Writers With Wrinkles
Whether you're an aspiring author, indie publisher, or career writer, Writers with Wrinkles is your essential guide to writing craft, book marketing, and the publishing industry. Hosted by authors Beth McMullen and Lisa Schmid, we iron out the wrinkles of the business — from mastering novel writing and story structure to navigating literary agents, query letters, and KDP self-publishing.
Each week, we bring you expert interviews with editors, publishers, and bestselling authors, plus practical advice on building your author platform and marketing your book. Whether you're drafting your first manuscript or preparing for a book launch, we have the guidance you need to thrive in today's competitive publishing landscape.
Visit www.WritersWithWrinkles.net for resources. Follow us on TikTok: @writerswithwrinkles
Writers With Wrinkles
Latest Episodes
An Acquiring Editor Reveals What She's Buying Right Now
Most rejected picture book and middle grade manuscripts aren't turned down because they're bad — they're turned down because an editor has already seen five just like them. Susan Marston, the new editorial director of Albatros Books' US expansi...
AI Stole Our Books. Now We're the Suspects
AI companies are shredding rare books to train their models—and now authors are the ones being told to prove they didn't use AI to write their own. Beth and Lisa unpack the double standard rocking publishing right now.From a deb...
The 4 First-Page Mistakes That Get You Rejected Fast, with editor Joel Brigham
Your opening pages have about 30 seconds to keep a literary agent reading — and most manuscripts lose that fight before the first paragraph ends.Developmental editor Joel Brigham returns to unpack exactly what makes an agent stop ...
10 Years of Rejection, 40 Books Later (Corrected Audio!)
Note: If you downloaded this episode before 8/3 and experienced audio issues, please delete the download and hit re-download to grab the clean audio file!Wendelin Van Draanen spent 1...
Tired of Waiting 2 Years to Publish? Go Hybrid
You could finish four books this year and only ever get to publish one of them.That's the traditional publishing timeline in a nutshell — and it's why more authors are quietly going hybrid: keeping one foot in a trad deal and self...
Fan Mail
A very informative podcast. Happy to hear that there is an emerging MG ‘category’ - young teen lit. My 13 yo protagonist is a budding housing activist, in grade 8, and my target audience is ~ 11-14 yrs, and so this is encouraging. Also Meg provided a good summary of $$ considerations re publishing a book. Creative talent + hard work + a sound business plan (might) = a book on the shelves. Thanks
Ottawa, ON
