Nathan Bransford

Nothing written has to be lost Let me tell you a little bit about a creative project I’ve been working on for most of my adult life… Particularly when we’re just starting out as writers, we have a tendency to live and die by what i...

Nothing you write has to be lost, and you're never wasting your time. To wit: the creative project I've been working on in various forms for most of my adult life.

Literary tourism is taking off (This week in books) This week! Books! First up, don’t forget out my inaugural office hours next Thursday exclusively for newsletter subscribers! If you’re not already a subscriber, now’s a great time to join. It’s free! ...

Literary tourism is taking off, literary scams are rampant, how to take criticism, and more of the best writing and books links from the past week!

Return of the Nigerian Prince: A New Twist on Book Marketing Scams - Writer Beware Marketing scams have always been plentiful. Over the past year or so, though, they’ve really surged. I’ve written about one type of marketing scam–the “friendly author” social media scam, in which som...

Publishing scams are absolutely rampant these days (including someone impersonating me). Spread the word to your fellow writers and be careful!

Office Hours for newsletter subscribers on August 7! If you have tried booking a consultation with me lately, you have likely noticed that my schedule is more crowded than the bar at a writing conference. In order to help out more writers who have press...

Got writing/publishing questions? I'm going to host office hours exclusively for newsletter subscribers on August 7! Drop by and ask me anything.

Where to start Chapter 1 in a novel One of the trickiest parts of writing a novel is the whole “Chapter 1” thing. Or should this novel start with a prologue?! Gah! I’m already stuck! You know you need to grab the reader in the opening o...

It can be tricky to know where to start off a novel. Here's some advice and what to do (and what not to do):

An inside look at rampant publishing scams (This week in books) This week! Books! ‘Our Goal Is to Get Their Money’: Inside a Firm Charged With Scamming Writers for Millions – Brent Crane, Bloomberg (gift link) – A well-reported and wrenching look into rampant scam...

The unconscionable reason publishing scams often originate in the Philippines, Scholastic pivots to video, romantasy might just be getting started, and more of the best writing and books links from the past week!

Updated and expanded my post on thinking through what happens on and off the page in your novel. As Elmore Leonard famously said, “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” nathanbransford.com/blog/2025/07...

The makers of Cameo just launched... a birthday-tracking app? The new app, called Candl, puts your contacts’ birthdays into a single calendar where you can track and sort through upcoming birthdays, as well as see whose astrological sign you’re most compatible w...

Tech bros have discovered calendars

Utterly depressing how many publications are pimping Amazon this week because the economics are so skewed by the affiliate revenue and Google's advertising monopoly.

Is "crossover" becoming a real thing? (This week in books) This week! Books! Lots of links saved up over the past few weeks, let’s get to them! Anthropic Scores a Landmark AI Copyright Win—but Will Face Trial Over Piracy Claims –  Kate Knibbs, Wired – In a hu...

A new "crossover" imprint, the latest legal rulings affecting publishing, you'll be shocked to learn there's BookTok drama, and more of the best writing and books links from the past few weeks!

How to weave more voice into a query letter Query letters, as you may have noticed, are tricky beasts. They must accomplish several difficult feats at once. They need to summarize what’s in the book, but they also need to give a sense of the fl...

Updated and expanded my post on how to weave voice in query letters, a crucial skill to make your story come to life.

Amazon's Goodreads Is Forgetting Why It Even Exists The site is built on the backs of authors, yet continues to do almost nothing to shield them from review bombing.

Goodreads has been toxic and left for dead since 2013. What happened that year I wonder…

How ‘I Want to Burn This Place Down’ by Maris Kreizman Got Made An inside look at the publication process for the author’s collection of essays.

Happy pub day to @maris.bsky.social! I WANT TO BURN THIS PLACE DOWN is now on sale! Here's a cool PW feature on how the book came together:

G.O.P. Bill Has $1.1 Trillion in Health Cuts and 11.8 Million Losing Care, C.B.O. Says

Thousands--if not millions--of people will literally die so that Republicans can give rich people a tax cut they don't need.

How to decide if a writer’s retreat is right for you Nathan here, I invited author and editor Christine Pride to post about writer’s retreats–she should know, she has one coming up this fall! Perhaps you’ve noticed new writer’s retreats popping up acros...

How to decide if a writer's retreat is right for you! Guest post by Christine Pride:

The Forever Dying and the Always Dead; or, Literary Fiction and the Novel A long post on the state of "literary fiction," book sales, and the culture at large

Really great @thelincoln.bsky.social newsletter on false glory days, the rise of mass market blockbusters, and what's really needed to support literary fiction.

I see it as mixed, I think A.I. companies should need to license the rights, but at the very least it's good to have it reaffirmed that you can't just outright steal books.

Anthropic Scores a Landmark AI Copyright Win—but Will Face Trial Over Piracy Claims While the startup has won its “fair use” argument, it potentially faces billions of dollars in damages for allegedly pirating over 7 million books to build a digital library.

In a huge ruling on A.I. and copyright, a federal judge agreed that using books to train A.I. is fair use, but Anthropic will stand trial over pirating books. Basically, the judge says Anthropic could have used books to train for A.I. if they'd actually paid for them. www.wired.com/story/anthro...

Impersonation scams Hi everyone, just a quick note that I’ve become aware of scammers who are impersonating me and reaching out to authors of self-published books with A.I. generated messages. I do not use a gmail.com em...

I've become aware of people using my name in an impersonation scam. If you're ever unsure whether you're corresponding with me, reach out to me here or via my site!

Oh no Tyrese Halliburton

It's tough out there right now One of my favorite truisms about the publishing industry is that no matter what year it is, the golden era was always twenty years ago. There’s a perennial sense of doom in this business that’s belied...

It's not just you. Everything is taking forever. It's tough out there for authors right now.

Bloomsbury on the rise (This week in books) This week! Books! Some things are bigger than books and writing, and this feels like one of those weeks. The photos and videos out of the Los Angeles area are lurid and unsettling, no matter your poli...

Bloomsbury on the rise, ten years of @weneeddiversebooks.bsky.social, a successful query, and more of the best writing and books links from the past week:

Brian Wilson, Songwriter and Leader of the Beach Boys, Dies at 82 A hitmaker elevated and burdened by the label of genius, he transcended the breezy surf genre to create complex harmonies and intricate soundscapes in the studio.

My parents went to see The Beach Boys in Marysville, CA the night JFK was assassinated and I feel like they’re almost a part of my DNA. RIP to a true genius www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/a...

Think more about whether you like a prospective agent than whether the agent will like you Researching literary agents is an absolutely crucial step in the traditional publishing process, and I personally believe there are no good shortcuts. You’re essentially searching for a (hopefully) lo...

It's tempting to try to tailor your agent search based on who you think will like your book. I'd flip it around. Cast a wide net and prioritize agents who *you* like.

Tom Cruise is the same age as Alec Guinness when he played Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars

Reddit post “Strange thunder like sounds in MPK”

LA: “Guys what’s this water falling from the sky anyone know what this is?”

Anyone who says modern readers can't "handle" omniscient is quite frankly insane, as any cursory look at bestseller lists or top selling backlist titles will affirm.

How to bridge characters' thoughts in an omniscient POV Perspective is a foundational storytelling building block in novels. Having a consistent perspective in your novel is absolutely crucial, but many beginning writers don’t give sufficient thought to th...

Omniscient is only disorienting when writers fail to properly guide the reader through a scene.

Third person omniscient vs. limited vs. head jumping If a writing fairy popped out of an old typewriter and granted me the ability to fix one craft problem in all the unpublished manuscripts across the realm I would probably terrify it by how quickly I’...

Head-hopping and omniscient are in The Discourse, and people are treating them as the same thing? They're very assuredly not! Head-hopping is a clumsy *mishmash* of third person limited and omniscient.

Your protagonist's plans are useful, especially when they don't pan out When I’m editing novels, one of my most common margin notes–particularly at the start of scenes–is “What’s the plan here?” Providing the reader with insight into a character’s plans is an incredibly p...

Putting a character's plans on the page is an incredibly useful storytelling technique, even (or especially) if the plans don't work out.