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

A new blog baby: Jen Campbell, "Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops"

A blog baby is a writer who got a book deal or agent deal while following my blog, and who believes that the blog helped. I'm very proud to be the blog mother of lovely Jen Campbell, author of the new Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops. Jen says, "Your blog was very helpful when submitting to agents. You are a lady of wonderful knowledge! All writers should listen, and listen carefully." *

The Simple Guide to Caring for an Author

It really is simple. Organising a festival or other event is not simple but looking after your author(s) is. Simple it may be, but important it absolutely is. It makes the difference between us being able to perform with energy, passion and positivity, or us collapsing at the end in a quivering, possibly furious, heap.

My simple guide
1. Pay us. Please. We don't have salaries or wages; we've

How much promotion is too much?

I was asked this on Twitter the other day. The reason the conversation arose is that a successful writer has been bugging the pants off people on Twitter. (Please, if you know who I mean, do NOT identify him on my blog. I have no desire at all to embarrass the poor chap. Besides, I hear there are more than one bug... Erm, person who bugs.)

Poor chap? Hang on! His book has done fantabulously well

How to be professional

I often exhort aspiring writers to "be professional" and someone recently pointed out that I have never actually explained what that means. Which is not very professional of me as a professional advice-giver.

Writing may be a passion, but if we want to be published it is also a job. We must intend to earn money from it and we must therefore enter our profession and our industry with certain

AUTHOR PLATFORMS - MY SOCIETY OF AUTHORS CONF PRESENTATION

During the conference event that I mentioned here, I said I would make my powerpoint presentation available to anyone who wanted to see it. So, I include the link below.

Please note - it can't make full sense without me there to talk about it. This was just the bare bones and there was a great deal of explanation about each slide. Also, the formatting has disappeared in the transition to Google

THE WRITE PERSONALITY - and AN EVENT FOR YOU

Our writing and our journey towards our writing goals must inevitably be wrapped up in who we are. As we try to become published and then stay published, we focus, rightly, on the words and the book we're writing. But, in many ways, our personalities shape all that, too. We can't avoid it.

So, what personality traits are needed to hack it as a writer?

I wasn't thinking about this much until I

ARE YOU REALLY READY FOR THIS?

I bring you this video and challenge you not to laugh. Actually, I pretty much cried, and not with laughter. I have so been here - well, not in the Waldenbooks, but in other bookshops, one reasons why I don't do bookshop signings if I can possibly help it. I especially related to the bit where he's with Mary Higgins Clark.




Seriously, folks, I bring you this video to make a very important

GOOD AUTHOR BEHAVIOUR: RESPONDING TO NEGATIVE FEEDBACK

No one actually likes negative feedback. "I welcome your feedback" is usually said through gritted teeth and with a sinking feeling. But the mark of our stature is how we respond to it.

Responding well does not necessarily mean following the negative feedback to the letter. It doesn't necessarily mean changing anything. Responding well involves:
accepting that someone did not relate to or enjoy

ANDREW CROFTS - THE GHOST SPEAKS

You may have noticed that I've never had a guest post on this blog. I guard my territory jealously, you see. But I know what I don't know, and one thing I don't know about (but am fascinated by) is ghost-writing. So, imagine my pleasure and surprise when the UK's most famous ghost-writer walked through my walls recently and tapped me on the shoulder. After I'd regained my equilibrium and stopped

WHAT TO EXPECT AROUND PUBLICATION

Let's get positive today. Imagine you're about to be published  -  hooray! I see the frisson of excitement rippling across your face. You can't stop grinning!

Of course, you'll grin when it happens. You may well do some leaping too, but ideally in the privacy of your garret, since an author leaping is not usually a pretty sight. But what else can and should you expect on P-Day? Specifically,

TWITTERING IS NOT JUST FOR BIRDS

It would be possible (though not for me) to write a book about Twitter. However, it would be pointless, because it changes so fast. There's also plenty of help on the internet, so I'll just select salient points from an author's perspective. I am a fairly new Twitterer, or at least newly converted to its value, and I am sure there are other ways to use it. But I don't want Twitter to take over

REASONS TO BE BLOGGING

Two days ago, I talked about whether and when authors need "platforms"  -  see here. And I explained what I meant by that prosaic and commercial word. Don't shy away just because you don't like the word. That would be ostrichesque.

There is no doubt that a very good way to start to build a platform is to blog. Many of you already do. Many of your blogs were mentioned and visited during the

DEALING WITH JOURNALISTS

To encourage you to focus on your goal of publication [you were wavering, I know you were], I thought we'd have a little look at that thorny issue: controlling journalists. Or at least from the very one-sided POV which is the one I am choosing to take today.


Journalists are lovely, of course, or, even if they're not, they're only doing a job. And that, dear readers, is the crux: they are doing

APPEARANCE + PERSONALITY MATTERS

Let me start by offering huge congratulations to successful author and reader of this blog, Daniel Blythe? Why? Well, partly because he sent me the link that is going to inspire this post. And partly because I see that his newest book, Autonomy, is .... sound the trumpets .... No 1 in Tesco! Hooray in spades! (NB - that's a link to the live chart and the trouble with being No 1 is that ultimately

POINTY THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: 5 - BEING NICE

My daughter is (rather usefully, some might say) working in the children's bookshop in the Edinburgh Book Festival. This in no way explains why my books are so beautifully displayed, of course. But a conversation with her on one of the prep days before the festival opened has engendered this pointful point.Being nice is a very useful and under-rated quality.No, I'm not saying I was nice to her.

CRAPPY AUTHOR BEHAVIOUR: THE LAUNCH

It's a while since you've had a full-scale rant from me and I feel it's been too long. How you have managed, I have no idea. Wait no more: I feel the need to share a little thing that has been bugging me since a book launch I went to a while ago. Let's not be precise about the exact date and let's not go anywhere with the name or genre, because I do not wish publicly to embarrass the author, who

TRUTH HURTS - SO UNLEASH YOUR HIDDEN MASOCHIST

For a writer, there are sensible ways to take feedback and there are foolish ways to take feedback.I won't add (much) to the vitriol hurled from and at two writers who got themselves into the news this week as examples of extreme(ly bad) ways to take negative criticism. Alain de B and Alice H will make up their own minds how to react to the feedback to their feedback to the feedback (aka reviews)