What is included in book coaching?

Book coaching is a collaborative process that empowers authors to reach their potential, finish their book and get their work published. It can include a range of negotiated tasks, all aimed at helping you hone your writing skills and navigate the process of getting your book into the hands of readers – whether self-publishing or submitting to a traditional publisher. Tasks vary depending on your needs, the amount of time required, and the type of assistance that will best help you grow, but common tasks associated with Karin's book coaching service are below. 

Evaluating and planning

• Identifying your writing strengths and weaknesses. 
• Reviewing your plans for the manuscript and giving experienced feedback on your target market and genre, how to structure your work and choose a viewpoint, how to flesh out and define your characters, how to hone your authorial voice and plan and structure your novel.
• Sometimes, this also includes managing author expectations.

Setting goals, motivating and encouraging

• Creating a roadmap for completing your manuscript and helping you set realistic writing goals to get there.
• Keeping you on track and helping you feel more positive about your work as you grow throughout the writing process.

Analysing chapters

• Offering detailed feedback on chapters as you write – including pacing, dialogue, character development, theme and motif, and any gaps or inconsistencies in the narrative.
• Acting as a sounding board for your ideas and solutions. 

Explaining craft

• Giving you advice on writing techniques, style, literary devices, enhancing descriptive elements and dialogue, and overall writing craft, with direct and relevant examples.
• Sometimes, setting broader exercises that will help grow your craft.

Assisting with revision

• Offering guidance on revising and self-editing your manuscript, especially regarding clarity, coherence, correctness, conciseness and comprehension (the five Cs of editing). Karin also likes to add a fifth C – creativity.
• Sometimes, this includes limited edits to passages of text, but it is important to note that book coaching is not a complete editorial service like a developmental edit is and does not include extensive line-by-line edits on your whole manuscript.

Advice on building an author platform

• Helping direct you to sources that will help you refine your author brand and create a compelling online presence.

Advice on publishing

• Explaining the publishing process, whether traditional or self-publishing.
• Sometimes, critiquing query letters, synopses, proposals, blurbs, or submission strategies.