Category: Querying
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How to Write an Author Bio with No Experience
Publishers aren’t reading author bios to separate the experienced from the inexperienced. Instead, they want to know why you’re the right author for the book you’ve written. Sometimes life experience that connects to your book’s subject matter is a stronger hook.
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Answering Your Questions about Nonfiction Book Proposals
Writing a book proposal can be a daunting undertaking, but it’s necessary to get your nonfiction pitch into the hands of an agent or editor. I recently presented a webinar on crafting your nonfiction book proposal and the audience asked some insightful questions. Here’s an exploration of those and others I’ve encountered.
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Common Questions about Comp Titles
You’ve heard that you need to include comp titles in your query or book proposal, and you have questions. After a decade of polishing my comp-title skills as a publishing professional, I have answers.
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What A Literary Agent Wants Writers to Know
I asked a literary agent to sit down for an interview—an anonymous one, so they could speak with full frankness: How do you impress a literary agent? What are they really looking for in a query? In a manuscript? What factors make them decide to take an author on? What red flags scream “unprofessional”?
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Writing a Rhyming Picture Book that Publishers Actually Want
In today’s publishing landscape, rhyme is usually reserved for specific kinds of picture books. What’s more, it’s difficult to get right. Let’s dig into your questions: What kinds of picture books should rhyme? How long should a rhyming book be? How do you write a good rhyming picture book?
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Why Your Picture Book Manuscript Got Rejected
Before I was a freelance editor, I worked in house and was often the first pair of eyes reviewing manuscripts. Frequently, I knew within a few lines that a picture book manuscript wasn’t going to be suitable.
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Find Comp Titles Faster with These Publishing-Industry Tools
The same advice is often given over and over to querying authors who are seeking comp titles: talk to librarians and independent booksellers, and leverage recommendations from Goodreads and Amazon. As a publishing professional, I can suggest some tools to make the process faster and easier.
Erin Alladin 