Nathan Bransford - The Forums

I'm procrastinating today, so I'm dreaming of the day that I have an agent - which makes me wonder: What is the agent-author relationship like for subsequent novels? Do you automatically represent/read work from your client? Do they still have to pitch the idea to you and sell you with a query /syno...

I think when it comes to critiquing manuscripts advice from unpublished authors is just as valid as from published authors because they have just as much experience READING. We are all consumers of books, and so we know when something has it. Most of us are also pretty good with grammar, syntax, etc...

Up until last month (when I bought my eReader) it was Amazon if I was planning ahead, or in the airport if I wasn't. Now it's sony store or B&N online for eBooks or in the airport.

I'm super over-confident about the "big picture" of what I'm writing... the basic premise, the plot, etc. I'm also confident on the dialogue as that is one of the things I think I excel at... however, I'm really bad at descriptions of settings, etc. Also, right now, no matter what I write ...

Joe Konrath (jakonrath.blogspot.com) lays out his sales numbers for e-Books on his novels. He writes the "Jack Daniels" detective series, which is own it's 8th or 9th book right now. For books in that series that have gone out of print (so he now owns the digital writes), he has released t...

nathan's blog post brings up a huge question, which is how long is the exclusive period? The other question that you bring up, which is a good one, is how long do you go without a reply before you consider it rejected? I personally think if an agent hasn't made the time to write me a rejection lette...

I would put forth the guess that Editors/Publishers are not willing to take a risk for more than 3 books at one time. I'm sure if you wrote a successful trilogy that was selling well, and then wanted to add #'s 4-5 in the series then you could. Why not two? Maybe b/c soem part of the author/agent kn...

From looking closely at Googlebooks, kindle store, sony estore, B&N online store, etc., you can download almost anything written before 1932 for free. So this includes things like: Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Jules Verne, Jack London, Mark Twain, Tolstoy, Proust, etc. I know these aren't a big por...

Rick - I had been waiting for them to do what they did (one way or another) ever since season 1! I mean, I can't describe how happy that ending made me (think church bells ringing, angels playing harps, and warm and fuzzy puppies doing tricks kind of happy). Personally though - season two (Bay Harbo...

Re-querying: I know in general that re-querying is a bad idea, but let's say that as a young and inexperienced author I queried about a 274 agents with a manuscript that got rejected 193 times (with 81 no replies - er... yet to be replies). Then, I went and learned a bunch of things (like how to wri...

I just read the first chapter of the "Fire in Fiction" by Donald Maass tonight... it's just about how to make your readers connect to your protagonists. I can tell it is going to be a quality read from just the first chapter. Although it might make your books cliche, it will definitely mak...

My current work in progress is turning out to be much darker and more brutal than I had originally thought. The protagonists are getting screwed over at every turn... little victory, huge loss. The side characters that are a part of their lives are getting sucked into the downward spiral and suck th...

There was an interesting article in the NY Times now about how male writers these days seem to have had their testicles removed - most literacists prefer cuddling to sex, and that they don't have the edge that a young Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, or John Updike had. They're protagonists are the type ...

In my non-expert opinion I think that the most important step is making sure to follow the submission guidelines and give them exactly what they ask for, making sure to get their name right, making sure that they looking in the genre you are submitting, etc. I don't think anyone has ever gotten stra...

We all hear about how some big name author [insert favorite rejection folklore here] got rejected 37 times on 14 different books before they landed an agent/deal/etc... and then I started reading Nathan's recent post about searching for matsutake's out of the slush pile, and was thinking about how h...