meet 8 (!) amazing MG and YA book editors

Calling all aspiring MG and YA novelists! This week and next, I am posting interviews with:

Molly O’Neill of HarperCollins
Brian Farrey of Flux
Joy Peskin of Viking
Anica Rissi of Simon Pulse
Madeline Smoot of CBAY Books
Miriam Hees of Blooming Tree Press
Reka Simonsen of Henry Holt
and
Jim Thomas of Random House

Come check out these truly awesome editors at --

http://community.livejournal.com/classof2k9/

How to Land an Agent

Wheras almost every debut author I've met this year got their book contract through an agent, and

Wheras most writers freak when they hear the word query, and

Wheras it's mind boggling to get started,

Let it be resolved that taking a class will de-mystify the process.

(I worked on bills for two legislative sessions in Honolulu...at least that's my excuse for this)

Anyway, if you're interested, Writer's Digest is offering a Webinar on How to Land an Agent.
www.writersdigest.com/webinars

Check it out!

Up next...a profile of a young, hungry agent that presented at last weeks SCBWI Handsprings Conference in New Mexico.

Query Letters Part III

You're ready to find an agent, but...

Did you complete Part I and Part II? No?

Go to jail, do not pass Go, and do not collect 200 dollars.

I'm serious. Don't start hunting for an agent until you've written a killer query.

Oh. You did that already?

Hooray!

Start the search at www.agentquery.com Here you can search by genre, which saves time. Some agents share their likes and dislikes, plus some of the books they represent.

publishersmarketplace.com lists agents that are actively seeking clients. The list changes often, so keep checking back. For a fee, you can subscribe to Publisher's Lunch. PL provides info on all the current deals between agents and publishing houses, including a short description of each book sold, which gives you a sense of an agent's tastes.

Writer's Digest's blog Guide to Literary Agents is another excellent resource. guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/ The archives are chock full of interviews with agents. The blog also announces conferences where agents will attend.

Once you narrow down your list, the Google will lead you to other interviews with your prospective agent, which will help you refine and personalize your query letter.

Always check the credentials of your prospective agent at Preditors and Editors. anotherealm.com/prededitors/

Good luck!

Query Letters Part II

Ack! It's been over two weeks since I wrote anything on query letters. Blame my To Do list. It's grown (or is that groan) to three pages!

So you've been to Nathan Bransford's blog about query letters (see previous post), and taken a stab at writing one. You've deleted the first ten tries, but number eleven isn't half bad. Or is it?

How can you tell?

If you don't mind making your query letter "public," you can have it critiqued for free at:

http://evileditor.blogspot.com

or at

http://queryshark.blogspot.com

For those who aren't up for a public critique, read through the archives to check out other writer's queries. You can see my attempt for My Invented Life here (You have to scroll to Face Lift 314 about half way down):

http://evileditor.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html

It's bad. I know.

Did I mention that I suck at queries?

Query Letters

I was talking to a self-published author friend of mine, and he commented that most agents don't accept submissions, so everything was hopeless, blah, blah, blah.

True or False?

True, most (if not all) agents don't accept full manuscripts. But...
most agents accept queries.

So get off your duff and write one!
Except ten out of twelve writers agree that writing a killer query letter is harder than writing a novel.

What goes in a killer query letter?

1. An introductory paragraph about why you're approaching this particular agent.
2. A synopsis
3. A paragraph about you

IM (not so) HO the best queries fit on a single page, especially when querying agents that represent MG and YA.

For help on writing a query letter, visit literary agent Nathan Bransford's two part blog titled the anatomy of a query letter:

nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2006/11/anatomy-of-good-query-letter.html

AND

nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2007/05/anatomy-of-good-query-letter-ii.html

Next up:
How to get your query letter critiqued
Where to send your query letter
Tips on submitting query letters

Stay tuned.

Submitting: Editor vs. Agent

After finishing* (see footnote) my first novel, I joined SCBWI, and submitted to editors listed in their newsletter. And I bought a copy of the Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market to find more editors that might be interested in my book.

I did this for years.

Send a letter plus three chapters, check the mail box daily, open rejection letter, cry...rinse and repeat.

And guess what?

I survived. But I didn't get my book deal that way. And most of the 2009 debut authors I've met didn't get their book deals that way either.

After years of submitting, I switched camps. I firmly, vigorously, most vociferously insist that you (first purge all the superfluous adverbs from your mss and then) query agents instead of editors because--

-an agent will give you access to editors that don't take unagented submissions
(like mine)
- an agent will often help you improve your mss and your pitch
- an agent will negotiate a better deal for you
- many slushpile submissions to editors are read by an underpaid assistant
- some editors want to read through their slushpile, but never get around to it

An aside: Don't submit to both. Many agents won't (joyfully) represent a mss that has been submitted all over the place...and rejected.

* And now for the footnote:
How do you know when your mss is finished?
I'll present my thoughts on topic in my next blog.

So please come back.