The Byline Bible by Susan Shapiro is a reference guide for writers who want to see their work in print—from big publications like The New Yorker and The Washington Post to online and regional publications.
This may be a bold statement, but I learned more in this book than I did in three years of journalism classes. Of course the journalism classes served to teach me how to write pieces that belong in these types of publications, but this book is what I needed to take the next step. As Shapiro points out in the beginning of the book, many writing programs don't offer common sense steps or advice on how to get your pieces published, just that in order to survive as a working writer you need to figure it out. Shapiro gives you all of the steps you need to take once you have started writing (this book doesn't do any hand-holding for those who still need to learn grammar and structure).
What is different about this book is that it doesn't just offer you the steps you need to get your next piece published. It also adds quite a lot of full examples of pieces that have made it into a wide variety of publications, both from the author and the author's students. Almost seventy percent of the book is examples, but this is the kind of stuff I'm always looking for. When I'm given any type of writing advice or assignment, I always ask to see examples so I know whether I'm on the right track or not.
The only thing I found a little disappointing is that this book promises detailed information on where to submit these pieces for pay, and what actually appears in the book is a little vague. To get a list of publications that may be appropriate for a reader's piece, you have to search through the examples to see where those were published, then check to see if the publication is still in business. Including this information could have made the book obsolete by the time it was released, but it would have been nice to be pointed to a database or webpage with relevant listings that could have been updated easier than a book.
I will be using the information I learned in this book to see what I can do with all of the essays I write, but never seem to find a home for.
This may be a bold statement, but I learned more in this book than I did in three years of journalism classes. Of course the journalism classes served to teach me how to write pieces that belong in these types of publications, but this book is what I needed to take the next step. As Shapiro points out in the beginning of the book, many writing programs don't offer common sense steps or advice on how to get your pieces published, just that in order to survive as a working writer you need to figure it out. Shapiro gives you all of the steps you need to take once you have started writing (this book doesn't do any hand-holding for those who still need to learn grammar and structure).
What is different about this book is that it doesn't just offer you the steps you need to get your next piece published. It also adds quite a lot of full examples of pieces that have made it into a wide variety of publications, both from the author and the author's students. Almost seventy percent of the book is examples, but this is the kind of stuff I'm always looking for. When I'm given any type of writing advice or assignment, I always ask to see examples so I know whether I'm on the right track or not.
The only thing I found a little disappointing is that this book promises detailed information on where to submit these pieces for pay, and what actually appears in the book is a little vague. To get a list of publications that may be appropriate for a reader's piece, you have to search through the examples to see where those were published, then check to see if the publication is still in business. Including this information could have made the book obsolete by the time it was released, but it would have been nice to be pointed to a database or webpage with relevant listings that could have been updated easier than a book.
I will be using the information I learned in this book to see what I can do with all of the essays I write, but never seem to find a home for.