down permanently or turned to crowdfunding for operating capital to tide them over.
But it’s not all bad news, as numerous booksellers—veterans and newbies alike—have continued to pursue their dreams of owning their own stores and opened in the midst of this crisis. Here we highlight a sampling of these new stores, from a Sunday on-the-street popup in New York City run by book industry veterans to a Chicago store that was open for only three days before temporarily closing to customers.
Questions about this topic? Call me at (505) 401-1021 or send me an email at william@wgreenleaf.com. I’m in my office most weekdays from 9 to 5.
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‘We’ve Already Survived an Apocalypse’: Indigenous Writers Are Changing Sci-Fi
Bill's Blog
‘We’ve Already Survived an Apocalypse’: Indigenous Writers Are Changing Sci-Fi
The New York Times
When Cherie Dimaline was growing up near Penetanguishene, a small town on the Georgian Bay in Ontario, her grandmother and great-aunts told her stories about a werewolf-like monster called the rogarou. It wasn’t spoken of as a mythical creature but as an actual threat, the embodiment of danger in a place where Indigenous women face heightened risk of violence.
“This wasn’t like, here’s a metaphor,” she said. “They would say, ‘The rogarou’s out, and he’s really hungry.’”
Decades later, Dimaline, a member of the Métis Nation in Canada, was working on a novel about a woman whose missing husband reappears with no memory of her, seemingly under a spell. She needed a charismatic villain, and when the rogarou — a wily trickster figure in Métis oral traditions — popped into her head, she realized the creature had never been given its due in popular culture.
That flash of inspiration turned into “Empire of Wild,” a genre-bending novel whose modern Indigenous characters confront environmental degradation, discrimination and the threat of cultural erasure, all while battling a devious monster.
Questions about this topic? Call me at (505) 401-1021 or send me an email at william@wgreenleaf.com. I’m in my office most weekdays from 9 to 5.
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August 12, 2020
How book publishing has filled the coronavirus entertainment void
Bill's Blog
How book publishing has filled the coronavirus entertainment void
The Week
August is known in the book industry as the “dead zone,” when agents and editors take their vacations ahead of one of the busiest months of the publishing calendar, September. But there are no summer doldrums this year: with movies and new television on pause due to the corona virus pandemic, books have remained one of the few forms of entertainment able to proceed relatively unaffected — and they’re successfully filling the void.
On Tuesday alone, a number of notable releases hit the (virtual) shelves, including Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Pulitzer Prize-winner Isabel Wilkerson. “It’s an extraordinary document, one that strikes me as an instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far,” raved The New York Times. Oprah Winfrey, in announcing Tuesday that Caste is her new book club selection, told CBS This Morning that “all of humanity needs to read this” and that it might be “the most important book” she’s ever picked.
Questions about this topic? Call me at (505) 401-1021 or send me an email at william@wgreenleaf.com. I’m in my office most weekdays from 9 to 5.
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July 27, 2020
How to Sell Books in 2020: Put Them Near the Toilet Paper
Bill's Blog
How to Sell Books in 2020: Put Them Near the Toilet Paper
Book sales jumped this spring at big-box stores, which stayed open and stocked essentials while other shops closed.
The New York Times
If you want to sell books during a pandemic, it turns out that one of the best places to do it is within easy reach of eggs, milk and diapers.
When the coronavirus forced the United States into lockdown this spring, stores like Walmart and Target, which were labeled essential, remained open. So when anxious consumers were stocking up on beans and pasta, they were also grabbing workbooks, paperbacks and novels — and the book sales at those stores shot up.
“They sell groceries, they sell toilet paper, they sell everything people need during this time, and they’re open,” said Suzanne Herz, the publisher of Vintage/Anchor. “If you’re in there and you’re doing your big shop and you walk down the aisle and go, ‘Oh, we’re bored, and we need a book or a puzzle,’ there it is.”
Questions about this topic? Call me at (505) 401-1021 or send me an email at william@wgreenleaf.com. I’m in my office most weekdays from 9 to 5.
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July 24, 2020
Print Units Have Double-Digit Gain in Mid-July
Bill's Blog
Print Units Have Double-Digit Gain in Mid-July
With another strong showing by the juvenile nonfiction category, unit sales of print books rose 16.6% in the week ended July 18, 2020, over the comparable week in 2019, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. Units were up 40.9% in juvenile nonfiction from the week ended July 20, 2019, led by a new surge of sales for one of this year’s biggest bestsellers, My First Learn-to-Write Workbook by Crystal Radke, which sold nearly 40,000 copies in the week. The adult nonfiction category also did well, with unit sales increasing 19.9% over 2019, helped by Mary L. Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough, which sold 337,473 print copies in its first week. White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo was #2 in the category, selling nearly 49,000 copies. Three strong debuts drove up print unit sales of adult fiction titles 4% in the week. Topping the category list was Daniel Silva’s The Order, which sold nearly 54,000 copies. In second place was Peace Talks by Jim Butcher, which sold more than 50,000 copies, followed by Clint McElroy’s The Adventure Zone, which sold more than 25,000 copies. The juvenile fiction segment had a 16.6% increase over 2019, helped by sales of Antiracist Baby Picture Book by Ibram X. Kendi, which sold almost 18,000 copies in its first week. Print unit sales of YA nonfiction surged 71% in the week, with a good performance by This Book Is Antiracist by Tiffany Jewell, which sold more than 3,000 copies, putting it in second place on the category list.
Questions about this topic? Call me at (505) 401-1021 or send me an email at william@wgreenleaf.com. I’m in my office most weekdays from 9 to 5.
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July 14, 2020
John Bolton’s memoir has sold a staggering 780,000 copies in its first week on sale
Bill's Blog
John Bolton’s memoir has sold a staggering 780,000 copies in its first week on sale
CNN
John Bolton’s book “The Room Where It Happened” is the best-selling Trump tell-all in two years, according to week one sales figures.
Simon & Schuster, the book’s publisher, said Wednesday that it has sold more than 780,000 copies so far.
The total included print copies, ebooks, audiobooks plus “orders from consumers that are as yet unfulfilled due to extraordinary demand,” the publisher said.
Most authors are lucky to sell tens of thousands of copies. Selling hundreds of thousands of copies in one week is exceedingly rare.
Bolton’s success is a testament to his bombshells about life in the Trump White House; an aggressive marketing campaign with interviews on all the major networks; and an anti-Bolton campaign led by the president.
Questions about this topic? Call me at (505) 401-1021 or send me an email at william@wgreenleaf.com. I’m in my office most weekdays from 9 to 5.
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