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I have an agent and a novel currently out on submission. The agent asked if I had anything for her to look at. I sent her another manuscript. She sent a two word rejection: “Not unique.” This tells me she didn’t read it because it has a number of unique plot twists. My question is,…

What a month! More queries than ever before, but amazingly, I’m keeping up with them. If you’ve sent me an email query and I haven’t responded, that means I don’t have it, so please try again. If you’ve sent a hardcopy via U.S. mail (in which case you’re probably not reading my blog), I haven’t…

Lisa wrote with this question: When you request a proposal at a writers conference and ask for the first five chapters and a synopsis, is that all you want? Or do you want a market analysis, character sketches, etc.? This is a great question, because it once again points out the need for clear communication.…

Many of you are working on your first contracted book. (Yeah!) Prior to your publishing deal, you may have been through countless edits and revisions of your book (or books). But you’ve never had to do it under deadline, and you’ve never done it with the input of your own publishing house editor. So this…

I’ve been writing a lot of posts geared toward the unpublished author. But I know many of you are published, or at least agented, and hopefully the rest of you are getting closer to publication, so you have questions about the process after you receive an offer from a publisher. I’m going to start interspersing…

I really appreciated all your comments on yesterday’s post. Lots of wisdom there! Related to the situation I wrote about, Katy sent this question: Is it sometimes true that a new author, who’s just signed with an agent, will find the agent unwilling to try to sell some of her already-written manuscripts? How can that…

I want to tell you about an incident at ACFW that was sort of heartbreaking for me. I guess I want you to know that we agents have a lot invested in these conferences, just like the writers do, and sometimes we have disappointments too. I met with a writer, a lovely and sweet woman…

The latest issue of Writers Digest included an article called 28 Agents Who Want Your Work and I was included in the 28. A dubious privilege, to be sure. (Thanks, Chuck!) I’ve been receiving a record number of submissions since then, and it really is cool to have such a large pool of writers from…

I spent the last several days at the ACFW conference in Minneapolis (along with about 600 of my closest friends) and once again my overriding feeling is… I’m tired. I’m sure everyone who went is feeling the same thing. It was terrific meeting lots of my blog readers and I’m glad many of you made…

I promise I’ll blog about ACFW sometime today…

Earlier this week, a writer sent me this response to a rejection letter: As a first time author I can’t tell you how much I am humbled for the kind and thoughtful responses from you agents. You guys are really nice people out there…and God bless you for the kind words. Wow. It really struck…

I’ve written before about the agenting process… culling through submissions, deciding what to represent, getting books polished and ready for submission, submitting them to publishers, negotiating contracts, etc. etc. But I think when the rubber meets the road is when I know I have a good book that people will like, but publishers aren’t biting.…

Last Wednesday in response to my call for readers to contribute their own additions to the writers conference checklist, one wise person wrote, “Don’t make it all about you.” I had been thinking of including that exact tidbit in my original list because it’s so important. But I ended up leaving it off my list…

Many of us will be heading to the ACFW conference in about a week, so I wanted to give you a handy checklist of things to make sure you bring. Even if you’re not attending ACFW, you might find this useful sometime in the future for another conference. a Some concise and fascinating answers to…