I’ve been on legal blogging hiatus over the holidays, but today, I’m returning with a post about the importance of following posted procedures when querying agents and publishing houses. When querying agents or publishers, it’s critical that authors follow the posted submission or query guidelines exactly. Authors are often tempted to deviate from posted guidelines, either to shoehorn multiple queries into a single cover letter, to make querying “easier,” or for other reasons. DO NOT DO THIS. EVER. Literary agents and publishing houses do not create query guidelines to make authors’ lives difficult – or even to make their own lives “easy.” (Reviewing tens of
Read morefinding a literary agent
Do Your Homework: Tips for Finding a Literary Agent
Today, we’re continuing the #Publishing Law for Writers mini-series on finding the perfect literary agent to represent your work. While not every author needs an agent–author-publishers and those who want to work only with small presses may do equally well with a lawyer’s help instead–authors who want to publish traditionally, with larger publishers, normally do better with the help of a literary agent. (However, all authors do better with some kind of legal or literary representation.) Many times, authors who want a literary agent struggle to find one. This struggle may have a variety of causes, from the author’s work not being ready for
Read moreHow to Find the Perfect Agent
Today we continue our Publishing 101 series with a look at finding the perfect agent. “Finding the perfect literary agent” starts – like everything else in publishing – with understanding the author-agent relationship. The author-agent relationship includes much more than merely selling books and negotiating contracts. In fact, a functional author-agent pair looks a lot like a business partnership, with each person fulfilling important related tasks. In addition to identifying the proper publishers (and editors within the house) and making the publishing deal, the agent often functions as the author’s sounding board and advisor. Agents provide their author clients with
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