Nathan Bransford - The Forums

I would put your title, genre, and length right up at the beginning. If I were an agent, I wouldn't want to read anything about the book until I knew those things, and if the person querying me made me have to hunt around for that info, I'd be perturbed. And you don't want your prospective agent unh...

Thanks everybody! I love how vibrant and collaborative these forums are. Lots of good advice! Here are my thoughts: If I could get my query down to 250 words I would feel like a query god. At 350, I feel like I'm really pushing the envelope of what an agent wants to slog through. I think going below...

Thanks, Quill. The requests for material continue trickle in. I got an R last month, and another the week before Christmas. The last one was especially painful, as the I had met with the agent in person at the fall SCBWI conference, and she was enthused by the first ten pages (she asked for a full a...

I'd change Wil Drake and the Witches of the Water to: Wil Drake and the Water Witches. It's snappier.

I've just received two referrals. I have two problems. One: how, specifically, do I alter the query to reflect that this is a referral? And two: is it okay if a referral exceeds 350 words? See, I'm really happy with my current query letter (it's been very good to me), but if I add so much as a sente...

Hi, a general quetion I am trying to find an answer to that's impossible to get from google. If a writer once had an agent, but for wahtever reasons no is no longer repped by that agent, agent is not doing fiction anymore, didn't sell their book etc, and now writer has a new book and is querying ne...

Thanks Dixon, So I have something else for you, or anyone: say you get a full request from two agents and send the ms. on same day etc. Two weeks go by and you start feeling nuts. You want to send a quick, explanatory email about the opening pages, something that you couldn't include in your query,...

Ok here's something else, another question. If an agent requests a full and the writer sends it five days later because they're doing some tightening etc--if that's a deal breaker for the agent (though it's a kind of unwritten rule, as in it does not state this anywhere) do people think that the ag...

How long have your various pages been out now? I just sent my first partial out a week ago and I am so insecure about whether it might have gotten lost in the email but I don't want to bug the agent. Wish they would have sent me a note saying: Thank you. I received the requested materials - will be...

Ok here's something else, another question. If an agent requests a full and the writer sends it five days later because they're doing some tightening etc--if that's a deal breaker for the agent (though it's a kind of unwritten rule, as in it does not state this anywhere) do people think that the ag...

And yo, Ticonderoga, here's something else for you: Things to remember before querying: For fiction and narrative non-fiction/memoir, your manuscript must be complete and polished before you begin querying. That's from Colleen Lindsay's submissions page. It's one agent, sure, but it's direct. Compl...

Good words, Brando. And you are so right about the difficulties in communication when dealing in a faceless medium. I had no intent, whatsoever, to antagonize Blanche. And had I been having a face to face conversation on the same subject with her, I would have had the clues to see how she felt. In r...

Ticonderoga, a word for you: I think in all this haze, what's getting lost is this: if an agent requests a full via email, and you are not ready, as in in that moment, to send along the ms., what's getting lost is mere professionalism, ie, sending a note to say that you their request, are pumped, a...

Again monsieur, the point is not "to let it go". It is that if the author of something of NPP quality feels that change is still necessary, it certainly isn't beneath an unpublished author to do a bit more editing, no? Certainly, I hear publishers usually demand it. But to address your po...

You ARE kidding, right? Absolutely not. Did you even read this out loud? No. Tony Morrison, when interviewed, said that if she could she would change certain parts of BELOVED, and that thing won the nobel peace prize for lit. That's exactly my point. She let it go. She stopped improving it. She sen...