Happy New Year, readers! 2018 was an exciting year for us at CDP. We published six books, added new members to our team, redesigned out website, and connected with you on the blog, on social, and through our newsletter! And it looks like the excitement will continue this year! We've got plenty of big things lined up. We're publishing middle grade novels, our very first picture book, and some exciting adult fiction! Our spring list: The Extraordinary eTab of Julian Newcomber The Math Kids: A Sequence of Events The End Note Our fall list: Love Life to Death The Math Kids: An Unusual Pattern #NotReadyToDie Stop Reading This Book We'll also be picking the winner of the Uncommon Quest! Exciting,

Happy Friday and a pre-emptive happy New Year to you all! Since this is the last Around the Web post of the year, I’ve got a few 2018 wrap up lists for you to check out and some writing inspiration and advice to get your 2019 started right. Read on and then share your 2019 reading and writing goals with us! Lit Hubs Best Stories of the Year The end of the year means tons of best of lists and Lit Hub has a great one; it’s their countdown of the top 50 stories of the year. Start with 50 to 41 and make your way through the whole list. Merriam Webster’s Top Words of 2018 If you’ve been watching or reading the news this year, it’ll probably come as no surprise that Merriam Webster’s word of the y

The Common Dear Press team wishes you all a very happy holiday season! Our offices are closed until January 7, 2019. Until then, we wish you all rest, relaxation, and good reading. See you in the new year!

Happy Friday, readers! The CDP team will be on holiday next week, so we’re hard at work making sure we’ve got everything in order before we go. We hope you’re all getting some down time in during this busy time of the year as well. Hopefully, that down time will include reading. (I know I plan to tackle a few titles on my TBR list.) Here’s a few things to get you started. Sylvia Plath’s Letters Sylvia Plath’s death is one of the most famous suicides in the literary world. A collection of her letters reveals details of the writer’s life, and Summer Pierre shares her reflections on these letters in comic form for the New Yorker, finding both inspiration and tragedy in Plath’s work ethic. Shake

Welcome back! This post highlights the must-haves in your proposal’s marketing plan, competitive titles, chapter outline, and sample chapters. Marketing Plan In this section you outline what you can do (irrespective of what the publisher is doing) to promote and sell the book. Only list what you know you absolutely can do within your current resources of both time and money. You need to be confident, realistic, and direct about everything that’s going to happen and include concrete targets (with numbers attached, please). Here’s where you highlight Recent and upcoming speaking gigs (as an expert) at conferences Your contacts who are expert VIPs and might provide a quote for your book jacket

Hello, friends! And welcome to another Around the Web, your weekly round-up of book and writing related stories from across the world wide web. Check out what caught our attention this week and then be sure to share your favourite blogs and articles in the comments. Coming Soon to Screens Near You Kirkus announced some upcoming film and television adaptations of books that may excite you. Or worry you, if you’re not a fan. I’m tentatively excited for Le Guin’s works to hit the screen, myself, but there are some other cool stories in the works too. Check out the full list! The Best Crime Reporting Anyone in on the true crime trend? Longreads gathered the best crime reporting of 2018 and the s

Happy Monday, everyone and welcome back to Ask the Publisher! Last week, in Part I of this series, we talked about what a nonfiction book proposal was, why you might need one, and book proposal ‘must-haves’. Today’s post looks at the sections you need to cover in your proposal. In order, they are: The Overview The Target Audience About the author Your Marketing Plan Competitive Titles Chapter Outline Sample Chapters There is a lot to cover and you don’t have all day to read blog posts, so I am going to break it into two posts. I’ll cover the first three on the list today and the final three next week. 1. The Overview This is the 50,000-foot view of your book encapsulated in an elevator speec

Happy Friday, folks! I’m writing to you from the warmth of my office while watching the snow fall outside. Sure, it looks lovely out there, but it really just makes me want to stay inside (maybe until, like, April) with some hot chocolate and some good reading. Luckily, there’s lots to read! Of course, we just launched three books, so we’d love it if you picked up Lackbeard, Math Kids, or Dear Earthling. But if you want something a bit shorter, here are some options from around the web. Dead Girls & Killer Women Times they are a-changing and pop culture is reflecting that. Dead girls have long been “an American obsession as a pop culture avatar for women’s oppression,” says Scarlett Harris i

The 2018 Royal Dragonfly Awards have been announced and once more we have reason to congratulate A.T. Balsara: The Great & the Small has received an honourable mention in the young adult fiction category! The Royal Dragonfly Book Awards honours excellence in all types of literature and book marketing. They recognize creativity and hard work for a comprehensive list of genres. Check out the full list of winners!

Common Deer Press doesn’t publish nonfiction…yet. But I get enough questions about it that it has sparked another blog series. Let’s start with some basics. The nonfiction book market continues to be robust and sales in fiction are declining. Adult nonfiction provides 67% of the sales in adult books while juvenile nonfiction contributes a more modest 25% of total sales of juvenile books. Both are providing the growth in books sold (1). The overall growth in nonfiction adult books was 3% with self-help (+ 18%), history/law/political science (+13%) and reference books (+ 12%) contributing the biggest gains with crafts/hobbies/antiques/games (-29%), house & home/gardening (-19%), and art/archi