Clear publishing advice, book marketing insights and stories from Zambia’s literary community.
"Everyone" sounds welcoming, but it can leave a manuscript unsure whom to help. How to choose a primary reader, test a real chapter and tell readers from buyers without narrowing the book's reach.
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Years of expertise do not automatically make a useful book. How professionals can choose a reader, turn recurring questions into chapters, show decisions rather than conclusions and test one chapter before writing twelve.
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A book should be as long as it needs to be to keep its promise, and no longer. How to judge length by word count rather than Word pages, why layout decides the page count and how length affects cost and price.
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Memoir asks for honesty, but not every private detail about other people belongs in print. How to choose what is yours to tell, handle uncertain memories, protect relatives and decide about photographs and letters.
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A poetry collection is more than enough poems to fill a book. How selection, sequence, sections, language, editing and page design give a collection its shape before it goes to print.
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A children's book has to work for a real child and for the adult reading it aloud. How readership, reading aloud, language, pictures and story choices shape a book a child will ask for twice.
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