Advice to New Writers: Read the Acknowledgements

The internet is awash with advice to writers, much of it from people considerably more knowledgeable and qualified than I am. There's one piece of advice that occurred to me this week that I've never seen anywhere else, though.

Read the acknowledgements.

Nowhere else will you get a glimpse into the number of people and the amount of effort it really took to make that book what it is.

I just submitted my acknowledgement sheets this week. Hopefully someone will read them and give those people listed a mental clap on the back, because they deserve it.

So read the acknowledgements. And start a file for your own because one day you're going to need to thank all those people that made it happen.

I know I am.