5 Easy Things You Can Do to Avoid Rejection
It’s widely known that agents (and editors) are inundated with queries and submissions. I scroll through my query inbox at least once a week and probably reject 98% of what comes in. Some of these rejections might have been avoided, at least leading me to consider the query seriously. Here are some obvious common mistakes […]
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 […]
When to Send Out an Agent Query
The ease of email queries, which most agencies accept, has resulted in writers sending queries to agents at all times of year and hours of the day.The assumption is (I think) that it’s OK to send out queries at odd times because we agents can read them whenever we like. The reality, for this agent […]