So. You have a finished and polished manuscript for fiction or a finished and polished nonfiction book proposal for nonfiction. You want a book deal. You need an agent. Now what? It’s tough out there for an author. There are literally hundreds of agents. Some are incredibly powerful and can transform your destiny with a […]
How to Find a Literary Agent
What Do Literary Agents Do?
Literary agents fulfill a crucial function in the publishing process. Here are the ins-and-outs on what they do. For context, I was a literary agent at Curtis Brown Ltd. from 2002-2010, so posts that I link to that were written during that time will sound as if I’m currently an agent (which, again, I’m not). […]
In defense of personalized queries (and five tips!)
Agent Janet Reid recently posted a rant about one of the frequent flash points in the “This process is too freaking hard” camp of agent-seekers: the personalized query. Essentially, Janet believes personalized queries are pointless. In one sense I do agree with Janet. Is a personalized query, by itself, proof that the author has written […]
How to get over writer’s block
With National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) starting tomorrow, here’s an excerpt from How to Write a Novel: 47 Rules for Writing a Stupendously Awesome Novel That You Will Love Forever, on sale now! Rule #34: You don’t have “writer’s block” The most important thing you need to know about writer’s block is this: it doesn’t exist. Seriously. Writer’s […]
Traditionally published short story collections
I get a lot of questions about short story collections. How do you write a query letter for a short story collection? Do publishers want them? Well, it’s complicated. Short story collections do get published, usually by the cream of the crop of the literary fiction world. (Note that I’m not talking about anthologies with […]
This Week in Books 2/25/12
Books! This week! Lots of heads were shaking about a story in the New York Times this week: Veteran author gets rejected by 13 publishers, then she adopts a pen name and the book sells in three days. Now, it’s easy to chalk this one up to the fickleness/stupidity of publishers, as lots of people […]