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…]
Query Letters #2: That First Sentence (or, Writers, it’s Attitude Adjustment Time)
Query Letter Scans--It's Strictly Business
This is the Second Entry in Our
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Time and again I run into unpublished writers who believe, sincerely, that the literary agent’s job is to read and respond to to their unsolicited queries.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…]
Query Letters: Jody’s Seven Goals
Don't Sweat the Query
Query letters. Yet again.
Holy smokes there’s a lot of query letter advice out here on the World Wide Web.
And like everything in information-overload-land, that’s good and bad–it’s terrific for writers to have easy access to models and thoughtful counsel, but at the same time I’m a little concerned about the stressing out I see–the agony over each detail in each query; and the stridency of the dogma. As in, “All query letters must start with x, end with y, and never, never include Popsicles.”
Query letters are crucial, don’t get me wrong. And yes, each book pitch does have to include some standard elements, like, well, the title of the book.
But ultimately each letter is as individual as the book that is being pitched and the author who is writing it. So rather than trying to fit your query into someone else’s mold, I suggest you sit back, take a deep breath, scribble out a quick rough draft, and [Read more…]
Book Publishers Maybe NOT Terrified
Today’s a great day for authors! The New York Times reports that three of the Big 6 publishers: Simon & Schuster, Random House and Hachette are each
RT