I find very few things more professionally stimulating than being in a learning environment with my peers. Conferences, workshops, retreats—when highly skilled professionals congregate in the same environment for a designated period of time, enrichment is bound to happen. And in the publishing industry, sometimes such in-person sharing has to be helped along a little (i.e. we’ve trapped you here, introverts, ha ha, so you have to talk to each other).

I’m thinking about this right now because we have a few dozen awesome writers in town for an advanced-level business-of-writing workshop. I teach them. They, in turn, teach me. Very, very cool.

But as I mentioned before, sometimes in-person sharing can be tough. Especially for introverts. And a lot of writers are introverts.

That’s one of the reasons we started the WMG Writer’s Guide series. Written by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, the books in this series help writers navigate some of the most treacherous waters in the book publishing industry.

The titles include:

And on October 14, we added one more key title to that list: Discoverability.

Here’s the synopsis:

Discoverability: a modern marketing buzzword. For writers, discoverability means the difference between gaining an audience and publishing into the void. Now, USA Today bestselling author and renowned business blogger Kristine Kathryn Rusch deftly tackles the topic of discoverability in this latest WMG Writers’ Guide.

Rusch covers topics such as when to hire help, how to measure success and the most important thing a writers can do. With Discoverability, Rusch offers professional writers the most comprehensive guide available today to help them make an informed decision about the best marketing approaches for their writing businesses.

 

For writers, this is a must-read guidebook to navigating this treacherous and time-sucking topic. For readers, it’s a fascinating look into the role you play in helping others discover books you enjoy.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. You, the reader, are who sustain this industry. Any publisher who doesn’t put the reader first has lost sight of why we’re in business in the first place. We publishers connect the creators (writers) with those who enjoy the creations (readers).

And that, my friends, makes this job pretty darned fulfilling.

Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer.