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Most of you know that I live and work in beautiful Colorado. In honor of our state’s early slide into winter this week (big snowstorm), I thought I’d share some Rocky Mountain humor with you. Enjoy! First, a winter statistic: 98% of Americans say “oh sh*t” before going off an icy road into a ditch.…

Several people have asked me lately how the process of getting an agent works. Not from the writer perspective, but from my perspective. It varies from agent to agent, but here’s an approximation of how it looks if you submit to me. You send a query. It sits in my inbox until I get to…

I’ve been a fan of editor-turned-agent Betsy Lerner ever since I read her brilliant book The Forest for the Trees when it came out in 2001. If you’ve never read it, you should immediately. It’s one of the best books for writers, right up there with Stephen King’s On Writing. Get the book! Anyway, that’s…

One of the questions writers ask me is “How do you know in the first couple of pages whether you’re interested in a writer?” Sometimes I stumble when trying to answer because there’s no pat answer. It’s a combination of strong writing, a topic or setting that interests me, a character (or two) that I…

(And Other Annoying Devices) When I was an editor, I found myself the heartless eliminator of exclamation points!!! Seriously, I developed a hatred for them! People tend to WAY overuse them! Not to mention italics and bold, and that oh-so-effective use of ALL CAPS!!!!!!! Here’s a hint to avoid coming across as amateur: Use the…

As you all know, yesterday Thomas Nelson announced they are launching a new imprint, WestBow Press, which will operate as a subsidy publisher. Lots of people are talking about it and I thought I’d weigh in with a few thoughts. *Please note, this is preliminary since I’ve only had a few hours to think about…

A couple of quick notes:(1) I’m all caught up on responding to queries, so if you sent one prior to October 10th and haven’t heard from me, you may resubmit if you like. I am NOT caught up on reading requested partials and fulls.(2) Shark Tank is on tonight! Set your DVR or write yourself…

Over the weekend I asked my Twitter followers to send me questions. Here are some of them, with my brief answers. Kennectto asked:Do publishers sometimes accept queries and/or manuscript ideas from writers without agents? Some publishers accept unagented queries and proposals, but most of the majors don’t unless an editor met the writer at a…

Many of you have been on this pursuit-of-publishing journey for awhile now. Whether you’re just starting to write, or you’re already contracted, or you’re somewhere in between, I’ll bet there are things that have surprised you along the way. I’ve been in publishing for so long, I’m not surprised by much of anything anymore. So…

My name is Rachelle Gardner and I’m an agent with WordServe Literary Group based in Denver, Colorado. Click on this link to visit our website; or to meet the other members of the WordServe team, see this post. I love books, authors, publishing, and talking incessantly about them. My passion is partnering with authors to…

I was completely impressed with how many of you chimed in on Friday’s post on You: The Marketing Machine. You eloquently expressed your enthusiasm, your dread, and/or your ambivalence about the need to market your own book. One of the themes that cropped up frequently was the romantic fantasy of the writer as a loner,…

A couple weeks ago I was having dinner with a group of novelists (who also happened to be my clients). We were talking about the terrible waiting that’s always involved in publishing. At every step of the journey, whether you’re agented or not, published or not, there seems to be a huge need for patience.…

On Friday, in his This Week in Publishing post, Nathan Bransford gave a nod to my post last week on proactive vs. reactive protagonists. (Thanks, Nathan.) One of the commenters on Nathan’s blog said: Whenever I read something like: “you have to have a proactive protagonist,” I immediately want to go out and write a…

First off, if you don’t read anything else this weekend, read this article from the Washington Post. It doesn’t say much that we haven’t already discussed on this and other publishing blogs. But I think (for many of you) it will confirm what you’ve already heard: Yes, it’s a whole new world for authors, and…