- Be a prayer partner with another writer and help them walk through the rough patches of the writing process. Helping someone else is one of the best ways to work through your tough moments.
- Be open to leading from others about what to write. Don’t dismiss the possibility God could be communicating to you through another person. Ideas can come from anywhere…even strangers. Or strange agents.
- Pray for your readers. It will calm your emotions and transform your perspective.
- Charge a reasonable price (not the cheapest or the most expensive) for your work, but always be open to be generous to a person who cannot afford it. The solution is not to make it “all about the money,” but recognize a proper balance and place for good financial stewardship in your work. Household bills require dollars to pay them, not units.
Search Results for: proposals
“Response” Books
When considering a topic for your next book, I suggest you avoid a response to another message in the media, especially in another book. Publishers and readers love books which are fresh, containing original thinking, and are well written, creative, with an identifiable purpose, a strong message and usually not springing from what someone else wrote. I am not talking about “connection” books, such …
Where Do You Find New Clients?
“As an agent, what percentage of your new clients come from meetings at conferences vs. general email or postal proposals? Can you address the importance of conferences?” Thanks to Scott for the question. It is a good one. Another way to frame it is “Where do you find new clients? Blind submissions or conferences?” The answer, as always, is “It depends.” Meeting someone at a conference is a …
Frustrated by Rejection or No Response? Try This
Last week I wrote about authors who send agents submissions despite the fact those agents clearly state that they don’t represent those categories. When this happens, I sense one of three things from the author: exuberance, ignorance, or frustration. Exuberance An author who’s been successful for decades still can be exuberant about her work. That’s not what I mean here. In this case, the author …
The Ambitious Author
Recently my office received an unsolicited submission from an author unfamiliar to us. Of course, this is not unusual. But here is a list of what is unusual: The submission was openly cc’ed to 185 agents. The author sent writing samples for 28 books. The author said she wants to write across all genres. At least one entry offered graphic detail of a sexual encounter. The author stated her age as …
WHAT Were They Thinking??
You know, one of the things I’ve learned since becoming an agent is that people have an odd sense of what’s appropriate. Happily, quite a lot of what I receive is well prepared and enjoyable to read. But I’d have to say that anywhere from a fourth to even, on a bad week, a third, of what comes in falls squarely in the “I don’t THINK so” camp. So here, just to help you avoid such things, are some …
Is Your Writing Controlled by Fate?
I was going to title this blog post something along the lines of “Calvinist vs. Arminian Authors,” or “Predestination vs. Free Will in Publishing,” but these titles inferred an entirely different angle than I intended. Every author believes their book, if published and promoted enough has the potential to sell well. No author writes a book feeling deeply it will sell 349 copies. Someone messed up …
What is Your Attention Span?
I came across the study that claims the average person now has a shorter attention span than that of a goldfish. Eight seconds. This means most people tend to lose concentration in less than ten seconds. As an experiment, I read the above paragraph out loud. It took about 10 seconds to complete. That means I just lost you. At least the goldfish will swim around its bowl and come back to the same …
A Book Loved By Everyone Hasn’t Been Written
There is no such thing as a book everyone likes and this problem is only magnified if it covers religion, politics, sports or anything else where people are deeply divided. If you think you are going to write a book, which unites all Christian believers worldwide, you better take a deep breath and realize no matter what you write, you will have detractors. While the Bible is the Holy …
A Roundup of Some Queries
Periodically we try to show you some of the more unusual things we receive, unsolicited, by our agency. These are by no means all of them (not exhaustive…just exhausting). Just a few to help those who read this blog avoid the same mistakes. Disclaimer: We do not suggest that any of these writers are insincere. In fact it is evident they believe in what they are presenting. But at the same …