Books for Writers: The Forest for the Trees

If you look on my Goodreads account, you will see that I gave The Forest for the Trees a two star review.  I gave it so because I felt it did not deliver what was promised.  However, this book is still good in some sense, and I recommend that indie writers (particularly fiction writers) read this.

The Forest for the Trees gives insight to the publishing world from the perspective of an editor, but it is crammed full of anecdotes of literary uppity-ups and how they were full of themselves in this way or that.  The examples of the publishing industry are few and far between.  However, the examples and stories about how the publishing industry works is invaluable.  For that alone, I recommend reading this.  One example is that (at least when the author of this book was an editor) there was no market research done on the artwork for book covers.  It consisted of the artist going around the office and asking his/her coworkers of their opinions.  And author agreement (getting the author onboard was crucial but not mandatory).

In summation, this book has great examples and insight to the publishing industry.  I mostly skimmed the book to glean the info, but others might find the book more useful than what I did.

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