DEAR AGENT - Extract 4

Here is your 4th free extract from Dear Agent, to be published on August 10th. By the way, any agent or any commissioning editor in a trade publishing house can ask for a free copy.

Also, you're all invited to the launch party on Twitter on Friday evening! Yes, one of those Crabbit party event thangs where you either need to kick your shoes off and join in, or batten down the hatches and steer

DEAR AGENT - Extract 3

The third free extract from Dear Agent - to be published on Amazon on August 10th - cheaper-than-chips for the first weekend only. (NB I have been saying it will be 50p but I just discovered that's actually not possible: Amazon doesn't allow me to make it less than 75p, so 75p it will be. Sorry. *cross face*)


Here's yer extract. It's pre-proof-reading, btw.

A few less reassuring but equally

DEAR AGENT - Extract 2

The second free extract from Dear Agent, to whet your appetite for publication on August 10th. But first, a wonderful piece of feedback from a very important personage who has consistently supported my advice for writers. He's Merric Davidson, former high-powered and highly respected agent and now publisher and editor of The New Writer Magazine. He said:

Worth reading for the author’s “Twenty

DEAR AGENT - Extract 1

I'm delighted to announce the 10-day countdown to publication of Dear Agent - Write the Letter That Sells Your Book! Dear Agent is my nifty, comprehensive ebook about that tricksy thing: the letter pitching your book and yourself to agent or publisher. Dear Agent will make a matching pair with Write a Great Synopsis - An Expert Guide, and once you've read them both, there will be no excuse for

DEAR CRABBIT: Can I pitch an unfinished book to an agent?

Thanks for your questions for Dear Crabbit so far. Keep them coming! For guidelines, see the Dear Crabbit page above.
You asked:
"I have read your book (AKA my bible) Write to be Published and I have one small query: I understand why it is wrong to send a publisher an unfinished book (i.e. you are offering them a product, which may never get off the drawing board and therefore potentially

DEAR CRABBIT: how long till I can follow up a query?

Hooray! The very first Dear Crabbit post! (If you don't know what I'm talking about, see this post from last week, in which I announced a change of direction for this blog.) From now on, most posts here will answer YOUR questions, in an agony auntish sort of way.So, to kick off, you asked:"I find it so frustrating when submitting work that it takes so long for people to get back to me - if indeed

A non-fiction pitch - Deep Country

Not exactly a pitch paragraph today, but a pitch letter - the covering letter that you'd normally send with your synopsis and sample chapters if fiction, or your proposal+synopsis+sample if non-fiction.


In a minute, you'll read a letter that actually did grab an agent, and then a publishing deal. It's also an example of an imperfect letter, and an illustration of the truth that if your idea

A reminder of why toffee is not a way to get published

This has remained one of the most popular posts in the three years of this blog's life, so I thought I'd let you see it again. Although it's fun to read, there's a very serious point to it. Take note!

Seven steps to publication

The other day I did a one and a half hour event, during which I gave as much information as I think anyone possibly could on how to become published. At the end, the final question came from a gentleman who asked (after telling us that I'd given a really good talk and that he'd written a really good book), "How can I get my book published?"

So, for anyone else who simply doesn't hear the words I

Are authors supposed to notice their own errors?

What if your book has a few clunky sentences and/or punctuation errors when you send the sample chapters to a publisher or agent? Does this matter? After all, isn't that what publishers' editors are for?

Yes, it does matter. And your book may well never reach a publisher's editor if your manuscript, covering letter and synopsis have the marks of a writer who doesn't have full control of language

Obstacles to being published

Characteristically sensible post here from Rachelle Gardner. There's nothing I haven't said myself, but it's all succinctly phrased and, especially if you are new to the approaching-publishers-and-agents lark, useful.

There are two points that I thought I'd elaborate on:


Pitching several books in different genres. Why not? Because although you can have a wide writing career later, you need to

QUERY LETTERS DISSECTED

Food for thought from Query Shark here. And then from Lynn Price here. Both American viewpoints but little they say is different over here. For "query letter" read "covering letter" - it's just that a US query letter is scarier to write because it has to sell your book and you on its own, without the recipient seeing your sample chapters at that stage.

I particularly draw your attention to

COVERING LETTERS, SYNOPSES AND LEGS

You worry too much about covering letters and synopses, you know. If most unpublished writers took a quarter of the effort they spend researching the perfect templates for covering letters and synopses and devoted it instead to their actual book, they might be published by now.

Let me tell you some simple truths about covering letters and synopses:There is no perfect template.If either or both

COVERING LETTER SPOTLIGHT 1

A very good writer I know, with poems and short stories to her credit, has sent me a covering letter for your comment. I know she's been working really hard on this, and she's got it honed down to something very lean and neat. But has she got it right? What do we all think?

Please note that this is for a UK submission, not a US-style query.

 ___________________________________________Dear Ms./

QUERIES, SORTED

There are so many fantastic pieces of advice in this post by Ann Crispin on Writer Beware, and all of them are ones I mention in my talks. So, I can do no better than send you over there. Take every one of them to heart.

By the way, a query letter is a US term, quickly coming over here. It is so similar to the UK "covering letter"  that you can follow all the advice in this article for UK and US

SYNOPSIS SPOTLIGHT

Remember when I used to do those Submission Spotlights? When brave blog-readers would offer part of a submission for public scrutiny and comment? As you may remember, I stopped doing them when I decided to help people more directly by setting up Pen2Publication.

Well, the other day I was contacted by a newish blog-reader, Siena, who was having problems writing a synopsis. Pen2Publication is

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

An awesome post over on Editorial Ass the other day had me cheering in my seat, somewhat inappropriately as I was on a train at the time. She (I always assume Ed Ass is a she) makes some essential points about the panic and stress that sets in while authors are submitting their work, warning that this panic and stress can cause poor decisions and end in inferior publication.

EA says:
"It's

DELUDED COVERING LETTERS

I am re-posting this earlier post to help those of you approaching covering letters / queries for the first time. Many of you, I know, are old hands at this, but there are new writers coming along all the time and terrible mistakes are being made. I want to save you, honestly!

The covering letter will give an agent or editor the first clues (and they may not look further) that either a) you may

A POINTY POINT ABOUT QUERIES

I know I'm focusing on craft rather than querying for a while, but every now and then I come across a post on **querying which I'd like you to see.

Apologies, btw, for any glitches in this post: I'm going to be away when it goes out, and it's so much easier to proof it once it's published. So, bear with me and don't tell me about typos.

[**I seem to have gone all American in my use of the word

PITCH YOUR HOOK

Yes, yes, yes: it's the writing that counts. But your aim is that people should read it, no? In order to get people to read it, you have to pitch it to them. So, your pitch must hook your reader - in this case an agent or publisher - and this hook forms the basis of your pitch.

Pitches and hooks? Gah - get to the point, wummun!

A blog-reader, Sarah from the Slushbusters blog, asked me to say