If you're a non-fiction or memoir writer, here's essential advice on how to map out your path to a book deal.

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Publishing Credits Video Transcript

Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Mary Kole and this is Good Story Company. I want to talk about nonfiction, and memoir, and this question of publishing credits.

Publishing credits are important in nonfiction because a lot of nonfiction avenues for getting published before you get to the book side of things are magazines, newspapers, avenues where you can publish and you can amass publishing credits before you have your big breakthrough book idea. In memoir, that looks like publishing personal essays. And there are tons of markets where you can get some personal essays that are maybe excerpts of a larger memoir off the ground. And for nonfiction, it looks like publishing op-eds, publishing articles, publishing interviews, publishing blog posts, publishing anything that has to do with your area of expertise and the one where you will ideally be writing a book or without your area of expertise where you are ideally chasing big publication credits, newspapers and magazines that have name recognition, for example, to sort of bolster yourself as a nonfiction writer, as an expert in some area or just as a name that's out there that has a lot of publishing experience before you go for a book.

So, one of the main questions that agents and publishers of nonfiction in the memoir scene, they say, "Is this an essay or is this a memoir?" which means for example, is this just one kind of juicy anecdote that could be boiled down into a very good personal essay or is there enough material here, is there enough of a hook, is there enough of a particular slant to make an entire memoir book out of this? Basically, can you do it in an essay or does it need to be a book? And a lot of the time, you will see an agent or a publisher say, "I don't know but this is a memoir. I think it's more of an essay. There's not enough here." And that's a reason for them to decline.

The same thing happens with nonfiction. They will say, "Is this an article or is this a book?" For example, if your book idea is three tips for personal finance. And there, the bee's knees, nobody has ever seen tips like these before, but there's a framework of only three. The most heartbreaking thing you could hear is, "This sounds more like an article because you can just give away the three tips. It's an article. It's gonna be 800 words. It doesn't need to be spun into a whole book." Of course, for a writer, the thing that's gonna be more attractive is creating a book rather than an article. But sometimes, you really have to make that determination.

Now, the good news is, hopefully, you will have more ideas. If this financial framework is your platform, this is your expertise, this is what you're hoping to turn into a book one day, I would recommend that you do publish articles in financial magazines, financial sections of newspapers, op-eds on financial topics, that way you can sort of lay some groundwork and paint yourself as an expert in the field. That platform will be able to hold up a book in the future but the book needs enough juice. It needs more than just three tips. It can be three categories in your life of kind of financial decay and what to do about it or three smart habits that you need to put into your life now that will reflect positively on your finances. And then it's more of a framework, it's not just three ideas. It's three bigger topics and how they apply to X, Y and Z.

On the memoir side of things, of course, you want to hear, "Yes. We want to buy your life story. Write your memoir." But memoir is very specific and everybody has a life story. So this question can get deeply personal of "Is there enough here that's gonna make your life story interesting to outside readers?" And sometimes, if you're just writing about one life event, for example, the passing of somebody very important to you or a story that your grandmother told you when you were a kid, that could make a really strong essay but it's not necessarily enough for a book.

Now, why this video is called publishing credits is you can actually take those ideas and turn them into something. Something is better than nothing in nonfiction because something builds toward that platform. It helps you lay your foundation as a writer. It helps build your name and your expertise. It just is another stepping stone, hopefully, to a book deal. So the nonfiction game, very much, is the game of amassing publishing credits until you have enough to your name or your ideas get big enough where you can go for that book deal. But if you're not there yet, if you don't have the book deal, if you've been hearing this kind of "Is it an article or is it a book?" feedback from your submission, what you need to do is think of ways to slant what you're already pitching, what you already have, what expertise you have, and in memoir, our expertise is top-notch because we are all experts in our own lives.

How do we get publishing credits with these topics? That should be your number one goal as you pursue publication for, eventually, a book-length work. So that's all about memoir and nonfiction publishing credits.

My name is Mary Kole with Good Story Company. Here's to a good story.

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