Guide To Literary Agents Manuscript
Friday, March 4th, 2011 at
12:20 am
How to Write a Query Letter that Works
Does your query letter drag or does it make your reader take notice? Learn how to write a query letter that’s short, simple, and grabs your reader’s attention.
A query letter is a way for authors to introduce themselves and their manuscripts to editors, agents, and publishers. Since the query letter acts as a first impression, itâs imperative that the letter captivate the reader and make that person want to know more. In other words, make the reader want to read whatever is submitted. The key to a good letter is to just whet the appetite. The manuscript will provide anything further.
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i recommend contacting other authors that they have worked with and the publishing companies that they have worked with to get a feel for the agents reputation in the literary community. Best of luck!
Should I trust a new literary agent with my manuscript?
or is it as easy to get it published without an agents help? The manuscript is good. Please guide.
go to cafepress:
http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/help/learn_book_info.aspx#pricing
it’s completely free. how it works is, you email them a pdf file of your book, and a jpg or gif file for the cover, etc. then they come up with a base price based on the size, number of pages, and type of binding.
so,, for example,, if you get a 7.5 x 9.25 inch perfect binding, and your book ends up being 200 pages, then the base price will be $7 (the flat binding fee) plus $6 (200 pages at 3 cents a page) which equals $13. then you set your selling price at whatever you want. so if you pick $25, then that means every time a copy of your book sells, they’ll keep $13, and you get the remaining $12.
they’ll sell the books for you,, take care of all the money handling, sales tax, and S&H, etc. then your profits go into an account on the website which you can wire to a bank account. they won’t promote the book, but you can do it on myspace.com. that website is so good for promoting things.
there’s a group of kids on there called the rational response squad. (http://www.myspace.com/rationalresponse) they did a really good job at promoting the movie “the god who wasn’t there”, and they’re currently promoting sam harris’ new book, “letter to a christian nation”. you should send them a copy of your book, and if they like it, then maybe they’ll promote it for you.
now’s a really good time to be releasing this sort of a book, by the way. dawkin’s new book, “the god delusion” is coming out this month, and they were talking on point of inquiry (http://pointofinquiry.org/) about how the fall and winter of 2006 is turning out to be a really eventful time in regards to this sort of stuff.
Where can I find a good literary agent with a high acceptance rate of taking on manuscripts?
You know how some universities and colleges have large acceptance rates, while others are listed as “Difficult” to get into, and some are “Moderate”? Yes well, is there a guide like that for literary agents?
What would be the best way to get a book on atheism published?
For starters, I do not have a degree in english, nor in anything yet. I am 30 years old and an atheist. I am writing a book that, if all goes according to plan, will demonstrate what it is like to be an atheist in todays society as well as comparing and contrasting being religious and not religious.
My problem is, I have no idea where or how I can get this published, if at all, once it is completed.
Has anyone here had a book published? How hard is it to find an agent to turn your script in to the publishers for you?
My wife wrote an excellent childrens book and tried for 3 years to get it published, always hearing back that “We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts” from the big publishing houses. No agents were willing to take on her case without charging an insane fee up front.
We have looked in the literary guide for both agents and publishing houses.
I do not want to fall into this same situation, any advice ahead of time would be well taken.
Thank you.
There is no such thing. However, if you read their listings in Writers Market, it usually tells you what the percentage of new authors they take on is. It is never very high, though. You are looking for shortcuts where none exist.
—-
They’re, Their, There – Three Different Words.
Careful or you may wind up in my next novel.
Pax – C
Please leave feedback, opinions, and comments as to what content I should include on a “Writers Guide” website?
I am setting up a Freewebs website, a writers guide to writing.
I have a few basic ideas of my own, but would like to know what kind of info. you, writers of B&A are looking for, so I know what to include on the website.
So far I am currently writing “Structure of Publishing houses and careers within the writing industry”, which gives a step-by-step guide to the different roles of various departments within a publishing house, for those who wish to progress to working within the writing & publishing industry.
I am also going to write a step-by-step guide on how to write and format a professional manuscript, as well as on how to contact local publishing houses and literary agents.
This answer to another Q shows a brief piece of the type of info. that will be provided –
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AvuSh2zjLZ.6OFpQiF6UxNfty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20100726173025AA1jqYV&show=7#profile-info-245296e926068369590c2d4c49cdf531aa
The only and sole purpose of the website is to educate those who do not know much about the publishing process, how to format professional manuscripts, who wish for future careers as authors or within the publishing industry etc.
So what type of things would you all be interested in learning and I will do my best to include it.
Hey Liam,
I think this sounds like a great idea as many people don’t know who to trust about getting information on publishing and contacting an agent. The anthologies of publisher lists do not provide any personal and identifiable information other than the cold hard facts of each company and what they expect from the people who send in submissions.
I think that endorsing certain tools such as the The Writer’s Digest magazine would be beneficial to the writing community. It is a magazine for writers by writers and often times has excellent information about not only the writing process but contests, publishing do’s and don’t’s, even to how to craft an excellent query letter.
Remember though that some people who find your site will be new to the writing world and/or might not even have a completed novel/manuscript to submit yet, so some reference guides about the writing process would be helpful too. Revision guides would be helpful to also.
Good luck with it 😉
Is copyrighting material amateurish?
Well, I’m an aspiring writer and I know that I have talent in writing. I recently bought a book called “Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents 2007”. In the writer’s advice section I’m pretty sure there wasn’t anything about copy writing, but if I did get my manuscript copyrighted and got it published and sent to literary agents do you think they would consider that amateurish?
Advice on that is greatly appreciated.
Thanks for all the answers guys! They were very helpful!
I didn’t expect so many adults to help a 16 year old girl so much!
I’ve got a lot of respect for the Hellcat, even when I disagree with her and I would not have seen this question if it wasn’t for her. I need to say that because I am going to disagree with her again. I have at least two very good friends whose creative work obtained copyright on behalf of the publishing company they were trying to sign with. One regained the rights to her material, the other did not. He is a joint owner, but will forever be tied to a publishing company that does not have his best interest at heart. It is not amateurish to copyright your material before you send it out, but it can be expensive.
If you cannot afford the copyright process but still want protection, you can always send the material Registered, return receipt requested. the thing about that it that it is more expensive than the whole copyrighting process if you send it to enough places.
If you believe in your work and want to protect it, Copyright is the Gold Standard. It doesn’t say that you don’t trust the agent. It really says that you know how to take care of yourself. For shorter works, bundle them into a collection before you submit them. The publisher will know what to do with the individual work if they are interested in it, but that way you only pay one fee for getting the protection instead of a separate fee for each work.
It is your agent’s job to get the work published though. Once you sign with an Agent, you may even agree to let the Agency obtain the copyright. It is part of the service and you might as well make use of it. If you get it published yourself, there is really nothing left for the Agent to do, you have in effect become your own Agent. If you are speaking of Vanity Publishing, where you get a few hundred to a few thousand copies to distribute yourself, that will give you a nicer book to shop around with, but sometimes it scares legitimate publishers off because they don’t generally enjoy dealing with people who want to do their job for them.
I will say that it certainly worked for Christopher Paolini, who self published Eragon and shopped it around to school Libraries before he got it accepted by his current publisher, so don’t take any advice as the absolute word!
Best of luck in your endeavors in any case and I hope to see you on the bestseller rack in B&N soon.