Guest Post: Selling a Seller–Writing a Killer Overview in a Proposal, John Paine
The beginning section of a nonfiction proposal is called an Overview.* Its function is to attract an acquisitions editor’s interest in a book. If the Overview does not do that job, he may not bother to read the other sections. He reviews hundreds of proposals a year, after all, and his time is valuable. […]
The Query Letter: Start with a Stop Sign, Guest Post from John Paine
You need to arrest the agent’s attention with the first line. She does not want to read about the fact you actually completed a novel. Everyone who queries her has done that. She doesn’t want to know anything about you personally, at least not at first. She wants to know: why does this book […]
From Author to Marketer–the All-Important Query Letter
I invited freelance editor, ghostwriter, and blogger John Paine to contribute advice on how to approach the query letter. Here he focuses on how to switch hats–from author to marketer–when formulating your pitch to agents. You feel a tremendous relief when you finish your novel. All those months, all those snatches of stray time you […]
Veteran Editor John Paine on Cutting Your Manuscript
Writers are understandably concerned when asked to trim their manuscript by a considerable degree. Yet the experience of cutting your manuscript with the help of an experienced editor need not be a painful one. An editor has the advantage of being a neutral outsider, not caught up in the countless whirling threads that consume an […]