Do you know your business? It’s all very romantic to claim that as a novelist, you’re a creative spirit with no head for the mundanities of business and marketing. The truth is that no agent or publisher wants to work with a clueless aspirant, and no self-published title will make it without an understanding of what you’re selling.

As a novelist, reading should be a way of life for you. You need to know your literary roots. You need to understand the current scene in the genre you write in. You need to understand how the publishing industry works and how you plan to make your way through it.

Nobody’s going to coach you through all of that. And that means reading.

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