Blog Archive
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Award for Most Interesting Pitch
Mar 23, 2010
A recent query was sent via YouTube video—well, a link to a YouTube video. Interesting. Well, the idea was interesting. I didn’t have time to click on the link or watch the video. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer a good old-fashioned query. Jessica
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To Answer Your Question
Mar 22, 2010
No, I will not consider representing you for an up-front payment in lieu of or in addition to a commission. BookEnds abides by the AAR Canon of Ethics. We abide by the Canon not because we feel like we need to be a part of AAR, but because we feel it’s the right way to […]
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Spring Fever
Mar 19, 2010
Seventy degrees and sunny in March. I have Spring fever and a pile of reading. Sounds like the perfect day to me. Have a great weekend! –Jessica
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Thought of the Day
Mar 18, 2010
There’s absolutely nothing I can do with a 500,000-word novel. If you feel you can divide it into five different novels, then do that and submit or query one at a time. There’s just no way I’m going to find a publisher for a 2,000-page book. And don’t start arguing that some novelists can get […]
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Status Updates
Mar 17, 2010
Since I’ve been posting regular updates on my status with query letters and submissions, I’ve been getting a lot of requests for status updates. So before doing another status post, let me give some tips on what you can do when requesting a status update to make an agent’s life easier. On query letters do […]
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Photos with Your Proposal
Mar 16, 2010
When a publisher asks you for a book proposal with instructions to send copies of photo’s, how should I send those photo’s? They want hard copy sent through U.S. Postal service! I’m not sure if I’m understanding your question correctly since the answer seems so easy to me. If your proposal is requested via hard […]
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Thoughts on Thank You
Mar 15, 2010
In doing Query Recaps, you’ve noticed that I get a fair number of thank-yous in response to rejections. Not a ton, but about 3 to 5 for every 100 queries I answer. There’s been a lot of discussion on agent blogs about not doing thank-yous because it simply adds more to our in-box, and I […]
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BookEnds Status
Mar 12, 2010
Happy Friday! I can’t believe it’s March 12 only and already. I’ve been reporting about how far behind I’ve been on queries, but haven’t really given you a full idea as to why. It’s because I’ve been busy, busy, busy doing those things an agent is supposed to be doing. In the first week of […]
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Pet Peeves
Mar 11, 2010
We agent bloggers often teach, or try to teach, writers how to write a stronger query. Sometimes, though, in those lessons, we also discuss our pet peeves, those things we wish writers wouldn’t do, but things that probably don’t matter all that much in the grand scheme of how an agent considers your book. So […]
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The Wrong Way
Mar 10, 2010
All agents post a lot on our blogs about the things writers do wrong in their queries. Certainly we’ve posted the “rules” for writing a query, but since we’re constantly bombarded with new and creative ways to screw up a query, those are the things that you see most frequently. After one such post of […]
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Possible Romance Idea
Mar 09, 2010
You don’t know me, but I’m a big fan of romance novels and would like to try to write one. I have a really good idea, which is to write a romance novel about [information deleted by Jessica in order to protect the author’s identity and idea]. My plot idea is that [information deleted by […]
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Finding Agents and Publishers
Mar 08, 2010
I have written a book about [insert either fiction or nonfiction subject here] and would like to know where I can find publishers or agents who handle these types of books. I get questions like this all the time emailed to the blog, in lieu of a query, or even via phone, so while it […]
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