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
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
by Amber Oliver, HarperCollins I’m not much of a TV watcher, I must admit. One of my favorite lines to say to my mother whenever she asks me about a funny commercial she’s recently seen, is to say “I don’t have cable.” Despite the fact that I do have subscription services to Hulu, Netflix, Amazon … Read more
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 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
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
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
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
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
by Elizabeth Bewley and Sarah Landis Why did you make the switch from editors to agents? SL: I’ve always been someone who goes out and looks for projects. I was an editor for 15 years, and I’m excited to find great writers and to work with them over the course of their careers. EB: … Read more