The Shortest Distance Between You and a Published Book by Susan Page
Publishers buy new book ideas every week. Why not yours? Whether your book consists of a few notes on the back of a napkin or a completed manuscript, Susan Page's proven system will make your dream of successful publication come true. A bestselling author and leading consultant to other writers, Susan Page knows the difference between common industry wisdom that doesn't work and the precise, easy-to-follow strategies that actually get results. In this breakthrough book, she leads you away from the obstacles that often delay and frustrate writers and introduces the twenty essential steps for success.

How to Write and Get It Published by David Strode Akens
This practical guide to strengthening writing skills and getting noticed in the cutthroat publishing industry will benefit aspiring authors, struggling authors, or anyone with an unpublished manuscript. Among the topics covered are how to read intelligently and carefully, understanding setting and characterization; how to write character biographies and characteristics lists; plotting, drafting, and writing; reasons why manuscripts are rejected; finding agents, publishers, and printers; and marketing and sales strategies. This complete set of start-to-finish tools puts the emphasis back on good writing as the surest means of getting published for profit.

How to Sell, Then Write Your Nonfiction Book by Blythe Camenson
From idea to contract to execution, this is the first all-in-one guide for prospective nonfiction writers. "How to Sell, Then Write Your Nonfiction Book is uniquely structured to help you sell your ideas or yourself "before you invest time and effort in a lengthy book project. This comprehensive reference guide provides specific tips for pitching and writing various nonfiction categories, with suggestions from agents, editors, and published authors. With expert advice on the technical elements of voice and style, useful resource listings, and sample proposals, you will find all the tools necessary to ultimately earn a living from nonfiction writing.

How to Write a Book Proposal by Michael Larsen
Written by a literary agent who has successfully placed authors' manuscripts with more than 60 publishers, this revised edition of a successful resource clearly addresses every step of writing a nonfiction book proposal, including choosing the best editors and publishers for a particular proposal.

Story Starters: How to Jump-Start Your Imagination, Get Your Creative Juices Flowing, and Start Writing Your Story or Novel by Lou Willett Stanek
For authors who have the passion and energy to write fiction, but have trouble finding an idea and getting started, writing instructor and author Lou Willett Stanek shows how to get inspiration from neighbors and strangers, reshape classic tales, cull current events, and use other tricks of the writing trade so effectively that the reader will soon be brimming with ideas, imagination revved to its full potential.

How to Sell, Then Write Your Nonfiction Book by Blythe Camenson
From idea to contract to execution, this is the first all-in-one guide for prospective nonfiction writers. "How to Sell, Then Write Your Nonfiction Book is uniquely structured to help you sell your ideas or yourself "before you invest time and effort in a lengthy book project. This comprehensive reference guide provides specific tips for pitching and writing various nonfiction categories, with suggestions from agents, editors, and published authors. With expert advice on the technical elements of voice and style, useful resource listings, and sample proposals, you will find all the tools necessary to ultimately earn a living from nonfiction writing.

Publish or Perish - The Educator's Imperative by Allan A. Glatthorn
Glatthorn guides education professionals through the basics of the writing process, empowering them with the tools to create and enhance their own professional submissions and writings.

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
The secret of creativity, Natalie Goldberg makes clear, is to subtract rules for writing, not add them. Proof that she knows what she is talking about is abundant in the speed, grace, accuracy, and simplicity of her own sentences. Writing Down the Bones is "simply the best aid and comfort around today".--Judith Guest, author of Ordinary People.

On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner; Raymond Carver
On Becoming a Novelist contains the wisdom accumulated during John Gardner's distinguished twenty year career as a fiction writer and creative writing teacher. With elegance, humor, and sophistication, Gardner describes the life of a working novelist; warns what needs to be guarded against, both from within the writer and from without; and predicts what the writer can reasonably expect and what, in general, he or she cannot. "For a certain kind of person," Gardner writes, "nothing is more joyful or satisfying than the life of a novelist." But no other vocation, he is quick to add, is so fraught with professional and spiritual difficulties. Whether discussing the supposed value of writer's workshops, explaining the role of the novelist's agent and editor, or railing against the seductive fruits of literary elitism, On Becoming a Novelist is an indispensable, life affirming handbook for anyone authentically called to the profession.

Elements of the Writing Craft by Robert Olmstead
Never before have the elements of the writing craft - and the challenge of extracting knowledge from the work of great writers - been presented in such an intelligent and accessible format. Elements of the Writing Craft offers more than 150 inventive lessons that focus on such practical tasks as describing a room, switching from narrative to dialogue, speaking in a character's particular voice, and giving a story significant closure.

The Spirit of Writing by Mark Robert Waldman
A collection of essays by such notable authors as Joseph Campbell, Gail Godlwin, Janet Fitch, Anne Lamott, and Octavio Paz shares their thoughts on what it means to be a writer, from the difficulty of creating a first draft to the mystery and language of words. Original.

The Sell Your Novel Tool Kit: Everything You Need to Know about Queries, Synopses, Marketing & Breaking In by Elizabeth Lyon
Lyon offers novelists the wisdom of her experience as an author, book editor, writing instructor, and marketing consultant. Step-by-step, she details what editors want, what questions to ask them, and how to develop a marketing strategy.

Secrets of a Freelance Writer: How to Make $85,000 a Year by Robert W. Bly
Dozens of high-paying, commercial writing projects are available. These include ads, annual reports, brochures, catalogs, newsletters, direct-mail packages, audiovisual presentations, and other promotional pieces. This new, fully revised edition of Bob Bly's invaluable resource tells how to tap these lucrative but lesser known markets.

Ernest Hemingway on Writing by Ernest Hemingway; Larry W. Phillips
Imbued with Hemingway's wit, wisdom, and humor, "Ernest Hemingway on Writing" offers essential advice from an author who has had an astounding impact on contemporary American fiction.

The Writer's Life: Insights from the Right to Write by Julia Cameron
Exploring such issues as time, mood, inspiration, and support, the author reveals that writing is a natural and crucial part of life in a tiny, portable companion to help readers lead a writer's life more easily, joyfully, and powerfully.

Opportunities in Writing Careers by Elizabeth Foote-Smith
Offers advice on writing fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, and describes writing careers in newspapers, magazines, television, advertising, and science.

How to Write Irresistible Query Letters by Lisa Collier Cool
In this book, successful literary agent Lisa Collier Cool shares professional, practical advice on how to craft powerfully persuasive letters that connect with an editor's imagination. Readers will learn how to develop their ideas, select the strongest slant for their article or book, hook an editor with a tantalizing lead, and more.

How to Sell, Then Write Your Nonfiction Book by Blythe Camenson
From idea to contract to execution, this is the first all-in-one guide for prospective nonfiction writers. "How to Sell, Then Write Your Nonfiction Book is uniquely structured to help you sell your ideas or yourself "before you invest time and effort in a lengthy book project. This comprehensive reference guide provides specific tips for pitching and writing various nonfiction categories, with suggestions from agents, editors, and published authors. With expert advice on the technical elements of voice and style, useful resource listings, and sample proposals, you will find all the tools necessary to ultimately earn a living from nonfiction writing.

How to Sell, Then Write Your Nonfiction Book by Blythe Camenson
From idea to contract to execution, this is the first all-in-one guide for prospective nonfiction writers. "How to Sell, Then Write Your Nonfiction Book is uniquely structured to help you sell your ideas or yourself "before you invest time and effort in a lengthy book project. This comprehensive reference guide provides specific tips for pitching and writing various nonfiction categories, with suggestions from agents, editors, and published authors. With expert advice on the technical elements of voice and style, useful resource listings, and sample proposals, you will find all the tools necessary to ultimately earn a living from nonfiction writing.

Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditation for Writers by Susan Shaughnessy
A daily motivator for people who write--and for all those who long to write--providing an insistent wake-up call for the creative urge, with insights on how to work against resistance, live with the loneliness, develop discipline, and dare to take deeper risks in their work.

Advice to Writers by Jon Winokur
Perhaps the best bon mots ever penned about literature have come from the minds of its greatest creators. Take Faulkner's rhapsodies on the author's moral duties, Nabokov's unapologetic reference to characters as galley slaves, E. B. White's time-honored tenets of grammar and style. The advice is sometimes contradictory, but it always offers a glimpse at genius and a chance for every wordsmith to improve his craft.

Writing from the Heart: Tapping the Power of Your Inner Voice by Nancy Aronie
With warm, lively, often humorous anecdotes, advice, and lessons, this unique approach to creative writing as a path to healing the self shows how to reverse the damaging effects done to writers in school, where red pens disciplined grammar and taught them to mistrust their natural ability as storytellers--freezing them in their creative tracks.

100 Things Every Writer Needs to Know by Scott Edelstein
An all-in-one guide for writers, this wide-ranging handbook combines artistic techniques and inspiration with practical, insider's advice on getting published.

Careers in Writing by Blythe Camenson
Provides information on how to begin a career in writing, with an exploration of each genre, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenwriting, and first-hand accounts from writers in each field.

Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript by Jack Neff; Glenda Tennant Neff
Throughout this easy-to-use guide, dozens of charts, lists, models and sidebars show writers everything they need to know to submit their work correctly and enhance their chances of being published. From screenplays and novels to articles and children's books, writers will find comprehensive, up-to-date information for creating effective query letters, proposals, outlines, synopses and follow-up correspondence.