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Should queries,

Posted: October 27th, 2012, 12:49 am
by JustSarah
By being compressed into one query letter, if your doing connected shorts? My only other option was to serialize it in a science fiction magazine.

Re: Should queries,

Posted: October 27th, 2012, 6:10 pm
by HillaryJ
Hi Sarah,

I'm not sure I understand what you are asking. Are you trying to find an agent for, or sell a collection of short stories?

Re: Should queries,

Posted: October 27th, 2012, 6:42 pm
by JustSarah
I'm wondering, if I were selling a collection of connected novellettes (Stories between 5,000-17,500 words.) would I need to query for each story, even if each story is a sequel to the previous story? Anna has a story for age eight, for age ten, for age twelve, for age fourteen, for age sixteen, and finally seventeen. Although her father is the main hero for stories 1-3.

Re: Should queries,

Posted: October 28th, 2012, 4:40 pm
by Shipple
I am not very familiar with the short story market, but I do not know of many books of short stories that sold as straight up books. The only example that came to mind was The Girl's Guide To Hunting and Fishing. From what I could find, it looked like Melissa Bank (the author) had very successful short story publications in magazines before she got that book deal.

Even if your end goal is to put all the short stories together in a book, I would think that it would make your query letter much more desirable if you'd been able to prove you can get some of the short stories published by other successful publications first. So my personal opinion is that you would probably want to query short stories individually first.

Re: Should queries,

Posted: October 28th, 2012, 4:48 pm
by JustSarah
I could always try to post it in Fantasy and Science fiction. By the way, is it weird for a short story to have a direct sequel(s)?

Re: Should queries,

Posted: October 29th, 2012, 1:10 am
by HillaryJ
JustSarah wrote:I'm wondering, if I were selling a collection of connected novellettes (Stories between 5,000-17,500 words.) would I need to query for each story, even if each story is a sequel to the previous story? Anna has a story for age eight, for age ten, for age twelve, for age fourteen, for age sixteen, and finally seventeen. Although her father is the main hero for stories 1-3.
If you are trying to query each story individually, each would need it's own query or cover letter. In my experience in the short story market, many publishers do not require full cover or query letters, particularly not those with electronic submissions.

I would advise you, if you're looking at publication of these stories, to consider the age of your intended readers. This is a wide variety of ages for the main characters. Typically, stories set within a related world are geared toward the same readership (Middle Grade, Young Adult, New Adult or Adult). This isn't so say that older readers won't read younger characters; they will.

Collections of short stories are a difficult sell, unless you have a proven audience.

Re: Should queries,

Posted: October 29th, 2012, 2:22 am
by JustSarah
I was considering making it a YA-16, as suppose to YA-13. Or there a distinction between the two?