We’re On A Boat! OR: The International Writer

If you haven’t yet tuned in to #MSWL’s free podcast, now is a great time to do so! Many writers worry about whether they can possibly get an agent’s attention, and sell books in the US, if they live abroad. We talked with agent Kurestin Armada (P.S. Literary) and her client, Amy Schaefer, who not … Read more

Signing With A Dream Agent + His Tips for Success

by Diana Urban, author and Jim McCarthy, agent Diana: A couple of months ago, I finished edits on a YA thriller called The Last Hour. It’s a cross between to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and Abigail Haas’s Dangerous Girls — nine teens get locked in a room and must choose someone to … Read more

Dark, Weird, and Powerful

by Ben Grange, L. Perkins Agency In my “I’d like the next” section of my MSWL page, I list three stories that to me, represent something impactful in human nature. And yeah, those three stories are in visual format, not the printed word, but if I had found their equivalent in books, those books would … Read more

Jade City: a MSWL Success Story

by editor Sarah Guan (Orbit/Hachette Book Group), Jim McCarthy (agent, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management), and Fonda Lee, author of Jade City  Sarah: I joined the Orbit editorial team toward the end of 2016, and immediately set about hunting for that perfect first acquisition as I began to build my list here. I wanted a … Read more

Our First #TenQueries Podcast!

Our first #TenQueries episode is now live! John Cusick, agent at Folio Literary, was kind enough to let us record him reacting to his inbox in real time. Just like #TenQueries on Twitter, he described what he was seeing–but you can hear in his voice when he gets surprising mistakes (and great queries!). If you’ve … Read more

Join A Live Query Discussion Group!

We’re so excited about next week’s Query Workshop! This is a new program brought to you by The Manuscript Academy, #MSWL’s educational sister project. We’re adding a new feature that we’re super excited about–small groups for live, face-to-face feedback in an educational setting. We’ll go over each query in a group up to ten, and … Read more

Persevering Through the Process

by Jennifer March Soloway, agent at Andrea Brown Literary Agency, Inc Writing is hard; publishing is even harder. There is a lot of rejection in this business at every level, and agents get rejected all the time too. It takes guts, thick skin, and sheer tenacity to keep going. However, I don’t get discouraged; in … Read more

The Making of a Bestseller: How an #MSWL Tweet Connected a Singapore-based Aspiring Writer with a Chicago-based Literary Agent and a #1 Best-Seller was Born

Jo Furniss is the author of All the Little Children, a suspense novel about a frazzled working-mum whose family gets caught up in a disaster. Danielle Egan-Miller is a literary agent and president of Browne & Miller Literary Associates. This is their story. JF: I’m a former BBC journalist, but I’ve been an ex-patriate for … Read more

Hooking An Agent

by Julie Dinneen, Agent @ D4EO Literary Literary agents get a lot of query letters – some as many as hundreds a day. They have to make quick decisions about you and your book based purely on that one-page letter and the first few pages of your novel. So how can you make yours stand out … Read more