Nathan Bransford | Writing, Book Editing, Publishing
Helping authors achieve their dreams
I’ve been connected to the publishing industry long enough to have some opinions about query letters that can charitably be described as Old School. For instance, I still think the industry standard is to capitalize all book titles in query letters, not just one’s own, but it increasingly looks like I’ve lost that battle as […]
Query letters, as you may have noticed, are tricky beasts. They must accomplish several difficult feats at once. They need to summarize what’s in the book, but they also need to give a sense of the flavor of your writing. The agent needs to understand what happens, but they also need to get a hint […]
Chances are you absolutely, positively did not enjoy writing your query letter. Writing a query is among the things writers hate the most about their profession, up there with paper cuts and no host open bars. But once you’ve scarred your soul whittling down your wondrously complicated creation into 350 words or less of glorified […]
A while back I outlined the general necessity of whittling down your plot to one sentence, one paragraph, and two paragraph pitches in order to give yourself a head start on the literally thousands of times you are going to need to summarize your work over the course of a book’s lifetime. Today I want […]
Do not worry about spoilers in a query letter. “But wait, I saw an agent say in an interview that they don’t want spoilers in a query letter! It’s right there on their website!” Do not believe them. I repeat: Do not worry about spoilers in a query letter. “But I want them to be […]
I’ve been hard at work on some new ways to deliver you the information you need to achieve your writing goals. First up: a sixteen minute video on how to write a query letter! I share my top tips on writing a killer plot description, the personalization and nuts and bolts you need to include, […]
Helping authors achieve their dreams
