More advice on How to Hook An Agent w/ Sara Megibow

ON MY MIND by Sara Megibow

Whether you are looking for an agent to sell your book or planning to self publish a book, the ability to pitch your story is vitally important!

I'm in the middle of a whirlwind three-conference tour, so pitching is on my mind. Knowing how to condense your story into an engaging one-sentence pitch is a skill. It's an important skill and it's a difficult one! Here are five times this skill comes into play in publishing and, not to scare you, but each one of these times can be a career-influencing moment.

1) The best query letters include an engaging, unique, powerful pitch sentence. For example, "the kingdom's hero is tricked into drinking poison just days before the queen is kidnapped" is a more powerful pitch than "the kingdom's hero must go on many adventures to save the kidnapped queen." We would ask for sample pages for the first example and pass on reading sample pages for the second example.

2) A one-sentence pitch is how you would communicate to an agent, editor or fellow writer what your story is about. Meeting someone in person? Attending a pitch session at a conference? It's super important to be able to answer the question, "so what do you write?"

3) You may or may not know this, but as an agent I may take that pitch right out of your query and send it to editors when I put a book on submission. (Often I tweak it but the core of the pitch is from the query.) The editor reads your pitch and takes it to the sales meeting to decide if they will make an offer; the sales director takes that pitch to the sales team to decide how they will market the book to book buyers. The book buyers read the pitch and decide how many (if any) copies they want to acquire for their stores. Last but not least, the reader reads your pitch (aka the back cover copy) and decides whether or not to buy and read your book. This is, of course, a bit of an oversimplification, but you get the idea. Publishing is not about putting books on shelves; it's about readers buying books and reading them. Your pitch is the hook that ultimately results in readers.

4) We are seeing tremendous amounts of press right now regarding self-publishing. This explosive publishing model has its pros and cons (as does the traditional publishing model, to be fair). Writers excited to pursue self-publishing will need to know how to pitch! In fact, it will rest even more heavily on the writer to craft a compelling hook. The term "discoverability" is vital to standing out in the crowd, and learning how to communicate convincingly about your work is key.

5) Finally (maybe because I've been yapping about pitching so much on twitter recently), I've been invited to teach an online webinar for Writer's Digest this month. The workshop is called "How to Hook an Agent with your Query Letter" and will be taught on Thursday, May 26 at 1:00 EST (yes, you can still access the workshop even if you are unavailable at that particular time). For those writers interested in attending, I am looking forward to this webinar very much! I will have lots of juicy details to help those interested in pursuing traditional publishing and those interested in self-publishing. See details here:

http://www.writersdigestshop.com/product/how-to-hook-an-agent-with-your-query-letter/?r=sara
Master the pitch as this skill is the key to so many aspects of publishing!

Happy writing,
Sara

(Thanks for allowing me to share, Sara.)

Dawn Chartier
NOT AN ANGEL, OUT NOW!
WWW.DAWNCHARTIER.COM

RWA party scoop from Barbara Vey (Publishers Weekly) blog

Run over to Barbara Vey's Beyond Her Book blog....See some great RWA party insiders scoop...(plus my buddies and I are posing for a picture for her)...My eyes look closed, but yep thats me...worn out, yet still so excited to be there...

I'll post my own blog when the fog clears from my head...

http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/beyondherbook/

TIPS FROM THE SLUSH PILE BY SARA MEGIBOW

TIPS FROM THE SLUSH PILE by Sara Megibow The end of the year is a nice time to celebrate success stories!In early 2007, I read a query letter in the slush pile from a writer by the name of Sarah Rees Brennan. The query letter piqued my interest and we ended up asking for sample pages and shortly thereafter for the full manuscript.

To make a long story short, THE DEMON’S LEXICON by Sarah Rees Brennan was one of our debut novels this year and was recently named one of the Best Young Adult Books of 2009 by Kirkus Magazine. I mention all this because success stories do happen — successful authors are pulled out of the slush pile, tremendous books are bought by amazing publishing houses and these gems are read by delighted fans. Sometimes the process may seem daunting or overwhelming but as a writer-on-the-agent-hunt you are already one step ahead of the person who has already quit trying.

Hopefully this tip will help. Instead of breaking down my thoughts on query letters, I’ve decided to post the original query letter by Sarah Rees Brennan. Kristin frequently posts clients’ query letters on our website, so if you want to read more, go to the Nelson Agency FAQ page.Anyway, here it is — enjoy!

Dear Ms. Nelson and Ms. Megibow:

I am a big fan of Ms. Nelson's blog and the dedication and positive attitude obvious in every post.

I would like you to consider THE DEMON'S LEXICON, my YA urban fantasy set in modern-day England. The manuscript is complete at 75, 000 words.What would be the first word to come to mind about the runaway romance between a beautiful, headstrong woman and a darkly fascinating magician?

For Nick, it's 'embarrassing', since said beautiful, headstrong woman was his mum. 16 year old Nick has been brought up on the run from the darkly fascinating magician after things really didn't work out between him and Nick's mother. He resents his mother for the predicament they're in, and he was mostly raised by his older brother, Alan.Nick has also been brought up knowing that there are certain people who have limited magical abilities. Some of them, the magicians, increase these magical abilities by summoning demons who give them more power - in return for the magicians giving them people to possess.

The other magically gifted people have considerably less power and rely on magical trinkets and information, exchanged every month at a 'goblin market.' As the only people who know about the magicians and their victims, they do try to control things, but it's an endeavour that is not going well.Nick, who can summon demons and is pretty handy with a sword, is mostly concerned with just getting by, but his life is greatly complicated by the advent of his brother's latest crush.

Not only is she a little too attractive for Nick's peace of mind, but she has a boy in tow who bears the marks of demon possession. Added to that the fact that Nick has started to suspect that Alan, the only person in his life who he trusts, has been lying to him about a few very serious things, and not only Nick, but everybody else, are in for some surprises.

I have a popular online blog, some contacts in the writing and publishing world. I want to move ahead on this with an agent, and I also want an agent for the long term, for negotiation and guidance - in fact, everything it says on the tin - that is to say, your website.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing back from you.
Yours, Sarah Rees Brennan

Sincerely,Sara Megibow

(Thanks again Sara for allowing me to post your words of wisdom!)

Good luck to all aspiring writers and authors in the year 2010!!

Happy Holidays,
Dawn Chartier
http://www.dawnchartier.com/
http://www.thewildrosepress.com/
NOT AN ANGEL, coming out in 2010 with TWRP

K-Con 2009 was a great time, including the cute naked butt!

K-Con started on a Friday afternoon were I had lunch with Debbie, Cheryle and Jenn at Commanders Palace. Food, service and company were all awesome.

After that, I had to run back across the river to visit my mom in ICU. She was doing well, but they wanted to watch her for a few more hours just in case.

Then I went back to the hotel, signed up, and then hung out in the hospitality suite for a few hours. I volunteered with the ladies mentioned above to help with incoming fans, etc. After our deal was over, we were in the hall way and Debbie asked a very good looking man to pose with her for our treasure hunt picture. He did along with his friend who ended up taking his pants off and mooning us. Only in New Orleans!! (What is that you ask? Um, yeah it was a nice cute butt.) Deb has pictures to prove it.

The next morning I picked up Barbara Vey, Deb, Cheryle, and Jenn and we went to Cafe' Du Monde' in the Quarter. We had messy beignets, cafe' au lait, and I had hot chocolate. Yep, we made a mess. (go to Barbara Vey's blog at publishersweekly.com and you'll see us in her pictures pigging out - de-lish..). Not sure if you know it but Barbara Vey reviews books and such, and she shares tons of info on conferences too. Her site is a must.

Next we had to rush back for Diana Love's class, we made it just in time. Barbara then announced my new contract for my novel "Not An Angel". I need to get use to this, because I know my face must have turned red, purple, blue, and red again. It was sure hot as hell.

Then there was the League party. Everyone in costumes. Think, Terminator style... Lots of assassins and such... Next up was the dinner...they had so many people show up we ended up eating in the hall, but it didn't matter, we had a blast...Sherri's just a popular gal...and by the time desert came, we had more tables in the dining room.

Once we moved into the main room, Sherri was giving little gifts to all her helpers and she called me and Deb to go up there and get our gifts. I hugged Sherri, and then Diana Love tells her the news. So then Sherrilyn proceeds to announce to approx. 200 people my book news. I know, you want to know if I fainted right?? Actually, not that I can remember....(grin) I held it together, but after that, its all a blur. (grin)...

There was Q&A's with Sherri, and she gave away some top secrets to some future novels, but we were sworn to secrecy. Then my time ended after the Dark-Hunter tour. I had to visit my mom who was now moved into the regular hospital. I didn't go back on Sunday for the brunch, too much going on, but my mom sure got a kick out of my K-Con experience as did I.

Hugs,
Dawn