Agents and Queries and Proposals, Oh My!

Sometimes new authors are under the impression that traditional publishing is the easiest of the options. They believe in order to get published, you send a simple email to an agent or publisher that asks them to consider your book and that's that. After all, business is so much more informal nowadays right?

While that may be true in many industries, in publishing not so much. Agents and editors may be open to email vs snail mail, but there are still plenty of formal rules/procedures that really need to be adhered to in order for your book to have any shot at acceptance.

Some of those rules include sending a proper query letter and if you get past that stage, a book proposal of some sort. You need to work at least as hard, if not harder at these items because you only have a short space of a page or two to make your case especially in the early stages.

The good news is that because of social media, it's easier than ever to learn what you need to know. A great way is to follow agent blogs. For example Pub Rants by Agent Kristen offers tons of the "how-tos" authors need. Her blogroll also lists other agents' and published authors' blogs and I'm sure there's a wealth of information to be discovered on those as well.

And just in case you need a little extra inspiration, you can always pop over to Chip Macgregor's Blog where he occasionally posts some of the best of the worst of the stuff he sees on a regular basis. The March 8th entry has some at the end of the post. If nothing else, smile and be glad in the fact that you know better.

Good Writing & God Bless,
Cheryl Pickett