Ever wondered how to write and publish a memoir? This video will provide 5 tips on how to write a memoir about yourself and get published. If you’re attempting to get your memoir picked up by a traditional publisher, there’s a formula you’ll need to consider to catch their attention. This video will share what all new memoir writers need to consider.
[trx_call_to_action title=”Schedule a free strategy session!” subtitle=”Learn how I can help you to write your book!” style=”1″ align=”center” accent=”no” custom=”no” link=”http://thelifeofawriter.net/writing-coach” link_caption=”Schedule NOW!” top=”inherit” bottom=”inherit” left=”inherit” right=”inherit”][/trx_call_to_action]
Video Transcript for How To Write And Publish A Memoir
Hi aspiring writers! Writing coach Stefanie Newell and this is The Life Of A Writer channel. Today’s video How To Write A Memoir and Get It Published.
So in today’s video I’m going to be sharing five tips that will help you to get your memoir picked up by a traditional publisher. If you want to learn how to connect with readers and sell more books make sure to subscribe and get new content to your inbox every Tuesday.
So while this video is geared towards authors or new authors that are looking to traditionally publish make no mistake that the tips that I’ll be providing in this video will be beneficial to all memoir writers. So let’s get right into it!
How To Write And Publish A Memoir – Tip #1
Tip number one, be clear on your target audience and we talked about this briefly in a previous video. I’m going to link that video in the description box below but the reason why it’s important to be clear on your target audience is because you want to write a book that your target audience wants.
You don’t want to just share all of these different details and this is not what the genre or the demographic of people that you’re writing for are in need of. That’s really important!
Again if you’re trying to capture the attention of a traditional publisher being clear on your target audience is not an option you want to make sure that you know exactly who your target audience is. So of course you’re gonna go through the basics of you know there’s this age range, there’s this gender but you need to know way more than that about your target audience.
So how do we learn about our target audience? That’s often a question that’s asked. You have to immerse yourself in the genre that you write in. So if you write memoirs go on Amazon look at other memoirs look for it in memoirs that are similar to the type of book that you’re writing.
I often recommend to my clients that they go and look and read the reviews of books that are similar to the book that they’re trying to write because there are so many clues as to who is a part of your target audience down in those reviews.
You will learn so much about the people, what their interests are, what their likes are… Again the more you can learn about your target audience the more you can write with them specifically in mind.
Tip #2
Tip #2 Consider other commercially successful memoirs! And we kind of talked about this previously, but the reason why this is so important is because there’s so much information that can be found in other books that are already out on the market and doing well.
So what I want you to do is to consider three to five books that are similar to the book that you are writing or the memoir that you’re writing. So you want to go on Amazon look for books that are similar as far as themes are concerned as far as target audience concerned and you want to actually read those books if you can.
If you don’t have time to read those books you know you can go and do the look inside feature on Amazon and read you know just a few pages to get an idea. But really and truly you want to read as many of those memoirs as possible.
The reason why that’s important is because number one like we said they are commercially successful. These are books that people are actively going out and purchasing because there’s something in it that people want to know about and if they’ve been traditionally published already the likelihood that you’ve written something that’s similar to this book tells you that you may have a chance at having a book that’s also commercially successful.
So again some of the things that you’re looking for in these books you want to look at their writing voice, you want to look at how they introduce themselves to their readers, you want to look at how transparent they were, did they connect with you as the reader? And all of those things will help you when you begin writing your own manuscript.
Tip #3
Tip number three be honest and don’t embellish your stories. So I don’t know how many of you guys remember an author by the name of Frey he wrote a book called A Million Little Pieces. He was really kind of brought to the forefront by Oprah Winfrey and then it later turned out that a lot of his memoir was embellished.
And the reason why you don’t want to embellish your story is because you want to have credibility. If you are looking to have a career in writing, even if you’re not looking to have a career in writing, you don’t want to ruin your credibility by embellishing a story.
You are not obligated to share your life story, but if you do decide to share your life story you want to be as honest and as transparent as possible and you want to be credible. So that’s really going to be important tip.
How To Write and Publish A Memoir – Tip #4
Tip number four find a literary agent that handles memoirs. So this is going to be important because again in order to be traditionally published you have to have a literary agent.
They’re kind of the gatekeeper between you and the traditional publishing company so you don’t want to just query any agent. That’s not what you want to do. As you did in a previous step you were looking at some commercially successful books… look at those books and see if those authors are sharing who their literary agents are. If they are, see if those literary agents are accepting queries and that will give you a starting point.
I’ll also put down in the description box a website that you can use to find literary agents but again you’re not just querying any agent. You want to make sure that you’re querying agents that are looking for memoir writers.
Down in the comment section share with me the traditional publishing companies that you would love to be signed to.
Tip #5
Tip number five is to write an engaging story this is so important so whether you want to be traditionally published or self-published it really doesn’t matter an engaging story is important. Most of you who are watching my videos are going to be first-time writers who don’t have an audience so an engaging story is important because you are trying to get readers to connect with you and they don’t know anything previously about you.
So an engaging story, by having a strong introduction, a strong middle and a strong close will draw the reader in and keep them interested.
As always all of my social media links will be in the description box below if you’re looking to hire me as your writing coach you will find that information there as well and I look forward to talking with you in my next video.
0 Comments