3 Tips for Your First Conversation with a Publisher

First impressions count. They're not always correct, of course, but they count nonetheless.

When you're planning to be an author, your first conversation with a potential publisher counts just as much.

To help you make the best first impression you can, follow these tips.

#1 Be honest.

The publisher will most likely ask you lots of questions about your book idea. Answer as honestly as you can. If you don't know the answer, say so.

Sometimes we ask about the market you think your book will be written for. You don't have be exact or even correct, because chances are that the market you first envision will change as you discuss the book in more detail.

If you're unsure about the market, say so. But don't get ahead of yourself and say that the book is for everyone. No book is for everyone, not a single one ever written including the Bible. (For more on writing for a specific market, see "Picture the Person You're Writing For."

#2 Be humble.

I've had potential authors actually argue with me about how and to whom their book should be written and marketed.

Don't do that.

When it comes to publishing, the publisher is the expert, not you. So listen to the publisher. If you think you disagree with something, that's fine, but don't take the publisher on from the point of your being an expert. Take him on from the perspective of wanting to learn.

#3 Be professional.

Sounds like a no-brainer but really, it isn't. We want our authors to feel comfortable with us, to feel open and talk with us as colleagues.

Sometimes, though, that familiarity breeds conduct a bit too, shall we say, loose.

Your publisher is still, when comes to authoring, your supervisor, in a way, so act accordingly.

Don't drink too much at dinner. Don't disparage colleagues. Don't invite friends or family members to a publisher's event without asking the publisher first.

The best tip, though, is to just be your very best you. That will be more than enough.

Social Media and Health Care Publishing

A lot of educational publishers aren't quite sure yet what to do with social media. They know they have to use it but they're struggling with the hows and whys of it.

They're working through questions like:

• Should social media be the responsibility of Marketing, Editorial, or Sales?
• Who should coordinate platforms and posts?
• What should be our core message when we deal with so many different market segments?
• How do we take advantage of each platform's strengths while maintaining our core message?

And perhaps most important, how will we know if we succeed?

Answering those questions

Each of us publishers is answering those questions, and many others, in their own way. There's no one size fits all answer, nor should there be.

The critical component of our efforts should be to explore the many options this constantly changing tool offers and to use each one as best we can to reach and influence the people we serve. I'll give you an example, using myself as the case.

I've been using social media strictly for my role at F.A. Davis for a couple of years now and have developed a kind of brand, which I call, surprisingly enough, Andy McPhee. I've been able to gather about 650 Twitter followers, more than 900 Facebook friends and fans, more than 1,000 Google Plussers, and assorted folks following me on my blog and YouTube and Pinterest channels.

Not awful for a simple acquisitions editor at a small health care publisher in downtown Philadelphia, but not exactly Justin Timberlake either.

I try to provide news and information I think my followers would be interested in and rarely present promotional information. I don't hit hard on promotion because, for me, gaining trust is more important than pushing individual titles.

Essentially my social media goals follow my company's overall philosophy of treating each customer with respect. With all those efforts, though, I reach a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of students, teachers, and practitioners in the markets I serve — medical assisting, medical billing and coding, health information technology, and physician assistant.

Yet I persist, and here's why.

The payoff

Publishers like me can use social media to help fulfill several key goals:

• Attract potential authors and reviewers
• Build a community we can tap for market knowledge and key trends
• Identify thought leaders in that community and work with them to further publishing goals
• Enhance our moral standing among the customers we serve
• Detect trends and concerns of our customers and act on them accordingly
• Strengthen brand identity

Meeting those goals takes work and persistence, but the payoffs are worth it.

Fer sure.

3 Tips for Getting Back on the Write Track

I've worked with authors for many years now, and I've found that if they get off track—if "life" happens and they move, land a new job, or have a baby—it’s often difficult for them to get back on track.

If you find yourself off track in your writing, here are a few tips to help get you back on.

#1  Read a chapter in a similar book.

Sounds silly, I know, but think about it. How many times have you read a book set in, say, Paris and began to feel rather Parisian? Your mind can sort of take on the environment, if you will, of whatever you’re reading.

So if you’re supposed to be writing a textbook, read a chapter or two of a textbook similar to the one you’re writing. Read it like you mean it, don’t just skim over it because you know the content. Read it like you’re a student.

When you begin to feel a connection to the writing, when you become engaged in that environment, put the book down. Go to your computer, and start writing something in the subject area of your book. Doesn’t make any different whether you ever use what you write, just write.

That reading–writing connection should help stimulate your writing appetite again.

#2  Reorganize your research and other project documents.

If you’ve put aside your writing project for a while, chances are good that you’ve got a pile of papers and books somewhere in your office, den, bedroom, or, I dunno, bathtub.

Pull that pile out to the middle of the floor or a large table, and start sorting through it. Put like documents with like, and then plunk them into manila folders.

Sometimes you can’t kick start a project until it’s well- and recently organized.

Give it a shot. Couldn’t hurt, might help.

#3  Work on ancillaries for chapters you’ve already written.

If you had written a few chapters before you fell off the tracks, pull them out and work on one of the ancillaries. PowerPoint (PPT) can be particularly helpful here.

Many authors enjoy the more visual aspects of putting together PPTs for their chapters. Working on a chapter’s accompanying PPT can engage you in the project without having to write much.

After you develop a few PPTs you’ll find it much easier to get back into the flow of writing chapter content.

No matter whether you’re on track or have been bumped a few miles off track, just keep telling yourself that, like the little blue train that chugged up that great big hill, you can do it!

5 Time Management Tips for Authors

Too busy to write? Your schedule so packed that there just isn't enough time?

I hear you. When you work full-time and write part-time, as so many textbook authors do, finding time to write can be difficult. I find, though, that it's not so much the lack of time as it is the misuse of existing time.

I mean, if there's always room for Jello, there's always time for writing.

Here are a few ideas to help you find that missing time to do what you love doing.

1. 60-Minute No Social Session. Give yourself a period of 1 hour when you're not checking Facebook, Twitter, Google+, e-mails, texts, or any other form of electronically enhanced social contact and spend it at the computer, writing.
2. Tap on the Timer. When you decide you're going to spend the next hour writing, set a timer. Use the one on your stove or microwave, if you're near the kitchen, or your phone, computer, or even — go figure — an actual alarm clock. Set it for 60 minutes, and don't stop working until the buzzer goes off.
3. "Sign" Into My Writing Time. Announce to your friends and family that if you don't answer your phone or respond to texts right away, it's because you're having a My Writing Time session. Tell your children, spouse, or anyone else in earshot that, hey, don't bug me, I'm having My Writing Time for the next hour. Then put up a sign that says My Writing Time: Go Away!
4. DVR That 'Downton Abbey.' If you simply cannot miss the latest episode of "Downton Abbey," "Family Guy," or "Dancing with the Stars," tape it. Record it on your DVR or TiVo. If you don't have one, make recording arrangements with a friend who does.
5. Win a Writing Prize. Make an agreement with your spouse, partner, children, or someone really important to you that if you actually do writing work for an hour at least five days a week, you'll go somewhere or do something nice as a "prize." Maybe you'll order takeout and eat it in front of the television. Maybe you'll go to a restaurant for dinner. Maybe you'll take a day off from cooking. It's like being on a diet. You can't do it 24/7/365, you've got to take some time off once in awhile.

The real key, though, is to make writing an actual, living priority. If you're looking for ways to stay on track, if you're reading this blog, even, to find the right tip for you to keep writing, it's really because you haven't made writing a priority.

When you can do that, when you make writing a true priority, you won't need any of these tips and tricks. You'll just need a computer and a place to write, and that's a lovely place to be.

Happy writing!

5 Principles for Effective PowerPoint Presentations

Faculty everywhere have come to depend on PowerPoint (PPT) for presenting information to their students in the classroom. Well, I say "PowerPoint," but really, I'm talking about any presentation software, including PPT, Keynote (Mac), and even the unique and constantly improving Prezi.

No matter what kind of presentation software you use, keep these five principles in mind as you prepare your slides.

#1 Brief is better.

You've probably spent time in conferences squinting at the screen, trying to read huge amounts of tiny print because the speaker put too much content on the slide. If your audience — your students, other teachers, or a whole auditorium of colleagues — can't read your slides, what's the sense of putting all that content on there?

Keep your slides brief and to the point. Each slide should perform a particular function, such as any of the following:

• Reminding you what you want to talk about


• Getting the audience to focus on one point


• Presenting a key concept

#2 Cut down on the text.

I think I said "Keep it brief" already, but I really really mean it. Use these tricks to help you whittle away the textual content on your slides:

• Delete all articles (a, an, the). Seriously. You don't need them and neither does your audience.


• Keep each concept separate. Don't try to jam three key points into one bullet. Instead, make them separate bullets or even separate slides.


• Don't be afraid to use more slides. The number of slides in your presentation is not the primary indicator of how long your talk will be. What's important is choosing which slides to spend your time on.


• Use graphics to help tell part of the story.

#3 Don't overdesign.

Don't do things that make your audience focus more on the presentation software than on what you're saying. To that end, don't do this kind of stuff:

• Don't use lots of different fonts and font colors. Oooh, aren't they pretty? NO! They're distracting, is what they are.


• Don't set the slide transitions to "Random." This is the mark of true amateurs who don't have a clue what they're doing.


• Don't use colors to indicate emphasis, do that yourself as you're talking.


• Don't have objects flying in for all different places, like mosquitos in tent. Make them all come into the slide the same way.


• Don't use a red font over a blue background. I don't know why people think that red stands out, but it doesn't. It can stand out on white or pale yellow, but on anything it gets lost or just looks awful.

#4 Use simple, clear, and consistently applied fonts, slide transitions, and animations.

Following up on #3, here are tips to always follow:

• Use clean, easy to read fonts, such as Arial, Helvetica, Calibri, Cambria, Century Gothic, Lucida, and Tahoma. Avoid smaller fonts, such as Garamond, Georgia, and Book Antiqua.


• Use one font for slide headings and another for bullet text.


• Make sure your font color has enough contrast to make it stand out against the background.


• Make slide transitions and animations subtle. The idea is to get the audience to focus on what you're saying, not on how cool the animations are. I recommend Fade, Shape, or just plain Appear.

#5 Let graphics work for you, not against you.

• Keep graphs simple, each one offering one key point. Cramming too much data on a slide, particularly through the use of stacked bar graphs and scatter plot graphs, won't do you or your audience any good. Put them in a handout, making them large enough to read easily.


• Remember that when you project your show on screen that the colors will wash out a bit, meaning they'll lose contrast. So what looks vibrant on your monitor won't appear quite that vibrant on the screen. So give your overall design lots of contrast with either a dark background and really light text or a light or white background and dark text.


• Use cartoons sparingly, and when you use them, don't be afraid to let them take up the entire screen.

I'll leave you with one more tip that I might not have mentioned before.

Keep it short!

Typographic Symbols

Ever see an odd little symbol and wonder to yourself, Self, what do you suppose that odd little symbol is called?

Wonder no more. Here's a handy little list of odd little typographic symbols and their names.



Now, ain't you glad you asked