My First Book Debuts

get a six-figure advance

or what you should really expect

I haven't posted in a few days because I just got final revisions back on my book, and I'm smothered in making them. Writing this book has been a mammoth project—two years in the making—a true labor of love, my passion. On many occasion, I have felt like a word scultor, taking away words here, adding them there and sometimes starting all over again.

It has been gratifying and rewarding, and I hope that my book will resonate with readers. I say all this because I think aspiring authors look at the potential reward of writing a book—a big advance—as the reason for writing. It is not, and realistic reasons prevail for why this is so.

The typical book advance for a first-time author is a mere $5,000 to $10,000. For that kind of money, if you're into the money, then you might as well write a feature story for Travel & Leisure magazine. You'd earn at least $4,000 for an article that would be less than 1 percent the work of writing a book.

Some books, of course, rake in huge advances. When Hillary Rodham Clinton sold her memoirs to Simon & Schuster, she received an $8 million advance on her book deal.

Her book, like mine, went to auction. That means that several publishers bid on your book. Before mine went to auction, my agent encouraged me to come to New York City and meet with the editors at Penguin, Simon & Schuster, St. Martin's Press and McGraw-Hill. Creating a three-dimensional image (me) out of a two-dimensional project (the book) was a strategy she used to bring excitement to the project.

She then set a date for the publishers to call in with their bid. All of the publishers, except McGraw-Hill, bid on my book. Around noon, the first bid came in, then the second and a third. My agent kept me aprised by telephone. In the end, it was between Simon & Schuster and Penguin.

My agent advised that I sign with Penguin, not only because it offered the highest bid, but because it had other titles (The Out-Of-Sync Child, for example) that sold well in bookstores. That was important because when it came time for Penguin's sales force to pitch my book to book buyers (they only have about two minutes per book to do this), it could rely on the success of its past titles to convince buyers to buy mine.

I hope that will bear out to be true when my book comes out in March—the month before National Autism Awareness month, and a big month for all publishers of special needs books.

Some tips for getting a bigger advance:

• Write a solid book proposal. Don't get ahead of yourself and focus on the prose. You need an "author's platform" (what kind of expert are you in relation to your book?) and marketing/promotion plan in your proposal. This is your marketing tool, to not only get an agent but a publisher.
• Believe in yourself. You need to believe that what you're writing about is either going to help improve the lives of others or offer provocative insight on something. If you get a chance to meet with publishers, let your passion shine through. Try to look at this process from the outside in; how will publishers perceive you.

Being a good writer is a given. You shouldn't be writing a book to perfect your writing. You should already be able to write clear, non-cliche prose.

Okay, my advance. It wasn't six figures; it was $60,000, with incentives to make more if my book sells from 10,000 to 40,000 copies during the first year.

MONDAY: Surprise!

who is kevin trudeau?

and why should you care

Kevin Trudeau self published Natural Cures They' Don't Want You to Know About. His book has sold millions, making it a New York Times best seller.

Your chances of self-publishing your own book and becoming the next Kevin Trudeau are about as good as me getting pregnant again. Sorry, the factory is closed!

It's not that I'm against self-publishing. My brother, bless his heart, put together a 60th wedding anniversary book, replete with vintage photographs, for my parents. Impressed is an understatement. This book had the "wow" factor but a steep price tag—more than $200. I had planned to buy two for my sons, but (unfortunately for my wallet) this book will be left to degrade in memory. Perhaps when my book hits No. 1 I'll change my mind and fork over the moula.

I'll say it again: I'm not that down on self-publishing. I've always wanted to self-publish my recipe book, but it's going to stay in my MasterCook software because, well, I just don't cook like I used to, and I'm too busy.

I get stuck on the distribution angle. If you're not a slick book author like Trudeau (and, really, do you think there are "natural cures" for everything that ails you?), how will you move your boxes of books out of your living room to the shelves of Borders? Short answer: You're not.

True, Trudeau's book is not the only self-published book to achieve success. The Celestine Prophecy and The Christmas Box became best sellers, but their success was a surprise to the publishing industry.

I've seen authors shell out thousands of dollars to self-publish their book in the hope of getting noticed by a major publisher. At Book Expo 2007, for example, a middle-aged chap went through all the trouble and expense of renting a booth and creating a ginormous poster of his book cover. Now, that guy has one big ego, I'd say. The book had something to do on global warming. Didn't he do his research? That's Al Gore's schtick. Like I said, you gotta know your competition.

That said, if you want to get that heirloom sugar cookie recipe book published by Christmas or write your memoir like Amy Fisher (aka the "Long Island Lolita") did in If I Knew Then (and I don't want to know now), you might want to check out Lulu and Amazon's fairly new BookSurge program.

TUESDAY: what is a reasonable book advance

digging for information

rich resources for online research

The Web is a haven for conducting research for your book, be it fiction or nonfiction. But knowing how to search for information is equally important as knowing where to search.

Knowing where to search is certainly the easier part of the equation to solve. For brute searches using keywords, I prefer Google, but there are niche search engines. Under speciality search engines, for example, you'll find a link to medical search engines, such as Health on the Net.

As you retrieve information from specific sites, always pay attention to the source of the information, as misinformation abounds on the Internet. Sometimes, the information is dated, so look for a date. If its not posted, you may have to follow up with a phone call.

Let's pause and talk about how to search. If you're entering more than one keyword, put quotes around the keyword phrase, which should force a search engine to retrieve results using that exact phrase. This works with Google.

Some search engines, such as AltaVista, let you eliminate words from your search if you put a minus sign before a word. This technique helps filter results. Another tip: If you don't know the meaning of a word, you can simply type the word after you enter define: in Google's search field (don't put a space after the colon and the word you want to define). Example: define:amygdala

Google will return links to sites that define the word. I use these basic keyword search techniques the most. For more on search engines and how they work, head over to Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch, which is a leading sources of information on this topic.

Getting back to where to search. If you need to talk to an expert, ProfNet, a service of PR Newswire, allows journalists to blast out a free query to experts that are part of the ProfNet service.

There are also a growing number of fee-based services to find the full text of articles, which I found very useful. I particularly like HighBeam Research. For $79 a year, I get access to full-text articles from mainstream newspapers, magazines and professional journals, transcripts, books and so on.

I'm also a subscriber to Newspaper Archive. That also cost about $79 a year for full access to PDFs of newspapers, mainly middle market, such as The Syracuse Post. For that price, you're not going to get current issues of The New York Times, only those dated from 1857 to 1909.

These two services also offer "alerts," which means you can specify keywords and be alerted via email every time your chosen words appear in the news or press release. When it does, you get a link to the article or release.

To keep up with fresh news, I follow blogs in my area of interest. These days blogs and specialized eNewsletters break news, often much faster than the paper press. For example, the news about the strained relationship between Autism Speaks cofounder Bob Wright (who, BTW, is endorsing my book) and his daughter over whether mercury in vaccines causes autism rippled through cyberspace a week before it hit the mainstream press. To find a blog that covers your interest, use Technorati.

You also might consider creating your own clipping service to keep up to date on your interests.

MONDAY: who is kevin trudeau? (and why should you care)

may I edit you?

using book-editing services

You hear stories about the big publishing houses not paying enough attention to an author's writing and that the editing isn't as good as it used to be. That thought scared me into thinking I better find an outside party to edit my chapters as I was going through the process of writing them.

You wonder about online book-editing services. Are they any good? What level of service do I need? How much do they cost? How do I decide.

I was faced with those very same questions when I finished a couple chapters of my book. I googled "book editing," and came across a worthwhile service, book-editing.com. I had finished two chapters and sent an email. Two potential editors responded. From their bios, both were highly qualified.

They asked me what level of service I wanted. I said I didn't know. I didn't know whether I needed a copy edit or a more substantial structural edit. I asked them to decide. They asked to see a writing sample and did a sample copy edit. Both said that's all I needed. The copy editing was superb, but I had a hard time deciding, and it wasn't because of the price. One charged 2 cents a word; the other 3 cents a word, which I felt was reasonable. I had also contacted other services, and their rates varied, from $90 an hour to $175 an hour.

At book-editing.com, I asked the editors if they'd point out deficiencies in structure or more substantial writing problems as they read through the manuscript. They said editing was a different level of service than copy editing and would cost more. I felt confused because I didn't understand how an editor would copy edit and not point out larger problems. I had been a copy editor for The Washington Post, and the copy desk would always tell reporters if there were "holes."

That is when I took an advance novel writing course. I liked my writing teacher so much that I asked her to help. Her fee was reasonable, and I trusted that she'd help with the structure of my book. Writing 60,000 involves a much different pace than writing a magazine piece.

If you don't have a mentor and are left with using a book-editing service, wait until you have finished your manuscript. While one chapter may need a copy edit, you'll want to see how that chapter fits in with the rest of your book.

You may find, as I did, that you'll need to delete material to reduce the word count, which will involve both editing and rewriting. I had promised 60,000 words but turned in 88,000 words. It's okay to run over, but the run over better be darn good. I got it down to 64,000 words.

The word count is important because your publishing house has estimated its production costs based on trim size (the dimensions of your book) and page count.

FRIDAY: Tips for researching your book online

another rewrite?

how many times is enough

Answer: As many times as your editor tells you. Honestly, that is the truth.

To keep revisions from your editor at a minimum, you should be revising your book through another set of eyes (not your friends) before you turn it in. Friends are not professional writers and don't know how to offer constructive criticism. Professionals who are not professional writers are also poor choices. Use them to check facts or review tone, especially if it's a sensitive topic.

That leaves you with either finding a mentor who is a professional writer, or hiring your own editor before you show it to your editor at the publishing house that bought your book. Both may eat up your advance, but how could you turn in a product without an expert writer looking over its structure? To me that would be like putting on makeup without looking into the mirror.

I can't stress enough how important the structure of your book is as well as the framing of each chapter. How you frame each chapter determines whether a reader will continue or even start to read your book, and the structure of the book is, well, need I say anymore. If the structure is faulty, your book will fall apart like the London bridge. I found a mentor after deciding my book needed more than a copy edit. She taught a writing class at a local writer's center in my area. I took her class first.

Use your chapter synopses and sample chapters as your guideposts. I admit, I had done that, or at least so I thought. When I turned in my book, I had to revise it yet again because I emphasized the memoir portion of my book rather than the prescriptive advice. Let's just say there wasn't a balance between them. I grumbled because I had been working on this manuscript for about a year and a half, and my mentor had read over everything. We thought we had it in pretty good shape. Lesson: Even when you think you're following your blueprint, you still might get sidetracked.

Because you'll go through countless revisions, you'll need to stay organized. I wish I had remained better organized with the way I named my files. They got to be all over the place because I didn't want to lose track of my latest version. There was a simple solution: Name your file and at the end put v1. Change it to v2 the next time you edit it and so on. If someone else is editing along the way, have that person put v2_JT (their initials) at the end. That way you wouldn't have countless revisions because you'd have a record, if any one is counting.

If you're throwing up your hands in a cry of help, there are reputable online services that can help. Book-Editing Associates is one of them. I will talk more about this service tomorrow.

THURSDAY: book-editing services: what level of service do you need?

asking for book blurbs

or, will you endorse my book?

When you pull books off the shelves at the bookstore, do you ever wonder how authors got so and so to endorse their book? As a first-time author, I did.

The simple answer is that they asked, but the process of asking is not so simple. The hardest part about getting a big-name person, presumably someone whose name can generate more sales for you, is getting the first one. After that, the rest fall in place like Dominos, give or take a few.

For me, I started with perhaps the biggest name I could think of but one that would not immediately come to mind in the autism community. My target: T. Berry Brazelton, M.D., an icon in the pediatric world, just like Dr. Spock was when my parents brought me up.

I chose Dr. Brazelton because his name resonates with authority and respect. When parents suspect a developmental disorder in their child, they're likely to first turn to their pediatrician for advice. If parents then went to the bookstore to find a book on autism spectrum disorders, I reasoned that they'd be drawn to an endoresment by a name they knew and trusted. My in: In my day job, I'm director of marketing at ZERO TO THREE, a national nonprofit about early childhood development. Dr. Brazelton sits on our board of directors.

I had an opportunity to meet Dr. Brazelton at an event. But, don't ask notables to give you something at an event. They're too busy, and you shouldn't put them on the spot. My method: In advance of meeting Dr. Brazelton, I wrote him a snail mail letter outlining my request. I signed and sealed it, and when I introduced myself, I said, "Please take this and read it on the plane home." [I got this letter-writing tip from another author, and it's just the best.]

I then followed up via email with Dr. Brazelton's assistant. I got turned down. No boo-hoos. I tried again, promising I wouldn't be a "pest" if he turned me down again. I had heard Dr. Brazelton speak at a recent conference on autism spectrum disorders. He talked about the importance of pediatricians listening to parents when they think something is wrong with their child. That was my plea.

In my email, I said: "You say that it is important to get the word out about healthy social and emotional development and having a quote from you would carry that mission forward, I believe, because of the great trust and credibility you carry." He said, "yes."

Next target: Bob Wright, cofounder of Autism Speaks. Of all the autism-related nonprofits, Autism Speaks is a powerhouse. I don't know a lot of people in high places, but I do know a few, and a former college friend (and now managing editor of Forbes magazine) got me in touch with Wright's chief strategist at NBC Universal. Wright is chairman. I got the go-ahead to send the manuscript and did so immediately (be prepared to follow up quickly if someone says yes). After a couple of months, I got a call. Wright said, "yes!" [I don't think Wright really read my manuscript; it was someone at Autism Speaks but that shouldn't matter. He probably gets asked a lot of things.]

If you don't have contacts to make introductions for you, or you're not well connected, take this advice. Ask your editor if he or she can help you, and start networking. If you're an expert in your field, you should have a few high-level contacts.

It's okay to email experts even without a connection. Just be polite and respectful of the their time, and don't be a pest, a gentle nudge, however, is okay.

Last tip: Don't offer to write the blurb for them. Give them a chance, and if you haven't heard back then email again and offer to suggest a few blurbs that they can then edit. And, always say thank you.

WEDNESDAY: how many times do you have to revise your book?

catch an agent's eye

write strong chapter synopses

The expository exercise of writing a summary for each of the 12 chapters was my least favorite part of the book proposal writing process. I was eager to write the chapters, not explain them. But writing chapter synopses is much like writing a business plan: It is not only necessary but vital to the success of selling your idea to both a literary agent and publisher.

I must admit that I tackled writing two chapters of my book first. I felt a compelling urge to bring to life on paper my experience of setting my younger son on a proper course of development after he was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder a week before 9/11.

There is nothing wrong with this approach, but if you don't write summaries the direction of your writing is likely to veer off course and lack focus. And you wouldn't get away without including chapter summaries in a book proposal. Of course you can scrap this advice if you're writing fiction because an agent expects to see a completed manuscript, not sample chapters.

There's no rule on the length of a chapter synopsis. Mine tended to run about a page of double-spaced type, sometimes a bit longer. While most summaries explained what I planned to write, I included some anecdotes to capture my emotions during a certain situation or provide imagery (download a chapter synopsis from my book proposal).

After Penguin-Perigee bought my book, I learned that my chapter synopses were the strongest selling point of my proposal. Other publishers that bid on my book were impressed with the quality of my writing. All points add up to make a winning book proposal.

The most important advice I can offer about your chapter synposes is that once you've secured a book contract, don't change them. You don't want to turn in a book that's different than what you sold.

TUESDAY: getting book jacket blurbs

read your competition?

Short answer: No

Long answer: As you write your book proposal, you should at least read the introduction and first and last chapters of books that come close to executing your idea. When you get a book contract, you should read, from cover to cover, those books that you believe will compete most directly with yours. Don't forget to also read books that would complement yours.

In your book proposal, you'll need to list your competition (and don't say there aren't any or you're delusionary). The best way to do that is to search on Amazon.com, using keywords that a potential reader might use to find your book.

I like to use this free keyword selector tool to come up with keywords and search phrases that I might not have thought of. This tool only lists keywords from Yahoo!'s search engine. Wordtracker, a fee-based sevice, aggregates search terms from all the major search engines. [These tools also are handy when creating "tags" for blogs and your author's website.]

When you find books that appear similar to yours, use the "Search Inside the Book" feature, if it is enabled. The Introduction or Chapter 1 typically comes up when you click on the Excerpt tab. Read until "the reader" won't let you advance any more, which is about three pages, sometimes more. Use the search field to search for other relevant terms.

I often buy the books that seem most meaningful and competitive. I also peruse my local bookstores and take advantage of sitting in a chair and reading as much as I feel is necessary before I either buy a book or place it back on the shelf. Visiting the bookstore also offers a visual feel for how books end up in either little corners or displayed as posters facing out of the windows (I'll cover that in another column.).

For my book proposal's competition section, I called it Competition, gave a brief introduction (less than one page, doubled spaced) and then continued with the subheading, Comparison Titles and Why Almost Normal Is Different. I listed six books (don't list more, or if there are more you might want to think about not writing it; listing too many books will scare off an agent).

My No. 1 competition was listed first. Here's what I said to show that mine would be different and stronger.

Parents of children with an autism spectrum disorder wrote the following books.

Could It Be Autism?: A Parent’s Guide to the First Signs and Next Steps, by Nancy Wiseman. Broadway Books, 2006, 272 pages, 8.6” x 5.8”, hardcover, $22.95. This book is the primary competitor of Almost Normal because it also stresses the early warning signs and early intervention. Lytel’s goal is to improve and expand on the coverage in this book so that anyone comparing the two will choose Almost Normal. Lytel’s book digs down to a deeper level of detail when providing parents with hands-on advice. For example, it offers parents who are assembling a home-based therapy program the wording for ads that they can adapt for their own situation, specific instructions for building a sensory room, how to set up a room for a Floortime therapy session and what toys best help children think abstractly and develop symbolic play. Almost Normal also doesn’t just drop in anecdotes, as Could It Be Autism? does, but presents a comprehensive narrative of Lytel’s journey that offers parents insight, empowerment and hope. Moreover, the Almost Normal website will include interactive features, such as video, which will allow parents to watch a child with behavioral problems and then review some strategies to defuse the behavior.

Notice all the detail about about the book's dimensions, year published, price and format. You'll need to include all this information.

Big tip: Don't criticize your competition but emphasize why your book will be better. You may list, as I did, a book whose publisher is now interested in buying your book. You don't want to diss the book, even if it is lousy. Also, having gone through the process of writing a book, I have too much admiration for authors and the work they put into their work, whether their book sells or not.

Writing this section can often leave you feeling down, that your great idea has already been taken. But if you're a clever writer and an expert in your field, you should be able to refocus the lens so that it offers further depth of field.

MONDAY: essential elements of your chapter synopses

inspire yourself to write

An idea pines inside you for writing your first book, but you just can't seem to get started, or find the time. Demands from work are pressing, and/or the kids need attention. Fill in the blank with your excuse.

Writing a book is a long process (average two years) of long hours, countless revisions and more long hours that extend beyond writing to marketing, not by your publisher but you. Yes, publishers today expect authors to take an active role in publicizing their book (think book tour; think dead book).

No one starts out writing a book without imagining it will zoom to the top of the best-seller list; there's too much work involved, and who would ever say, "I'm getting up at 4 a.m. today to write a flop." But will you roll your eyes open at 4 a.m. to write a best-seller? Not if you're not inspired.

While inspiration comes from within, it doesn't hurt to reach out to a writer's group in your area and take a class, which is a traditional approach. But inspiration can strike in other ways. For me, I found inspiration to write my first book on craiglists, but I wasn't searching for inspiration. Our family suffered a huge financial crisis a couple of years ago, and craigslist seemed like an ideal place to find a weekend job.

What I found was an ad written by a national author who needed gardeners. Since I love to garden, I clicked through. To qualify for wacking weeds, I had to submit an essay that reflected my best writing. In return, the author would pay me $10 an hour and treat me and other chosen writers to lunch while she shared her secrets about writing and getting published. The author cloaked her identity until she chose her gardeners. [That's me, sitting down with my arm around the poodle, with the other writer gardeners. Carole's in the back row, second from the left.] 

I submitted an essay about discovering that my son had a disability, autism. I got the gig. And the author—Carole Fungaroli Sargent, author of Traditional Degrees for Nontraditional Students—followed through, recommending a variety of resources, which I'll share with you. 

• How to Write and Sell Your Personal Experiences by Lois Duncan. In How to Write, Duncan shows how to tailor your personal experiences for the larger world. Since Carole recommended Duncan as an author, I have become a big fan, scurrying to the lower floor at Borders to buy her young adult fiction novels. She also wrote Who Killed My Daughter, a gripping memoir about her unsolved murder. [To this day, Lois is still searching for her daughter's murderer.]
• Selected articles from The Writer: The Breakthrough column, featuring Christine Contillo's rise from public health nursing supervisor to New York Times columnist (October 2004). And, the How I Write column, revealing the tips of author Emma Donoghue.
• Page 44 from Thinking Like Your Editor by Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato. Point: Don't say your book will be for everyone—the books that have the best chance of succeeding with readers are those written with the needs of a well-defined core audience in mind.

FRIDAY: do you need to read your competition

secrets of great titles

To cover some basics, every book proposal needs a strong title. In the end, however, naming your book rests with your publisher, but you do have a say. Sometimes your title will come to you; other times you'll struggle with making it click.

When I came up with the title Almost Normal, I had both positive and negative reactions to it. My writer friends and agent loved Almost Normal. But professionals working in the field of autism shook their heads no. To them, Almost Normal sounded pejorative, and I understood that. In the book proposal, I offered other titles. Healing Autism was one of them. Coming up with the subhead also posed a challenge. I went from using the title as the subhead, as in Healing Autism through Early Intervention to How Early Intervention Shines Hope Along the Autism Spectrum.

To make my book proposal punch, I also included a color photograph of my son on the cover. Adding a visual, as long as it adds value and is tasteful (don't use amateur clip art), I felt, would at least move an agent to pick up my proposal and read the overview, which ranks right up there with being one of the most important parts of your book proposal. [That picture is my son, Leo, the one I used on the cover of the book proposal. You may be thinking, he looks so normal. How could he be on the spectrum. Many children who are diagnosed with this disorder are, in fact, beautiful.]

It wasn't until I handed the book in that I learned the title would be changed. After talking to the sales force at Penguin, my editor said Almost Normal wasn't going to fly because it sounded too "memoiry," and that my imprint at Penguin doesn't sell memoirs; it sells self help. Indeed my book was perscriptive but what made it unique from other books on autism was that it blends memoir (back to that "showing") with advice. Moreover, the sales force said memoirs on autism weren't selling very well. I deferred to their judgment.

Since my book is on the importance of early intervention, we wanted to get that message across in the title. How to execute the message is a separate step. We wanted to stay away from jargon in the title, which meant using "early intervention" was out. We next came up with Act Early, but the sales force turned that down because it didn't have "autism" in the title.

If autism wasn't in the main title then it wouldn't come up in a keyword search on Amazon. Amazon doesn't always index the subtitles. You want your book to come up on Amazon, so I suggested Act Early Against Autism, which won approval, and then we played around with the subtitle, using words my editor came up with, finally settling on Give Your Child a Fighting Chance from the Start. A subtitle shouldn't be any longer than 10 words, but I've seen that rule broken.

If you need more help writing your title, I recommend the book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Other Die by Chip and Dan Heath. This book is all about messaging and offers examples on great versus okay messaging. Topics also include writing a memorable title. The Heath brothers also write a blog that is worth checking out.