I am a literary agent. I’ve been doing this work for the better part of four decades. When you do something and love it for as long as I have, you gain a lot of wisdom and knowledge, but you don’t lose the drive or the shrewdness. Those things only get better. I have plenty of war stories to tell, plenty of writing tips, and plenty of knowledge about things authors want to know. You won’t find a lot of this information anywhere else. If you’re looking for The Secret, this is as close as you’re going to get. Come on in.
THE MAGIC OF THE BACKLIST
When you sell a book to a publisher, they give you an advance against future royalties. Where does that money come from? A publisher has...
HIDDEN MONEY
Here’s a story about releasing money that was owed to the author. An author called me to ask why her royalties were so low. She...
FINAL OFFER
Sometimes a publisher will announce, following a normal period of negotiation, that this is their final offer. As Huck Finn would have said, that...
THE MOST IMPORTANT SENTENCE IN A NOVEL
The most important sentence in a book is the first sentence. If you don’t like the first sentence, you may not read any further. You...
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE
Let’s talk about THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, a book that most people have read. I never heard of anyone who didn’t like it. It...
HOW I WOULD FIND AN AGENT
If I were an author looking for an agent, here is what I would do. I would not just send a query and hope for...
AGENT TYPES
There are different kinds of agents. You want the one who is the right one for you, which may be different from what...
THE REAL VIRTUE
Humility is a virtue. You can be demanding, assertive, insistent, and even call rank, and still have humility. Arrogance is not a virtue and it...
THE PROS AND CONS OF SELF-PUBLISHING
Anyone can be an author today. Anyone. It used to be that someone else had to be willing to invest money in you, but no...
YOUR BIG CHANCE?
You sign up to go to a writers conference. You’re excited to land an appointment with an agent you have always admired. You prepare eagerly...
OH, DEAR, WHAT SHOULD I WEAR?
I’m thinking of the time I was sitting on an agents panel at a conference and realized that I was the best-dressed person on the...
LETTER FROM A TEN-YEAR-OLD
I once received a letter from a 10-year-old girl about a math assignment. The math teacher asked all the kids what kind of profession they...
NAME YOUR CHARACTERS WISELY
No one knew how to name characters better than Dickens. Who else would come up with a name like Ebenezer Scrooge? It sounds exactly like...
THE SECRET TO DESCRIPTION
Sometimes authors are afraid that too much description will delay the action, so they avoid it. That is a mistake. Once you have the...
MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE GODFATHER
MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE GODFATHER To me, THE GODFATHER (meaning the book and the first two movies) is an unparalleled masterpiece. It is operatic...
MY SOAPBOX ABOUT AUDIO
I have a thing about audio rights. Here’s a short history: Audio rights used to be easily retainable by the author, because no one thought...
CREATE A MYSTERY IN ONE SENTENCE
When my daughter was in second grade, she wrote a story. The first line was “It all started with ordinary carrots”. Why does that work?...
TEN SIGNS YOUR FIRST PAGE IS NOT WORKING
1. The font is tiny and single-spaced and the margins are miniscule. That lacks professionalism and tells me that you expect me to wade through something...
HOW I FIND NEW PROJECTS: A Tale of One Phone Call
I did a book a few years ago called BRAIN REBOOT: New Treatments for Healing Depression. Where did I find that book? In the slush...
LET’S PLAY DRESS-UP
This is one of my more delightful memories of my years in book publishing. My author Leslie Carroll (writing as Juliet Grey) sold a trilogy...
BACH’S SECRET
“Ceaseless work, analysis, reflection, writing much, endless self-correction, that is my secret.” — JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH That is my post for today. Bach is considered...
MANNERS
Manners matter. Here’s a story about that. When I first started in publishing, I worked with an elderly agent who was from the South. He...
THE KATE DUFFY LEGEND
There was once a wonderful editor named Kate Duffy. She did genre fiction. A story about her began to circulate many years ago, and she...
AGENT HOPPERS
No one likes an agent hopper. Someone who has had four agents in seven years is not attractive. It shows that they can’t stay put...
DON’T JUST SIT THERE
Let’s say you have a character who is stuck at the bottom of a well in the middle of nowhere. Her phone is dead. What...
WHERE ARE WE?
Setting is one of my favorite topics, because so many writers don’t use it well. Some don’t use it at all, which is a terrible...
IT’S A BUSINESS, REMEMBER?
If I were asked what is the one thing authors get wrong, it’s this. They don’t understand that publishing is a business. The second thing...
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