Tag: query

Finding Your Family – Comparable Titles

Donna Judy Curtin Leave a comment
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

The dreaded ‘comp’ or comparative title is every querying novelist’s nemesis. You spend years writing and perfecting your novel—a book only you could have written, a story unlike any other—and then you’re asked to list the similar books.

What? Are they crazy? Of course, there is nothing exactly like your novel—that’s why you wrote it.

The trouble is—this is the business of books. If you want an agent to promote your work, if you dream of the day a publisher will commit to printing your pages and you can’t wait to see your glossy hard cover baby mingling on the shelves of your favourite bookstore, then you need to help everyone to position your book. Read more

Querying, a Procrastinator’s Past Time

Donna Judy Curtin Leave a comment

I recently learned that although I don’t consider myself to be a procrastinator, when it comes to querying, I am.

There’s always something more to do;

 

  • I need to find a publishing home for the first book before I can think about querying the second.
  • I need to complete the suggested edits to the final draft of the second book before I can reach out to the agent who made those suggestions.
  • (or my favourite) I need to have the final book of this trilogy written so I can promote all three books together.

The problem is – it’s a never ending cycle. If I am going to wait until the third book is polished, it could be another ten years before the first book is ready to query, because that’s about how long it took me to edit the first book. Read more

How I Became a Freelance Writer

Andrée Levie-Warrilow Leave a comment

I’m writing to offer you …

Yes, I’m working on a novel. And it’s coming along fine. But there’s still a long way to go until it is written, edited, published, and receiving splendid reviews and whopping cash advances from publishing houses.

Speaking of cash, I needed to generate some. I wanted to do it by writing something shorter than a great long novel. My friend suggested freelance writing. Editors are often looking for well-written articles for their magazines, he said.

Write about what interests you

OK, but what could I write about? I asked myself. I love research, I love the outdoors, and I love history. OK. My first step was coming up with an idea I thought would be fairly unique and interesting to people who also love those subjects. Once I had the idea, I fleshed out points that I wanted to cover in that article. I would return to those points later. Read more