Search Results: book proposals

A Day in the Life

People are always telling me they’d like to hear about a typical day for an agent. But I have yet to experience a typical day. When you have a large number of clients, working on a wide variety of projects, which are all in various stages of writing or publication, the days provide endlessly changing…
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(Possibly) Bad Advice I’ve Heard Lately

Like most of you, I do a fair amount of reading on the web. I keep up with what’s going on in publishing and I like to read what industry professionals are saying. However, sometimes I cringe when I read advice that doesn’t square with what I’ve experienced. It might not be wrong, per se,…
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Help! An Agent Relationship Gone Bad!

Anonymous wrote: I recently fired my book agent for a number of valid reasons and her response was to say that I OWE HER thousands of dollars because she spent time on my project (never submitted it to publishers because we kept rewriting the book proposal because she kept changing her mind about what she…
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What is ICRS?

I’m spending most of this week preparing for my meetings at ICRS, so I thought I’d explain it to you in case you’re wondering. ICRS stands for International Christian Retail Show. If you’re familiar with BEA (Book Expo America), ICRS is a smaller version for the Christian publishing and retailing world. It’s a trade show,…
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First Things First

or… Don’t Put the Cart Before the Horse If you’re a writer, here’s what I want to ask you today: Are you getting ahead of yourself? There are seasons in a writer’s life: Seasons for focusing on the art and craft of writing, and seasons for focusing on the business of writing. And seasons where…
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10 Things to Expect from an Agent

(The Real Deal This Time) 1. Expect them to have a strong track record of selling books to legitimate publishers and/or experience in the publishing industry.→ Check Publisher’s Marketplace→ Ask around, ask other authors, ask others in the biz. Find out what books they’ve represented and check the acknowledgements page of those books.→ If they…
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The Competitive Advantage

Last April, Michael Hyatt ran a series of blog posts about the importance of the Competitive Advantage. I can’t possibly summarize it all, but there are a couple of really important thoughts I want to share with you. It seems the biggest worry of the unpublished author is (understandably), “Will there be room for the…
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A Friday Rant (And This One’s Not About You)

So, you know I love writing this blog, right? I enjoy the dialogue with writers, and sharing tidbits of information, and hearing about your experience as a writer in this crazy publishing world. But I have to tell you my #1 frustration with this whole thing. It has nothing to do with you. Nope. It’s…
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Word Counts: My Aha Moment

Lately I’ve been incorporating interval training into my workouts. When I’m at the gym, I use the interval setting on the treadmill. When I’m outside jogging with Reagan and my iPod, I alternate a faster and slower pace. Since it’s annoying to look at my watch, I use music to time my intervals. I might…
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An Embarrassment of Riches

Wow, that was an amazing discussion yesterday on the writer’s passion. Thanks for contributing! If you haven’t read all the comments from yesterday, you really should. They offer an incredible amount of invaluable advice and encouragement. And speaking of passion! It’s showing up in my inbox in the form of queries about 10 to 20…
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Stats… Industry News… and a Q4U

STATS It’s been awhile since I added up any stats. I didn’t do them for October, so here they are, along with November’s numbers. Total queries received in the two months combined: about 720 Pass letters sent: 358 Request for partials sent: 7 Queries unanswered in my query box: 262 Hard copy queries/proposals sent via…
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An Agent for One Year

That “no blogging on Wednesdays” thing didn’t last very long! I couldn’t help myself, had to post a blog today. You’ll see why… Another milestone to report! Today marks exactly one year since I made my first submission to publishers in my role as agent. In celebration, I wanted to share some impressions of the…
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Endless Tinkering

Here is a typical email I receive from writers who’ve submitted a partial for consideration, or clients whose proposals are about to be sent to publishers:Dear Rachelle,I’m SO sorry to bother you and I hope it’s not too late. I was looking over my manuscript and I found a typo on page 3. I left…
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Ask the Agent: Having It Made

How about shedding some light on whether getting published and “having it made” are synonymous. It seems to be the feeling among writers that once you get a contract and have a book or two published, all you have to do is run up a decent proposal and your publisher will buy it. I hear…
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