Anne Janzer

Author

Finding Your Publication Path

A landscape view of forest trails winding through tall, eucalyptus trees.

A familiar question came up in a writing workshop I led last week. A participant wanted to know how to publish the many stories he had accumulated during his unusual life. It’s a common and important question, and so hard to answer!

Many of my conversations with writers revolve around publishing options. People often want to know the right way to publish their works, to get a book out into the world. 

I dedicated one chapter of Get the Word Out to the publishing question, and that’s not nearly enough.

Alas, there is no single right answer.

All I can do in these conversations is guide people to think about their priorities, and to make sure they clearly understand their options.

Three truths about publishing

People tend to think about publishing decisions based on knowledge they’ve accumulated over the years. Here are three current truths to factor in to your decisions:

  1. The publishing landscape continues to change. You can learn from someone else’s experience in the past, but the river has kept flowing since they stepped into it.
  2. People’s content habits are shifting as well. We’re consuming content in different media—print, video, audio. That inevitably affects publishing decisions.
  3. A book isn’t always the right format—or the first format you should choose.

That last truth is hard for me to write, book-lover as I am. But it’s true. A book may not be the best way to reach your audience.

And even if it is, perhaps a book isn’t the first way to publish your work.

A tale of two Andys

You may have heard the story of Andy Weir’s break-out bookThe Martian. Weir originally wrote the book as a serialized story on his blog, getting feedback on the science as he went.

His readers started asking for the content in a more convenient form, so he self-published the book on Amazon. It took off, and the rest is history—traditional publishing contract, the movie, Matt Damon… 

Cover of the book The Martian

He didn’t wait to write until he knew his path to publication. He wrote and shared the story on his blog. He took an untraditional path.

Then there’s my friend Andrew Duxbury—less well known in literary circles than Andy Weir, no doubt. He’s a professor and geriatric physician at the University of Alabama. In addition to his medical work, Andy is a creative soul, involved in local singing and musical theater, and an astute observer of the world around him.

He started posting about his experiences during the global pandemic on Facebook— thoughtful posts filled with professional observations and personal stories.

Again, his readers encouraged him to put the material in book format. He worked with an editor and publisher, and the Accidental Plague Diaries arrived in the world as a book.

Cover of book The Accidental Plague DIaries

Blog posts. Facebook posts. Would either of those paths work for you? Maybe not.

But the key point is this: how can you get your work out into the world?

Finding your own path

You don’t have to write a book to make a difference in the world. You have many options, including:

  • Blog posts
  • Social media posts (be sure to save the work locally as well)
  • Serialized fiction sites like WattPad, Relish, or now Amazon Vella 
  • Subscription newsletters (like Substack)
  • Flash Nonfiction (see this list on Brevity)
  • A podcast series
  • An audiobook (with or without accompanying print book)
  • A video series

Watch and learn from how other people share their ideas. But don’t be afraid to blaze your own trail. In today’s world, there is no single “right” way to publish your work.

The only wrong path is doing nothing.

You might also like…

Read Get the Word Out for more advice on finding a path to your book.

Tidying Up Your Writing

Neatly folded clothes in drawer

A few years ago, my husband and I moved out of a house that we had lived in for over 25 years. As we sorted and packed, I turned to Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (and later Netflix special) for inspiration in dealing with the accumulated stuff.

Before you ask—no, we did not sort all of our earthly possessions into piles and choose only those that “spark joy” to remain. Even so, her approach offered useful insights into letting go.

Kondo suggests we thank the things we no longer need for their service, and then let donate them or send them on.

It’s a beautiful antidote to the sunk cost fallacy. (I paid so much for these pants I never wear, I can’t get rid of them!) 

Recently, I realized that this approach works for words as well as stuff.

What to do instead of killing your darlings

Cutting is a necessary, and sometimes painful, part of revision. People often tell writers that they need to “kill their darlings.” That advice that sounds doubly dark coming from Stephen King! (See his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.)

Of course, the advice is sound. As writers, we often become attached to bits of brilliance that we enjoy, but that don’t serve the reader. Getting rid of them is painful.

Metaphors like kill and murder only make revision harder.

I’ve been working with an author who has done extensive research for her book. She has countless hours interview transcripts filled with wisdom. Of course she wants to share it in her book. 

As lovely and generous as those conversations are, they don’t all belong in the book. That doesn’t serve the reader.

Here’s the hard truth for nonfiction writers: Only a fraction of the research you do ends up in the manuscript.

Fresh off watching Marie Kondo’s latest Netflix special, I tried something different. I told her, “Look at each of these interviews. Will these passages spark joy—or understanding—for the reader? If not, thank them for their service and move them elsewhere.”

She laughed, but understood my point.

We talked about things she could do with the research that didn’t end up in the book. She could create blog posts or publish interview excerpts to support the book launch.

The research has value, but not all in one place and all at once.

“Tidying up” your writing

How about your work? Are you trying extra hard to keep your favorite bits? Is the resulting book, blog post or article longer than your reader is likely to finish?

You might need to tidy up. To do this, think like the reader. As you read, put yourself in their shoes and ask:

Does this spark joy? Understanding? Insight? Is it necessary for the larger purpose?

If you discover defensive feelings about a passage, at some level you may realize that it doesn’t fit. 

You might need another set of eyes. Ask a friend, an early reader, or a developmental editor to weigh in.

Of course, you’re the author. You get to include a few things that you find uniquely entertaining or wonderful. If you’ve earned the reader’s trust and understanding, they’ll stay with you.

But if readers feel like they’re lost in a rummage sale of your favorite things, they might wander off.

If you have a tough time cutting things from your manuscript, give it the Marie Kondo treatment. Acknowledge and honor the things that you’re cutting—then send them to a good home. Your reader will appreciate the tidier text.

Related content

Check out Mari Kondo’s Netflix special: Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. It’s funny and also moving.

Read my post Revising for Cognitive Ease.

Failure Stories for the Win

banana peel on white background

As children, we learn by trial and error. We fall, get up, and try again. Sometimes the mistakes are painful. We learn not to tug the cat’s tail or grab at hot pans on the stove. 

We continue to learn from our mistakes as we grow. Remember your first full-time job? I shudder to remember my earliest content marketing attempts.

As we continue in our careers, our tolerance for mistakes disappears. The stakes are higher and errors can be costlier.

So, what do we do? Too often, we decide we know ‘enough’ and put aside the learning mindset. We keep doing the things that are safe and comfortable. 

And playing it safe is itself a mistake—especially when operating in a world of flux and change.

How can we keep advancing in our careers without experiencing painful or embarrassing mistakes? Through stories.

Learning from other people’s mistakes

When we read or listen to a story, we put ourselves in the protagonist’s place for a moment. When they make a mistake, we can internalize the lesson. That is powerful magic.

Technology companies love sharing “customer success” stories that model how customers use their applications. While success stories are wonderful, we may learn more from their opposites: failure stories.

When I set out to write my latest book about business emails, I knew it needed stories. The title of the book, 33 Ways Not to Screw Up Your Business Emails, prompted me to look for tales of failure.

I asked people for their embarrassing email stories, and they responded! Some were funny, others cringe-inducing. People sent many more stories than could fit in the book, but each one contributed to my sense of the pervasive problems of email. And all held lessons for others.

This got me thinking about how we share our successes much more readily than our failures. Maybe that’s a missed opportunity.

Sharing our failures is generous

When we want to help others, it’s tempting to tell them what we think they should do. It may be more effective, however, to let them know what does not work. Your goal is not to instill fear of change, but to inspire learning.

Yes, that means that you have to show up as flawed and imperfect. That’s generous, too. Because we are all flawed and imperfect.

Which stories should you share? It depends on what your readers might need. Look for uncomfortable experiences that also bring happy endings—lessons learned, situations rectified.

Show a path to the future. Don’t be afraid to model learning, with all its messiness and mistakes.

Failure is success in progress - handwriting on a napkin with a cup of coffee

Try this: Whether it’s for your next blog post or journal entry, explore a time you made a mistake, and what you took from it. Would others find this valuable? Experiment with writing it, creating a narrative that includes the lessons learned. And if you’re comfortable, try sharing it with others. You might be surprised at the responses.

Related Reading

Writing Your Way from Suffering to Serving

Stories and Fiction, Facts and Truth

 

It’s time to write better business emails

white paper airplanes, from crumpled to smooth, on yellow background

Our crowded inboxes drive us nuts. We resent their intrusion on our lives and the pull they have on our attention when we’re trying to work.

Then we get frustrated when other people don’t respond to the emails we send them.

Plenty of people think that email is broken. In A World Without Email, Cal Newport writes about the cost that the constant stream work-related emails has on actual productivity. It’s a fascinating book, yet even Newport agrees that email will be with us for a long time.

It’s time to confess that we are part of the problem.

  • We contribute to cluttered, unmanageable inboxes by writing messy, stream-of-consciousness emails that put the burden on the recipient to make sense of them.
  • We don’t include enough information, generating a swarm of follow-up emails.
  • We fire off a response quickly to show how responsive we are, without contributing to the discussion.

When we don’t use email with enough intention, we contribute to its burdens for everyone—ourselves included.

Who has time to polish email messages?

We’re all busy. Most of my email mistakes happen because I’m trying to move too quickly: to clear out my inbox, to respond right away, to get through the email so I can get back to writing.

It’s almost always worth spending time on the most important emails—the ones to your team, colleagues, partners, or clients.

Better yet, you can adopt processes to protect yourself from the worst email failures. I think of them as safety nets. Once established, they save you time and hassles down the road.

Here are three reasons for investing a little time and attention in your email habits.

#1 – Protect your reputation

In a fast-paced world, we toss off emails quickly, without a lot of care. And that sometimes backfires. 

As I researched my latest book, 33 Ways Not to Screw Up Your Business Emails, people sent me stories of emails gone wrong. There were many:

  • The inside joke unintentionally forwarded to the customer
  • The person who sent a complaint about a colleague to the person driving them nuts instead of the manager
  • The sensitive email about an executive appointment that sat on a shared printer where everyone could see it

Emails can misfire in so many ways, sometimes without our knowing it. People misinterpret the tone of our emails all the time, and we have no idea it’s happening.

Most email failures are survivable, but why put your business reputation at risk? 

#2 – Differentiate yourself

In a world of dysfunctional email, you can rise above the fray. You can show up as someone who thinks and communicates with clarity.

Paper boats on stormy water, one lifted above on a paper airplane

A few extra moments crafting a thoughtful subject line and clear opening will inspire people to open your email, or to find it later when they need it. 

Add subheads and a logical structure to a lengthy email, and people will think better of you because they understand what you want. 

Spend a few moments thinking about everything the recipient needs, and you can avoid back-and-forth messages.

#3 – Hone your writing skills

People tell me all the time that they don’t have time to write. But you probably write email messages every day. Approach that writing with intention.

Emails are an opportunity to cultivate clarity of thought and expression. They give us a chance to practice our writing skills—every darned day.

Related content

Find a whole host of email writing tips, best practices, and inspiration in my new book 33 Ways Not to Screw Up Your Business Emails.

Show Mercy: Use Shorter Sentences

Man holding sign saying "Shorter sentences please"

How many words do you look at each day? Think of all the text that you encounter: emails, Slack messages, news headlines, LinkedIn or Facebook posts, reports, books, articles, and more.

Research conducted in 2009 found that Americans saw or listened to an average of 100K words each day. I’d bet that the number is higher now in our remote world.

You couldn’t possibly read all of those words carefully. Your attention and focus is precious. Spend it wisely.

Now flip this situation. Instead of yourself, think of the people you hope to reach—your readers. They are just as inundated as you are, if not more so.

If you want people to pay attention to your ideas, make them as easy to understand as possible. Reduce the mental effort. 

While there are many ways to simplify and clarify your writing, there’s one piece of advice that most of us need. 

Shorten your sentences

If you want your words or ideas to penetrate, eliminate unnecessary packaging in your sentences. This advice applies to nearly everything you write: email, Twitter posts, team reports, blog posts—even books. 

You may need to unlearn writing practices you adopted in college.

The most valuable college class I took was an introduction to journalism class in my senior year. It taught me how to write quickly and to cut to the essence. This advice counteracted years spent as an English Literature major, deconstructing the elaborate prose of earlier centuries and attempting virtuosic efforts myself.

After I left college, I had to relearn the way I wrote. And I continue to help my clients do the same. 

I once worked with a Spanish tech entrepreneur who hired me to work on his corporate website and marketing collateral. The first thing I did was to take a metaphorical machete to the long, elaborate sentences on his website.

He pushed back, somewhat appalled by what I’d done. He said, “In Spain, long sentences are the sign of advanced education.”

I replied, “In the States, no one will read them.”

(He let me rewrite the website.)

There is a cultural component to this advice. But as everyone around the world is subject to the same information onslaught, we should show more consideration for our readers, no matter where they are.

This continues to be one of my most consistent bits of writing advice. I’m tempted to get “Shorter sentences!” printed on a t-shirt to wear on Zoom calls. 

The case for shorter sentences

I’m not anti intellectual. You don’t have to shorten everything. Elegant sentences still have their place in the world. 

But I also believe in being considerate of the reader. For most writers (myself included), readability improves when we shorten a few sentences here and there.

Think of it like pruning—how much you shorten the sentences depends on the situation and the effect you hope to achieve.

Man pruning branches of tree

Are you writing for online reading (like a website or email)? Shorter sentences make it easier for people to scan the text and find what they need. 

In longer works (reports, books), you have more of the reader’s attention. You can include more elaborate sentences. Even then, don’t overload them. Spare the reader’s mental effort and vary the tempo. 

Need more reasons?

  • Your long, beautiful sentences will shine when surrounded by shorter, simpler ones.
  • If the reader must juggle complex clauses or backtrack to make sense of the sentence, they will get mentally tired. When that happens, they might start skimming or simply move on to something else.
  • Grammatical errors often creep into those long sentences. (Noun/verb agreement is easier to mess up when intermediate clauses separate them.)

When to prune

Good news: this is an easy fix to apply in revision. Look through something you’ve written and apply the following guidelines:

  • If you have three or more sentences in a row that are long and have multiple clauses, shorten one of them.
  • Break up sentences that have many independent clauses, or where people might lose the train of the idea.
  • Put your most important ideas in simple sentences. (Here’s a good test: Could someone tweet this?)

Related Content

Revising for Cognitive Ease

Flux: A Book Review

As a prolific nonfiction reader, I ask two questions of each new book I encounter:

  1. Will I enjoy reading it?
  2. Will any of the ideas stay with me? Will the book earn a permanent place not only on my bookshelf, but in my mind?

I can usually answer the first question by the end of the first chapter. The second one, about lasting impact, takes more time to assess. Many books are enjoyable to read, but fewer make a permanent impression in my thought processes.

That brings me to the new book by April Rinne, Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change. For this book, I can definitely answer Yes to both questions—and you probably will as well.

Back in the spring of 2020, during the early days of the pandemic, I had the pleasure of interviewing April Rinne as research for Get the Word Out. April embodies the idea of servant authorship that I write about in Get the Word Out—she has written this book to serve others as they deal with a world in constant change.

April kindly invited me to read a prepublication draft. So I read Flux last December, and have lived with its ideas all year. And hoo boy, has it been helpful!

About the book

This book is about adjusting your mindset for the world in which we live—one in which the pace of change is accelerating without any sign of letting up. The ideas in this book were relevant and useful before the Coronavirus pandemic threw nearly every prediction and plan into disarray. Now they’re even more critical.

The book’s introduction includes a simple exercise to write down everything that is in flux in your life, and to assess your emotional reaction to them. Doing that was an eye-opener. I hadn’t even realized the baseline level of stress I was carrying around. (And I think of myself as a calm person.)

Many short, useful exercises like that throughout the book guide you to examine and shift your mindset around change and uncertainty.

Uncertainty is a difficult thing to manage. We often work hard to protect ourselves from uncertainty, but at great cost. Trying to control the future is a fool’s game, and we can waste more energy resisting change than adapting to it.

The answer lies in adopting a flux mindset. The eight superpowers of the title are really lenses that you can use to shift the way you approach uncertainty. Some may fit you more easily than others, although all are worth reading and absorbing.

The superpowers that have helped me so far

Here in late August, I can report that the book has helped me in a year in which nearly every plan is provisional. These are the three superpowers that have landed most permanently with me so far:

Run slower. When dealing with rapid and constant change, it pays to find a different pace. Slowing down has been perhaps easier during the pandemic. Now I find that I relish a slower tempo in my life. I’m not ready to give it up if and when the world resumes its usual frenetic pace.

Know your enough. The world is always pressing us to do more and optimize everything. Why, in fact, do I need to take the most efficient route driving some place? And the value of my day cannot be found in the number of tasks I manage to check off. This chapter is filled with advice for identifying what’s important, what’s enough, and putting aside the gnawing sense of scarcity that often chases us.

There’s also a wonderful play on words if you say the chapter title aloud: Know you’re enough. You are enough.

Let go of the future. If the last year has taught us anything, it’s to avoid hard-and-fast plans for nearly anything. I have become more intentional about releasing my attachment to plans and outcomes. The book suggests we shift from predicting the future to preparing for it, however it unfolds. This mindset has been invaluable in the last year. It’s a gift.

It’s time for me to revisit the book and see if I can adopt more superpowers, because the world isn’t getting any more certain.

If you’re feeling flummoxed, anxious, or otherwise disconcerted about the near and distant future, give yourself the gift of this book.

Related Content

Listen to or read the transcript of my interview with April last spring