Dec
30
How to sell your book in 2010. Part 1:
December 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Wake up! It’s 2010! Ok, it’s not quite 2010, but by the end of the week it will be. Have you located your shiny new resolution that you left under that pile of crumpled up gift wrapping and empty Frangelico bottles?
Since we will all be finishing our book proposals or novels this year, some apparently nice agents (Upstart Crow Literary) want to help us understand the next step in the process. They have provided a pleasant how-to on getting signed with an agent, based on the experience of one of their own clients:
Today on her blog, my lovely client Shannon Morgan detailed twelve ways an agent can sign a potential client based on our own experience just about one year ago. I thought I’d return the favor and catalog the twelve steps a writer may experience when signing with an agent.
1. Write an awesome story, revise, share it, sit on it, revise again, research agents, send it out, and commence fingernail biting.
2. At first, check email constantly, even though you’ve researched response times and know, in your heart of hearts, that you’re in for a wait. Finished with fingernails, move on to toes.
3. Begin to hear back on the queries. A few nos (Boo!) but a few yeses (Hurray!). If I’m requesting, it’s always for a full manuscript. I don’t request partials. I’m just cool like that…
For the rest click here.
Happy New Year! Be safe and have fun.
(Tune in next week for an article full of practical advice on getting an agent that I wrote for a San Francisco magazine. I am the former assistant to a big wig New York literary agent.)