Grants and Fellowships & Tips for getting them
+Social Media and Trad Publishing Survey
Hello all! The meeting is still on for the 25th, but I thought I’d send some resources and updates for you today.
Here’s a reminder:
August Authors’ Meeting
Google Calendar Link
Sunday, August 25 · 5PM PST, 6PM MST, 7PM Central, 8PM EST
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/exj-cgto-bxp
Survey about Social Media and Book Deals
I frequently hear “I can’t sell the book because I don’t have enough followers.” You know I love TikTok but I’m skeptical about this advice.
If you have/had a book deal, could you please fill out this survey about how social media impacted/didn’t impact that deal? It only takes a few minutes, and I’d really appreciate it! Whether your social media presence was lacking, amazing, helpful, hurtful, neutral, or whatever, I would love to hear it all!
I plan to share responses somehow, here and at future presentations* but I’ll keep everyone anonymous. Lots of the fields are optional. I’ve also contacted some agents about how important social media is to them, so I’ll share those responses, or a summary of them or something, soon.
Opportunities, Grants, and Fellowships
Science Book Proposal Development Grant
Applications are now open for Book Proposal Grants for the sciences from Princeton University Press. Apply by October 11 if:
You want to develop an idea for a science book (and you do not yet have a contract)
You are a scholar “in the sciences belonging to groups whose voices have been historically underrepresented”
The website says: “We are seeking work across a range of readerships—including books intended for general readers, scholarly monographs, and textbooks—and in the following subject areas: physics and astronomy, earth science, biology, natural history, neuroscience, computer science, and the mathematical sciences.”
It doesn’t say how much $ the grant is for, but it says you’ll be paired with a mentor to help develop your work and that you must give Princeton University Press the right of first refusal if you develop it into a book pitch.
Each grant cycle seems to have different qualifications and themes. Poke around the website and see if you qualify.
And I just added it to the Grants for ANBIP sheet.
Thank you to the people who have paid subscriptions, which you can get by clicking “Subscribe” in the brown box above! This newsletter/group is free but I’m very grateful for any support. If you want to contribute with a different amount of money, I have PayPal. If you would like to donate to a 501(c)3 charity instead, might I suggest a $10 donation to Small Town Community Cats (where I got my beloved Bijou) or Wyoming Arts Alliance, which has been generous to me. I’d love it if you could mention me/ANBIP in the note of the donation, just because I’m curious to see if and how much this may result in.
Recording: Fellowships for science journalists etc from CASW
The Council for the Advancement of Science Writers has published a recorded meeting called “Tip sheet: How to find and apply for fellowships for science journalists.”
There are some fellowship links at the bottom of the page, which are helpfully separated into early- and mid-career writing fellowships, and international ones. You can search for even more opportunities for science writers in CASW Connector. While I haven’t had any opportunities from this tool, it’s pretty new, and I love the design, so I think it’s probably useful.
Some of the fellowships and grants listed on the recorded meeting page are useful to non-science writers too, such as the Knight Fellowship in Business and Economics journalism. There are also several other Knight Journalism Fellowships, such as one at Stanford (I don’t see a particular theme for that one), ICFJ Knight Fellowship (“fellows lead projects in Asia, Eastern Europe/Eurasia, Latin America, Middle East/North Africa and/or Sub-Saharan Africa”), Knight-Wallace in Michigan (theme?) and of course the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship. I don’t know if there is any central hub for all the Knight fellowships, please let me know if you find one.
Note: if you’re pitching a book to any of these fellowships: the Science Journalism one specifically says “Please note: The research project may be a book proposal, but fellows may not sell the proposal during the fellowship year, nor may they arrive with a contract to write a book during the fellowship year.” The others probably have similar rules.
I attended this seminar and I’m probably the one who suggested listing the Book grant from Sloan, which is not a fellowship but a grant. I got one and I’m very grateful for it!
Note: The Sloan Book Grant website used to say that grants are typically $50,000 or less. Now it says $60,000 or less. Aim for 60. Inflation!
Tip: Remind yourself of opportunities in the future
If you don’t qualify for any of those opportunities right now, I suggest putting them in your Google calendar as a recurring task (annually, or something) or giving yourself some sort of reminder to consider applying later if and when you do qualify. Then I delete them from my calendar when I find out they’re axed.
Another way to remind yourself using technology is to queue an email to send to yourself at the specified date in the future. I prefer using “tasks” in Google Calendar because they roll over to the next day if I fail to check them off. I don’t have experience with AI assistants but I’ve heard good things about software like Motion and you could probably plug it into that somewhere.
But: Opportunities Don’t Last Forever
I also suggested the Poynter-Koch Fellowship, which is listed at the bottom of the recorded CASW fellowship advice meeting page. This fellowship was excellent and provided free money to news outlets to hire people (meaning they paid 60% of the journalist’s salary, up to $50,000) and provided free training to journalists. I think they accepted roughly half of all applications; not a lot of people applied, perhaps because the website wasn’t especially clear on what it was. But, you may notice I am speaking in the past tense because the program has been “sunsetted,” ie, it is no more. You can’t apply to the Poynter-Koch Media Fellowship. Unless it gets exhumed in the future.
Some programs seem to be fairly secure and have been going for a long time, like the Sloan Book Grant and the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship, knock on wood. But nothing is guaranteed in this life, whether that’s because the opportunity ceases to exist, or because you can’t do it next time. (Anything could happen in your personal or professional life, after all.)
Luckily, funding opportunities, grants, etc seem to arise about as fast as they die, so if you are serious about your craft, there is likely to be an opportunity for you along the way somewhere. Even though I just said you should jump on opportunities before they disappear, don’t cry too much when they do.
Let’s light a little candle and give thanks to the Poynter-Koch Fellowship, as my experience there inspired the creation of this group. At the end of our meetings during the fellowship, we would chat with a small group of fellows. I found it nice to connect with people in the same field as myself, but who didn’t work at the same office. I even helped hook someone in my cohort up with a recruiter at NBC, where the reporter now works, so I’m glad I was able to help! That’s why I started ANBIP, to get the personal and professional benefits of talking with other people with similar jobs, careers, and goals.
Tip: Apply confidently and often!
Many empty hands are attached to hardworking, qualified people who wrongly believe they “don’t deserve” certain resources.
When I lived in the San Fernando Valley, there was a chapter of the group Food Not Bombs that distributed food that bakers and farmers would have thrown away otherwise. Depending on your situation, you might consider waiting for others who are less fortunate to take their pick at the rare items like strawberries. Other items were not rare, and every week the FNB group would throw away huge trash bags of bagels because there was too much supply and not enough demand.
Regardless of your financial situation, if you have a mouth and want bagels, you deserve bagels more than the trash can does. Take the bagels.
I have 100 stories like this. There is a free store that limits how much people can donate, but not how much people can take for free. There was a ~$50k scholarship that got like 0-3 applicants each year at my undergrad school, for journalism juniors. Tuition was like ~$3k or something, so the rest of the money goes into the winner’s pocket. Depending on your competition, an applicant who follows the rules could have a 100% chance of winning.
The point is that sometimes a resource is plentiful, and you may be the best one to have it.
To be fair, I also have counter-examples, where people I’ve met are out of their depth, entitled, and should lower their expectations because they hadn’t put in the work to become good candidates, and in those cases, applying is a waste of time. Confidence is great, but if you have not yet put in the hard work, maybe that confidence should be “I can become great at this through hard work,” rather than “I deserve recognition for my assumed innate abilities without improving them.”
So, be wise and selective when applying, but be careful that your confidence levels aren’t leading you astray!
Good news!
Another agent contract signed for ANBIP members!
Congrats to Michael for signing his book about the Arctic with my agent Jane Dystel! That is the third person I’ve hooked up with Jane, and the fourth person I’ve hooked up with an agent. Michael got it after only a 13-minute call!
(My experience: every agent who asked me for a video or in-person meeting offered me a contract. I don’t mean to promise anything, but if you have a meeting scheduled with an agent, there is a decent chance they’re already quite interested and likely to sign you.)
More good news:
I’m the 2024 Wyoming Creative Writing Fellow for Nonfiction!
Woo, I got a fellowship from the Wyoming Arts Council! Yay!
That means I get money and I have to do a service of some sort. The WAC rep suggested doing a talk or reading at the Jackson Hole Writers Conference on November 1-3. My first thought, of course, was to present *“TikTok for Writers.” We’ll see!
See you in a few weeks! Don’t forget to fill out my survey about social media if you have/had a trad contract!
Thanks for this encouragement. I’ll look at possible grants.
Update on a subject of recent discussion, making my writing more personal: I started a Substack to flex those writing skills. I’ve moved from I Can’t Do This to This Isn’t So Hard. I used it in writing a magazine feature, not yet published, by adding a Story Behind the Story section at the end, which one reader targeted as “I love this!” I’m not promoting my Substack much yet, but I feel like it will be good to have an archive by the time I sell my book and am ready to move on to that stage. Thanks.