Authors often gnash their teeth at the nearly-universal advice that you should personalize your query letters. It’s time consuming to research agents individually, people don’t know what to say, and there’s something about it that just rubs people the wrong way. It pays to personalize. Just do it. In this post I’ll explain why and […]
How to Write a Query Letter
Query mastery! Hone your research and pitch
In my post on Monday, I mentioned a service called Query Mastery but wanted to do a full post to make sure you knew about it. Query Mastery is an awesome service created by my friends Natasa Lekic (former editor and founder of NY Book Editors) and Rachel Stout (former agent at Dystel, Goderich & […]
Agent stats on personalization, credentials, comp titles, and more!
Does it really matter if you personalize your query? How much do writing credentials matter? Are young agents more likely to take on clients via queries? Opinions vary out there on the old Internet. Sure, I tell you to personalize your queries, but that’s just my opinion. Someone else out there might say something different. […]
The key to a good query letter: Summarizing through specificity
Listen up all you query letter writers because this is the most important post on queries I’ve written in years. I’ve recently been devoting much more time to freelance editing and working with authors on their queries (need personalized help? Contact me!). This means that instead of just evaluating queries for a “yes” or “no”, like I […]
Last Week in Books 3/19/12
Last week! Books! First up, if you’re in the San Francisco area it has come to my attention that there’s a pretty cool film festival going on that’s built around cell phone cameras and nonprofessional cameras the like. It’s called the Disposable Film Festival, and it was recently covered by the Wall Street Journal. Now […]
Five ways to stay motivated while writing a novel
Believe it or not, there are many writers out there, including published writers, who don’t particularly like writing very much. It’s true! Some find the process tedious, even torturous, and find it difficult to stay focused for the length of time it takes to finish. Like many writers out there, I’m someone who finds writing […]
