RESOURCES FOR WRITERS

There were a few places I went for advice in the beginning of my writing and querying journey, and I'm sharing these here. I hope you find them helpful like I did!

 

QUERY LETTER HELP

​

Eric Smith's Page on how to write a query letter is fantastic. He's an agent, so he has some great advice from the thousands of query letters he's received. He gives plenty of examples and breaks down the process in a smart way. His website is also full of other information for writers. And he's kind. Which goes a long way in life.

​

Samantha Wekstein posted a Resources for Writers section with a direct link to a recommended query letter template. Great place to start and a comprehensive list of important questions to answer when creating your query.

​

Definitely take a peek at Reddit's PubTips page. If you're brave enough, you can post your draft query and have the entire community shoot it down. But I will say, just browsing the query letters and advice is educating. And pretty comical at times.

​

AGENTS

​

I used Query Tracker and absolutely love it. The data is comprised of a community of writers pitching and it becomes a fantastic research resource. It allows you to look up agents and dig into details including their website, social media handles, and what they represent. There's also comment section where other writers can post comments and answer questions like, how long does it take them to respond? Do they hand out form rejections or something more personal? It's a goldmine of info. You can also look at the data attached to each agents and see how many manuscripts they request, how fast the reject, how may writers are querying them, etc. It can be a black hole, but it tracks your queries and that fact was worth every penny of the upgrade (a mere $25 a year.) NYT Best Selling Author Sarah Penner has a great Tips & Tricks page I used to get me started that's definitely worth the look HERE.

​

Manuscript Wish List is one of my favs. So it's two-fold. There's a hashtag, and a website. I used the website which allows you to search for agents and cull through their personal wish lists for manuscripts coming across their desk. I ALWAYS fact checked against the agent's website or social media however. Some of the data was outdated, but steered me in the right direction. 

​

The Manuscript Academy is also a great resource for so many things. They not only offer consultations with agents (for a small fee), but they have a plethora of seminars, online and in person classes, and some really fun interviews with agents.