On the Road to a Best Seller

Woo Hoo!

Well, after many rejection letters, I have another agency that is interested in seeing more of my manuscript. So far, that puts the counts at NOs: 6, MABYEs: 2. Honestly, it's just nice to know that someone thinks my book may have a market.

In addition to being a "good news" email, it was one of the longest ever! I only excerpt highlights here.

Thank you for your query to Agency X. Based on your query form information we would like to see more.

1) Would you please send us an electronic copy of your work for further evaluation? Please email your manuscript to (address here)

2) Would you please answer these 2 questions in the body of the SAME email? (Just copy and paste the questions).

A. How long have you been writing, and what are your goals as a writer?
B. Do you consider your writing 'ready-to-go', or do you think it needs some polishing.

You may send either 3-5 chapters or the entire manuscript, whichever you are more comfortable sending. Your manuscript is completely safe within our company. We take care to properly manage all access and if we don't end up working together, we delete all files.

We believe that we are unique in that we are willing to develop an author and their talent. We like the metaphor of a "business incubator" as a description of how we will take time to bring an author's work to the proper quality level, even if it takes months to do so. We take pride in the fact that we answer every email personally within 2-3 days. Please, watch your spam filters!

Our job is to find a buyer for you, period. You may understand how a Literary Agency works, but many authors don't. As your Literary Agent, our mission is to assist you in finding a publisher and to coach you along the way in various options available to you. We don't edit, we don't illustrate, our mission is to sell for you.

As for compensation, we get paid on success only, meaning we only get paid if you get paid. Typically we will receive 10% of what you receive. We do not charge fees, so our compensation is based on success only. Along the way, we may suggest that you continuously improve the quality of your work and or how it is presented. Once your work is deemed 'presentable', then we'll start shopping it to publishers. We never promise a sale, but we can tell you that we have a model that works.

We look forward to receiving your materials.

Best regards,
Agency X

p.s. You might as well get used to these long emails. Part of our filtering process is to see if you actually read them .

Well, if they have a sense of humor, they're going to enjoy my book. :) Here's the kicker: My computer is with the fixit folks. I can't attach the file from my work computer, the filter won't let something that big through. Ugh. Gotta bug the fixit folks.

Tags: novel, writing, agents, Publishing, query letters,
rejection letters

posted by Carmen @ 9:40 AM