The Fiction Writer's Co-op has 51 members, from celebrated NYT bestsellers to promising newcomers, and a waiting list.

Don't add people to your subscriber list just because they once wrote you a note. Or once answered a note you wrote to them. Don't put your address book into your newsletter database. Let your readers sign up.

The biggest mistake is to assume that another writer's successful strategy will work for you, too. Publishers' marketers - and even freelance publicists who cost mega bucks - tend to do the same basic things for all books.

An author's ability to bring a marketing synopsis to the table - along with a great manuscript - makes a difference in what books get picked up. This is true for both fiction and nonfiction titles. You need to show your publisher what you've got in your marketing arsenal.

We have a current waiting list of approximately 153 vendors.

I'm not a science fiction writer, I'm a physicist.