I agree. Some writers do deserve to starve. And personally, I think Elaura Niles is one of them. This is a great title, a real kick-a** title (thanks, Jenny Bent, for that advice!). But the book just doesn’t live up to the title. My first impression was: too busy! Each page has an image (apropos of nothing), a sidebar of ghosted text that is cut off mid-word (and which, if you look closely, appears to be other chapters of Some Writers), and ruled lines or borders. On the double page spreads that introduce chapters, there are even more images and another, fatter ruled line. At first glance, it’s hard to tell which is text and which is art element, but even after 20 glances, it’s clear that a respectable percentage of every page is spent not giving the reader content. After reading? I suspect the art elements were added to fluff up weak content. Because most of the information is very basic. Statements like this one: “If you’ve got a can of Chick Lit, such as Sex and the City, don’t try to feed it to a hungry nonfiction editor. You might not be invited back to dinner.” Too much space devoted to being cute. Too little information. If you read a handful of blogs (make sure one of them is Miss Snark) and explore a website or two (I recommend Holly Lisle), you’ll get a much better education about publishing, and perhaps be entertained as well. Even worse than weak content, in at least one flagrant example, Niles gives some very bad advice. Don’t send a self-addressed, stamped envelope, she recommends in chapter 18, if you “still aren’t sure if you’ve made it out of the form-letter phase.” If an agent likes your writing, they’ll call or e-mail you, she adds. YIKES! Other advice isn’t flagrantly bad, just questionable. For instance, “Truth” #8 (yes, Niles titled all the chapters “Truth #x”) states “Most publishers will not consider a manuscript twice.” Which sounds logical until you keep reading. She says the major houses keep a database, and if one imprint rejects your manuscript, you’ll be blackballed from all of them. But that’s completely illogical: a manuscript that’s all wrong for Del Rey (a sci-fi imprint) might be perfect for Fawcett (thrillers) even though they’re both Ballantine Books, and Presidio Press (which deals in war themes) would want completely different material yet, even though all three are under the Random House umbrella. In Truth #14 (“To lie is wrong, to embellish divine”), Niles tells of helping a young man write a résumé. She changed his pizza delivery job into “Nicola’s Express Service—pickup and delivery of time-sensitive material.” She says, “I’m not saying that what I did was entirely honest,” and adds that the “intent” was good and resulted in a “win-win situation.” Then she recommends you use this sort of “creative truth” on your résumé “to make yourself look more professional” and in person to catch a publisher’s eye and “most of all,” in your story pitch. I’m quite certain that any agent or publisher who found you’d used “creative truth” pitching your book would immediately be finished with you, as not trustable. At this point, you may be wondering what Ms. Niles credentials are. What, exactly, qualifies her to write this book? Her bio, printed on the dedications page lauds her as a “former writing conference coordinator who has a big, fat Rolodex.” Then it discusses her “years of (carefully ambiguous) non-profit service” (parentheses mine, but really…those years could be cleaning kennels at the Humane Society or rocking babies at a NICU: laudable activities, but nothing to qualify someone to teach writers). Finally, it announces her involvement with writing communities (huh?) and suggests you visit her website (which is “under construction” and contains nothing more than an e-mail link and a plug for an upcoming release Niles co-wrote). Forgive me for being snide, but running a writers conference no more qualifies you to write than being a prison warden makes you a criminal. Please understand, I have an immense respect for the people who run conferences. It’s a killer job (and practically thankless), consisting of millions of tiny details that must be kept in place. If she wrote a book about how to run a conference, I wouldn’t be saying this. But without having written and published books, she simply isn’t an expert on it. And yes, I realize some prison wardens probably are criminals, but running a conference still does not equate writing. So the next question is, has she written books? I mean, besides this one. An Amazon search yields only Some Writers Deserve to Starve (Writers Digest Books, January 2005) and Zeus and His Mighty Nine Iron (PublishAmerica, May 2002), and indeed, Niles admits in Some Writers that it is her second book and her first was published POD (which she differentiates from self-publishing, no doubt to make Zeus look like a real book). In fact, she goes into detail about her publication experience. The same day PublishAmerica “offered” her a contract (one must question how many authors PA doesn’t offer a contract to), she was also offered “a chance to work with a NYC literary agent” (whatever that means). But the agent wanted her to rewrite Zeus, and since she’d been working on it for two years, she wanted to move on. Ironically, Niles herself says in Truth #30, “Yes, you have to rewrite…because they (agents) know the market.” Obviously, Niles could have benefited from a good “How to Write” book, like 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published and 14 Reasons Why It Just Might, by Pat Walsh. She would have learned that almost nobody sells her first novel after working on it only two years. And there’s a good reason: it’s almost certainly not ready. Elaura Niles clearly has talent, or the agent wouldn’t have been willing to work with her through a revision. Too bad she doesn’t also have a little patience. Some Writers prompted me to write a new adage: Never buy a how-to-write book from someone neither you nor your friends have ever heard of. Stephen King is famous for writing books. So is Elizabeth George. And their books on writing are wonderful. Elaura Niles appears to be famous for writing “Some Writers Deserve to Starve:” a kick-a** title but disappointing book.