Writing A Summary Sheet

September 14, 2009 Selling Your Novel

A summary sheet is a one page summarization that forms the skeleton of your proposal and contains basic information about the work on offer – size, genre, intended audience, completion date, summary logline, and the like.  It is the first thing that the editor sees when opening one of my proposals.  When done correctly, it [...]

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Knowing the Theme of Your Book

September 9, 2009 Selling Your Novel

Theme is a tough subject.  It is perhaps one of the most common reasons writers go awry in the midst of their writing.  Theme is, at its most basic, the reason you are writing the story.  It is part of our voice; your unique perspective and expression.  It is what your book is about.
Read that [...]

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The Parts of a Book Proposal

September 4, 2009 Selling Your Novel

In order to craft the most effective proposal possible, we first need to understand just what goes into a proposal and, perhaps more importantly, the purpose of each section.  Understanding how each section works in conjunction with the others is crucial to preparing a proposal that will catch an editor’s eye.
Please be aware that this [...]

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Writing a Killer Book Proposal

September 3, 2009 Selling Your Novel

I’ve had a request to do a series of posts relating to putting together a book proposal.  As the vast majority of the books I’ve sold have done so on the basis of a proposal – and I use that same proposal format for everything I do – I think such a series would be [...]

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A New (and Hopefully Very Successful) Project

August 31, 2009 Insider's View

As you’re no doubt aware by now, I’m always watching what’s going on around me, both in and out of the publishing industry, looking for ways I can expand my general readership and the success of my writing projects.  By paying attention and then reaching out when I think it appropriate, I’ve added all sorts [...]

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Selling to a Foreign Publisher – Part Five

August 21, 2009 Selling Your Novel

Our series on Selling to a Foreign Publisher continues as we draft a hypothetical query letter that we would use to try and generate some interest from our target publisher.  As I outlined in my last post, I would be about three quarters of the way done with the letter itself at this point, having [...]

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A Proposal Critique from Alan Rinzler

August 17, 2009 Craft of Writing

I read a number of writing-related blogs on a regular basis, both to keep up on what’s happening in the industry and to see what others are talking about.  One of the blogs I read is The Book Deal: An Inside View of Publishing by editor Alan Rinzler.  For those of you who might not [...]

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Selling to a Foreign Publisher – Part Four

August 14, 2009 Selling Your Novel

Once I had selected a foreign publisher and decided to approach them about the possibility of publishing some of my work, I would next need to write an introductory query letter or email to catch their attention.  Like most of what I do, I usually approach this process in a step-by-step fashion:

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