The writer’s workshop and book fair was unbelievable this weekend.
Friday’s Sessions was About: Everything you need to know about literary agents by Chuck Sambuchino, he is the writer of the Guide to Literary Agents and Formatting & Submitting your Manuscript
He has some interesting concepts, and on his blog he announces new literary agents who are hungry for new clients so join his blog.
He also said a few other things like, 9-10 of the literary agents that you receive a rejection from, is because the agency isn’t even taking clients or don't even accept your genre of work. And you should never send queries to 2 people in the same agency. And one more thing too, if a agency kicks you a letter back after the 20th try, that means it’s time to change your query letter so you can send it out to other literary agencies….and if you’ve sent it to every literary agent possible, change your query letter and change the title of your book and then resubmit it to the literary agents. If you’re writing a series of books, don’t even start the second book until you have found an agent bc most likely they will send you back a 10-15 page rewrite to your manuscript before they will publish you, so it is redundant to write the second book if the first book will be flipped upside down and the story line gets changed.
Getting it Done:Productivity and Muse-Wrangling for Writers by Allie Pleiter, she is a romance novelist. I got her email address and asked her how she got published...it was really interesting, she has her own blog as well….apparently networking is the “in” thing now lol and she teaches people what kind of writer they are, are you a big chunk writer or little chunk writer? I’m both…lol.
How to Write a winning query letter by Cavanaugh Lee, we received three different “Winning” real query letters. So, hopefully it can give you an idea about what you should need in yours….but you should know, Laurell K Hamilton sent out 110 queries before she was ever signed, Cavanaugh Lee sent out 175 and Derek Kent, sent out almost 1,000 before he was ever signed. It’s about persistence and determination.
Writing for Children and Teens by Cynthea Liu, she is the founder of authors now and wrote a book about Writing for Childrens and Teens.
Saturdays Session was About:
Ghost stories
Thrillers
Then we went and met about 100 authors, and met about 10 authors from YA genre, who told us to sign up at the www.scbwi.org website, it costs money to enroll in the membership, but apparently it is a phenomenal way to get your foot in the literary door. Not to mention, that we should be trying to participate in every book fair and writers workshop, locally and regionally, just to get our names out there. And most of the time there are editors and agents at those larger events, and you can pitch stories and ideas to them, without having to go through a quary letter.
Then We had a workshop with the YA fiction authors, they told us about how they all got published.
And then We took one class that was called How to get published…it was about starting small instead of big, to gain a bio for your quary letter, he recommended writing for local and regional papers and journals, just so you have the experience for your bio.
I know this is a lot of info to swallow, but I’m hoping that you can benefit from making the connections via networking websites and whatnot….and of course you know about www.agentquary.com
And reading up on the submission guidelines bc each agency is different.
I hope this helps.
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