Some of you may know Anna Olswanger as the former coordinator of the Jewish Children’s Book Writers’ Conference and through her work as a literary agent with Liza Dawson Associates in New York. She’s sold to Balzer & Bray, Bloomsbury, Boyds Mills Press, Cavendish, Chronicle, Delacorte, Dutton, Eerdmans, Greenwillow, McElderry, Random House, and Sleeping Bear Press. The picture book My Heart is Like a Zoo, which she sold in a three-book deal to Greenwillow (after an auction with ten publishers), made the New York Times Children’s Books Bestseller list after it came out a year ago. She’s also sold adult manuscripts to Pomegranate, North Light/F+W, and BelleBooks.
Anna is expanding her services to include book coaching. From what she’s observed, some writers need a vision of their career, their books, and their lives. What do they want to accomplish as writers? What do they want their legacy to be? What is it about writing that makes it their choice of an art form? And more practical: What if they have one book published and can never get their second book published? What if they can’t get an agent?
As a book coach, she’d like to help writers think about how they can accomplish their goals. She believes she can help them make professional decisions and, most of all, encourage them to write from their individual experience, and not from a need to chase the market. Talented writers need to write manuscripts that no one else can write. What is it about a writer that is unique, that makes her or him the only author capable of writing a particular book?
In Anna’s view, a book coach can work with writers to define their goals. The coach is not their editor or agent. The book coach might talk to them about their agent and editor, and give them advice how to interact with them, but a book coach does not play those roles.
If you are interested in exploring the possibility of working with Anna as your book coach, send her an email at anna.olswanger@verizon.net and describe where you are with your manuscripts or books. She’s looking to follow the careers of a few select writers.
You can visit Anna’s website at www.olswanger.com.
The Whole Megillah 