Today, I'm continuing my week-long theme from my workshop, HOW TO LAND AN AGENT: STEP BY STEP. I'm now going to share Steps 5 and 6. STEP 5: Create Agent Tiers You've finished the manuscript. Completed the query letter and/or synopsis. You've done the research. You have target agents. Now you’re ready to query. Some people say you should query widely and I agree but I think you should use the tier approach. What’s the tier approach? The tier approach strategy is what I used. … [Read more...]

This week I'll sharing notes from my workshop, HOW TO LAND AN AGENT: STEP BY STEP. Today, I'm discussing Steps 3 and 4. STEP 3: Research Agents You’ve finished your query letter and/or your synopsis. Now you’re ready to do some research. There are several ways to do this. Here are some of the places I did my research. Favorite Books/Authors I either went to my bookcase or to the bookstore/library and looked up all my favorite books or authors. I then went to the acknowledgment … [Read more...]

This week I'm sharing notes from my workshop, HOW TO LAND AN AGENT: STEP BY STEP. Today I'm going to talk about Steps 1 and 2. STEP 1: Finish Your Manuscript This is the most obvious but it bears repeating. You HAVE to finish your manuscript first. I’ve had several writer friends who write 3 chapters or 10 chapters and then send it off to an agent. They get a great response and then guess what? The agent wants to see the whole manuscript. They end up rushing to finish and lose a great … [Read more...]

All this week I'm going to post notes from my AACBWI Workshop, HOW TO LAND AN AGENT: STEP BY STEP. These are the seven steps that I implemented to get my own agent. *Post Update - March 2010* - This is how I obtained my former agent. However, when I do start querying agents again, I will definitely use these steps again. :) To kick things off, let's talk about what an agent does, dispel some myths, and alert you about red flags. What does an Agent Do? At the basic level, the agent … [Read more...]