Search Results for: proposals
The Send…A Proposal’s Weakest Link
You spend hundreds and hundreds of hours writing and re-writing your book. You work meticulously to craft a proposal for an agent or publisher. You talk to your friends about the big step you are about to take, the step of sending your proposal out. The power of email will carry your message to the world. Then you copy 135 names into the email address field, use a generic greeting and send it out …
Giving Thanks for Lessons Learned
Throughout my life in the church, from earliest Sunday school lessons to the current day, whenever I encounter Bible stories about people who have done less-than-good things, I have grown less judgmental of them than I might have in the past. The Israelites in the desert for forty years are actually a picture of just about every believer I know, including me. God does great things, but at the …
How Long Should You Wait for an Answer?
You have sent your project to an editor or an agent. Their guidelines state “We will respond within 6-8 weeks.” Do you mark your calendar on day 56 and send that person a query the minute the deadline passed? This past week one of my clients set a personal record for waiting. She was contacted by a magazine asking to publish a poem she submitted…in 1990. You read that right. …
The Proposal Review Process
You’ve all been there (and if you haven’t yet, you will…). You put together the perfect proposal and finally, finally send it off to agents for their review. So what happens next? Well, from your point of view, waiting. And waiting. And…(yes, we’ve covered that before. The waiting. That’s not what this is about.) But how about from the agent’s point of view? What on earth are they doing all that …
54 Pieces of Advice for Your Writers Conference Success
Our agency believes in the importance of a writer’s education and the value of the writers conference experience. We have written over 50 articles that can help you make the most of your conference experience, all of them are listed below. If bound in a single volume it would be a book of nearly 40,000 words. Enjoy! Conference Preparation The Writers Conference Decision Six Excuses (That …
What’s Wrong with my Book?
As you can imagine, we see hundreds of proposals and manuscripts each month. And, as you can also imagine, we must decline most. However, there are a few mistakes you can avoid to help your submission rise above others: Not beginning the story in the right place. All too often, an author will tell us about the main characters’ backgrounds before getting to the crux of the story, where the …
When You Must *Not* Wait
I shared, in a previous blog (“The Hardest Part of Being a Writer“), about the difficulty of waiting during the writing journey. Well, I’m happy to report that there is an area where you not only don’t have to wait, but you shouldn’t, and that’s building your audience through social media. I can’t tell you how many of the proposals we’ve seen in recent weeks that say something along …
Why I Don’t Critique Your Work
A fantastic blog post from Ramona Richards reminded me why I, as a literary agent, don’t offer critiques on rejected proposals. Believe me, as someone who used to write books, I understand the disappointment of the unhelpful rejection letter. So much that I blogged about it (click to read it). I appreciate writers who are looking to learn more about craft, style, and what will make their books …
The Why and How of Selecting Endorsers
Some authors find the endorsers section tricky when they write book proposals. If this describes you, or if you would like a refresher, I hope this post will be helpful. The Why: I can’t say I’ve ever sold a book based on an endorsement alone. Content is king. But the endorsers (or you can call it Potential Endorsers) section is important. To wit, here’s a quote from Mallory Ortburg’s May 3 …