Mastering the Business of Writing is an unusual opportunity for aspiring and established professionals to benefit from an insider's straightforward take on the business of being a writer. A leading literary agent covers approaching the various markets, negotiating successful contracts, benefitting from agents, handling legalities, and strategies and skills that will benefit writers in today's publishing market.
The book is about agenting and everything related to it - authors, editors and publishing in general. It's full of interesting information and written in charming, entertaining prose, BUT it seems to be many years old. Mr. Curtis speaks wistfully of word processors being someday more generally accessible, while lamenting having to struggle with the long reams of paper speewed by a dot-matrix printer (remember those?). Obviously, there is nothing about ebooks or self-publishing. Still, I really liked the book, even if I'm not entirely sure how much of the specific information is still good. I read quite a bit more of it than I intended because mr. Curtis is such a charming personality. Compared to mr. Sterling Lords Memoir, this is a gem.