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Archives for November 2011

Literary Agents Closed to Queries: Is the Sky Falling?

November 23, 2011 By Jody Rein Leave a Comment

Literary Agents Closed to Queries:  Is the Sky Falling?

 Who knew?  I’ve just learned I led the literary agent crowd when I closed my doors to new queries several year ago (for me it was to find time to develop software and hang with my family).  But now I hear that’s the norm–yet another mega-contraction in the world of possibilities for the unpublished writer. (If I listen closely, I can hear the

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Practical Publishing, Queries Series, Rants and Raves, Working With Agents

Romance Writers Enough with the Rules Already!

November 17, 2011 By Jody Rein Leave a Comment

Romance BooksRomance Writers Enough with the Rules Already!

Just stumbled on a short and funny essay by Avon’s romance blogger Lucia Macro.  From her opening lines:

“I’ve been seeing a lot of rules lately about romance writing. My advice today: stop. Please stop. Honestly, I’m not sitting around looking to see if your book has a prologue, if your pov shifts around a bit, or if [Read more…]

Filed Under: Practical Publishing, Rants and Raves, Self Publishing, Writing Tagged With: Avon, Civil, Genre, Romance, Writers

Sweating the Exception: An Exhaustingly Bad Idea

November 15, 2011 By Jody Rein Leave a Comment

A worthy hit

Today my friend Michael Larsen, probably the menschiest literary agent on the planet, and I were talking about The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach.  That book, published by the admirable Little, Brown, was a buzz book last BEA.   A first novel acquired for scads of money & published with great enthusiasm–but both Mike and I were underwhelmed by the read relative to the ransom.  Mike pondered:  What does this mean? Is character [Read more…]

Filed Under: Platform and Sales, Practical Publishing, Rants and Raves, Self Publishing, Writing

Query Letters #2: That First Sentence (or, Writers, it’s Attitude Adjustment Time)

November 11, 2011 By Jody Rein 8 Comments

Don Corleone

Query Letter Scans--It's Strictly Business

This is the Second Entry in Our Queries Series.

Literary Agents. Do. Not. Have. To. Read. Your. Query Letter.

I write this so stridently to reduce your anxiety.

Time and again I run into unpublished writers who believe, sincerely, that the literary agent’s job is to read and respond to to their unsolicited queries. This is NOT the agent’s reality.  The lit agent’s job is to effectively and collaboratively guide the careers of the clients who have hired her to represent them.  She is paid for this work, either [Read more…]

Filed Under: Practical Publishing, Queries Series, Writing Tagged With: literary agent, queries, query letters

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Writing a book? Confused about publishing options? Need a marketing plan? Don’t miss the 7th annual Nonfiction Writers Conference—a virtual event unlike any other.

Join 15 top speakers May 3-5, 2017 from the comfort of your home or office. For details and registration got to NonfictionWritersConference.com.

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Author Planet, Jody Rein News

Looking forward to the upcoming 2018 San Francisco Writers conference February 14-17, 2018. Jody will be teaching many classes, and offering free coaching sessions.

Hey, hey, teaching again at the wonderful 2018 Willamette Writers Conference, August 2-5 in Portland, Oregon. This time taught a SIX HOUR Query Master workshop–super fun!

Jody is doing the morning keynnote for theCastle Rock Writers Conference 2018, in October, in Castle Rock, Colorado.

Jody was interviewed by Stephanie Chandler in a teleseminar for the Nonfiction Authors Association on April 13, 2016.

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