23
May
New Leaf client Macon Blair kills it at Cannes with Blue Ruin!
Weinstein Co’s Radius label nabs the NA rights to the thriller.

For more details, check out The Hollywood Reporter!

macon blair /
22
May

QUERY CONTEST—One Sentence Pitch Letter 

hsgagency:

Attention writers! If you have a manuscript you’d like us to read please send us a one sentence pitch of your novel. Include the genre as well as the age group it is written for (YA, Adult, Middle Grade, etc.) Make it tantalizing, exciting, representative of your work as a whole. Make us want to read your manuscript. Ends Friday May 24 at 5pm

Little guy doing the dance

Like, reblog, follow—get the word out!

Send to either our ask box or our assistant/Tumblr-in-Chief (dburby@hsgagency.com)

221 notes query / contest / writing /
22
May
I've won a few query crits from authors (two rep'd by agents I'd like to query), receiving positive feedback on the query and the premise of the ms, but haven't snagged a lot of agent interest. Do author and agents read queries differently? Should I rewrite my query or press on?
— Anonymous

It’s hard to say for sure. You could be writing a great query in a dead genre…or it could be something else. I’d reexamine your query and see if there’s anything you can tweak and then send out some more queries. If you’re still not getting requests (and it’s not because it’s a dead genre), rewrite it and try again.

In the even that it is a dead genre, that doesn’t mean you won’t get any requests—you just might not get as many. Start working on something else, but keep querying. 

22
May
A few months ago Suzie did the “Can you Handle the Truth” query critique contest and for my MS at the time she said: “This is a pass for me. It feels too much like an issue book and those are a tough sell. I like your pages. I'd love to see a query for your next novel if this doesn't snag you an agent.” I have another novel, if I query her again, should I mention what she said before in the contest? And also, when comparing titles to our MS, is it okay if they share only a small similarity?
— Anonymous

Yes, query her again and mention that she specifically asked you to. 

For your comparable titles it depends on what the similarity is. Sometimes for X meets X it could work. If you’re not sure, you can always say that your novel would appeal to fans of _ and _ (fill in the blanks with your comp titles, think about which readers would buy your book).

22
May
Question: When circulating a new manuscript to literary agents, is there a certain etiquette as far as contacting the agent afterward? Is it best to wait and hope or is it alright to email your perspective agent asking where they are in the process?
— Anonymous

If an agent has requested your manuscript wait 8-12 weeks and if you still haven’t heard anything, follow up with a concise and polite email in order to check.

22
May
if i plan to query you next week should i do #pitmad?
— Anonymous

Sure! 

22
May
will any of you be in #pitmad next week :)
— Anonymous

I don’t think so—next week is BEA and we have a lot going on as a result. 

22
May
Can’t make it to NYC for BEA? Join the party at Live From Book Expo, a virtual, three-day Shindig event of online author talks from the floor of BEA! Check out the stellar lineup of best-sellers (including our own NL authors Loretta Nyhan, Susan Dennard, and Cora Carmack) and RSVP for an email reminder here. For even more details, follow the BEA events on Twitter, #BEA2013 and #LiveFromBEA

Can’t make it to NYC for BEA? Join the party at Live From Book Expo, a virtual, three-day Shindig event of online author talks from the floor of BEA!

Check out the stellar lineup of best-sellers (including our own NL authors Loretta Nyhan, Susan Dennard, and Cora Carmack) and RSVP for an email reminder here.

For even more details, follow the BEA events on Twitter, #BEA2013 and #LiveFromBEA

12 notes BEA2013 /
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