DEAR AGENT: send Crabbit champagne

Happy Publication Day to my ebook, Dear Agent!

To celebrate, a bit of fun - well, I can but dream:

Dear Agent,
I know my book is the most important thing. So I have made it all sparkly and wonderful. But now I have to write you a letter which will make you see how sparkly and wonderful it is, so that you will be desperate to read it. I would have done something really cute and original, such

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: 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

Covering letters / query letters / submission letters

*waves to the audience at my Belfast Lit Festival event this evening*

For anyone approaching writing a submission letter for an agent or publisher, here is some basic advice, in advance of my forthcoming book, Dear Agent (scheduled for August 10th and published by the one and only Crabbit Publishing - me).


Many of you have heard this advice over and over again, so I apologise, but you wouldn't

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

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