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patticalkosz · 2 months

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Not much snow in NYC this winter… but there’s magic all around, if you look.

With illustrator @xiaostudio17 on Instagram.

#olafandessex #am querying #illustration #digital illustration #digital art #comics #web comics #cartoons #web cartoons #snow

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novlr · 26 days

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Lots of people have told me I should self publish, but I think I still want to try to go through traditionally publishing my book first. I've got a finished manuscript, so how do I go about querying agents to find the best fit?

Pitching your manuscript to literary agents is a length process that requires lots of dedication, and a great deal of research. To get the most out of your querying, you definitely need to go in prepared.

We've put together this walk through for how to pitch your novel to literary agents, including some helpful do's and don'ts at the link below!

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thalialurksalot · 3 days

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Just got my 91st manuscript rejection \o/

#am querying

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saintmachina · 23 days

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As someone who is currently querying, do you think it is necessary for me to have a social media platform as an author? I'm really bad social media and I prefer being private but I feel really pressured to join social media to promote myself (even though I don't know how to do that).

Hello, querying anon! I love answering this question and am happy to share my thoughts. Credentials: this is coming from someone who got their agent via cold querying and worked as an agent for 2.5 years. I also worked as an acquisitions assistant in audiobooks and was responsible for sourcing authors to offer deals to.

Short answer: no!

Your social media platform is really only something agents take into consideration if you're trying to publish a nonfiction book tied into an existing platform and body of work. For fiction, you're in the clear!

What I would suggest you do, however, is to grab a website domain under your author name so you have it for the future, and to throw up a short bio and a link to your newsletter on there. But Saint, you say, I don't have a newsletter yet, I don't even have that much to say. That's okay! The link is so you can nab those people who are interested in you and have a direct line into their inboxes as you have more news to share. You don't have to email out often, or even at all, in the beginning. But no matter what happens to social media platforms, you'll always have that subscriber list to leverage.

If you're really wanting to do author social media, I always told my clients to pick one platform that seemed the most manageable and the less stressful and just do updates there, but honestly, if you'd rather remain private, I think that's just fine.

The expectation for authors to be super available and "on" all the time and doing pithy discourse and canny self-promo on social media is honestly the worst. If you enjoy that and it gives you energy, great! But if you don't, you'll be just fine stepping back and allowing your work to speak for itself.

(And, I've seen multiple huge booktubers and booktokkers get book deals due in part to their presence online, and it does not have any correlation whatsoever to the success of the book, imo)

Good luck querying! I hope the perfect agent falls head over heels in love with your work!

#am querying #answered asks #writing community #traditional publishing

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goddessvicky · 5 months

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Am I alive?

Maybe. I might be. I might be trying to get BACK into Tumblr because I'm diving back into my fandom loves so I can get going on my sequel to HaWYA. Only... 5 years later? 6?

Anyway. I'm trying. Allow me to offer a pic of what we've been doing in our living room as payment for me being woefully absent for so long.

We did the painting and crown molding. Still working on getting things on the wall. Am also considering painting the ceiling gold? We'll see how I feel when the walls are completely done.

Owning a house, man. The work never ends! But it's starting to look nice to my witchy little house!

#fic #fanfic #Here and Where You Are #writing #writer #am querying #halloween #home decor #witchy vibes

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coccinelle-et-chaton · 7 months

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Publishing a novel!

Hey guys! So. I'm on the road to publishing my debut novel, titled The Gifted, which takes place in post-apocalyptic Mexico and follows three bisexual slave soldiers who get caught in the middle of a conflict between the army they serve and a militia whose objective is to emancipate them. They stumble upon a terrible weapon while fleeing to safety which, if unleashed, could mean the end of what survived of humanity. Now, chased by absolutely everyone, they must make up their minds about whether they want to serve justice, revenge, or neither. I've been querying for an agent for half a year, but with the state of the entertainment industry as it is in this, the sag-afra strike era, I am keeping my options open by looking into self-publishing because let's be honest the publishing industry ain't that far off. I'm currently doing some market research and it would mean the world to me if you could help me out by answering this poll and/or sharing it with other likeminded readers. Also. I am holding a focus group with about 10 volunteer readers in December so I would be super excited to hear from you (in the poll or via DM) if you'd like to take part. I sadly cannot pay the readers because I am hella broke haha but I'll try my best to get some sort of gift card or something, as a symbolic thank you.

Tropes are:

found family

a real love triangle is when everybody holds hands and kisses on the mouth

dystopia but not told by white people

climate change core

the future may be dire but at least it's gay af

enemies to rivals to allies to friends to lovers

can we stop colonizing Latin America for like 3 seconds?

bastard meow meow meets sadboy babygirl meets angry dumbass

The Hunger Games, Iron Widow, and Mad Max had a lovechild.

so yea 😬😬 also, here is Them™

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aletterinthenameofsanity · 29 days

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welp. dipped my toe into the agent-querying-trenches for the first time in over a year. got my first rejection of this new cycle. realized that i had lost my emotional callouses for my work being rejected. cried. blasted glee songs for half an hour. stared at ao3 debating what fandom i could sell my soul to for a glimpse at some of that sweet, sweet serotonin. fired off some emails to a couple of agents regarding a DIFFERENT manuscript of mine. shoved goldfish into my mouth. am now going to sleep because i, like any person living under this capitalist hellworld, have work in the morning, and at least i have a job in my field to be thankful about after working food service/gas station jobs for six years. am currently curled up into a ball in bed and staring at the dark ceiling contemplating life decisions and how i really shouldn't base my emotional well-being off of what strangers on the internet think and yet i will still be refreshing my email hoping for fic comments. bon appétit.

#my writing #writing process #fanfic #am querying #querying #writblr #writeblr #listen sometimes rejections suck #no screw that rejection ALWAYS sucks #I'll feel fine tomorrow but tonight is for curling up into a ball and nursing the wounds #self publishing #well we're still going ahead with getting my next book self-published so at least there's that #aletterinthenameofsanity #ao3

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lindseybyrd · 1 year

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Mood Board for upcoming novel: Cat and Crown

When a boy who kills everything he touches meets those who can raise the dead at a whim, their ability to work together may just save their nations from a war without end.

Prince Mehdi and his sister, Laila, are Givers. With a touch, they can bring a dead body back to life. The boy without a name is a Reaper. He only has to touch a living body to end that life. Neither Givers nor Reapers can die by normal means, but that doesn't mean they cannot feel pain.

The boy without a name is sent to kill Mehdi, but nothing can kill a Giver. He's captured and imprisoned in a gilded cage meant to keep him safe and confined as a war between their nations wages on. Laila is meant to be his guard and guide as Mehdi fights at the front lines of the war. But there is a deadly plot brewing within Mehdi and Laila's kingdom. And the boy without a name must decide if his loyalty is to the homeland that turned him into a monster, or to Mehdi and Laila who have only ever called him 'friend.'

#cat and crown #fantasy #novel #am querying #mood board #first time making one #it's hard to find pictures of metaphors

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transcendragon · 2 months

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I’m at the San Francisco Writers Conference today, pitching for my novel “Mage By Blood”! I made stickers out of my art of scenes from the novel for the occasion. If you’re also at the conference, then let’s say hi!

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writingvampires · 1 year

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The Tales of Sinner Sharpe: Dark Waters

Black Merc on one last mission

A Forgotten, Ancestral Homeland brought to life in memory

Magic system based on blood and birth.

Found family between men.

Island of Black Caribbean vampires

Gothic Horror on a Ship

Art by the amazing LordM_Artist.

#writeblr #The Tales of Sinner Sharpe #horror #querying #am querying #s.c. parris #trinidadian #haitian #vampires #black vampires

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patticalkosz · 2 months

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An innocent ladybug? Or the reincarnation of Han Solo?

With illustrator @xiaostudio17 on Instagram.

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novlr · 6 months

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apolline-writes · 1 year

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planning today’s work 🌥️☕️✨🐱

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sydnycvwrtes · 9 months

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congratulations on getting an agent! that’s amazing 🎉 do you mind sharing your querying journey (what was it all like? when you started, how many queries you sent, how many full requests, and other stats? things you expected about querying? things you didn’t expect? lessons you learned? etc?)? just whatever you feel like sharing 😊

Yes!

So tbh I feel like I both had an easier but longer journey. I didn't send too too many queries (in contrast to some folks) but I was querying for a long time. I started when I was 18 for reference, so I queried for almost four years exactly (3 years and 352 days lol) but I took long pauses to overhaul the novel between query batches based on any feed back I'd gotten. I sent queries in batches of 4-6 and didn't send more until I'd gotten responses from everyone from one batch.

So:

33 queries sent (I resent edited queries to the same agents 4 times which feels a little 🧍🏿‍♀️)

6 partial requests (quick bit of advice: different agents have different specific ways they want you submit. It might be annoying to reformat everything, but just do it)

4 full requests (and let me tell you, when I sent fulls to "famous" agents, I was waiting for upwards of half a year, which can also account for the time gap)

1 offer of rep (woohoo!!!!) from an agent I feel really understands my vision for the book, and will be a great representative for me when sub time comes. For revisions, I'm not having to change any plot points, just explain a little bit more stuff so they're not too grueling. Plus I write super fast and that helps lol.

I think querying for so long definitely toughened me up. I was really expecting for the first agent I queried, who I considered a dream agent at the time, to adore my book, sign me immediately, and offer no critiques before we went on sub for three seconds and scored a billion dollar deal (and I queried her TWICE because I was just that hooked up on it lmao). As you can see, that didn't happen. I got some rejections after months, and some after only a few hours. And at the begining? Oh they HURT. They hurt BAD.

And then you get another and another and another, and the sting lessens over time.

I became a lot better at being critical of myself, which I feel like is the most important skill in querying- understanding that you are going to have to make heavy edits, kill your darlings, and just overall refine you book in ways you didn't see before. Even the version I sent to the agent I signed with was far from perfect, and I'm making revisions. And that's okay. It's a step to getting published.

It... Was hard. I had a friend tell me it was just not the right time for my book and to shelve it. I think that hurt more than a rejection. But I knew I wanted to be an author, and I knew I wanted to tell these character's stories, so I just kept working. I rewrote my book more times than I can count since I started writing it at 15. It's just all a very long process, and you have to be patient, and you have to KNOW that this is what you want to do and you're going to do it.

Last weird little tidbits of advice:

I had one person read a very old copy of my book. I had no beta readers. I never hired an editor. Don't do what I did. Beta readers can help you so so much. If you can find someone willing, have them help you!!!

Query that agent! I almost didn't query my agent because they said they were a fan of beautiful prose, and I didn't think I had that. But, after mustering the courage, I finally did and look what happened. Just send the query!! The worst they can say is no!!

If you get personalized feedback from a rejection, that is still really helpful. My book is better now mostly because of my rejection feedback because it was all telling me the exact thing to work on. For me, the writing was fine, but I tended to under-explain things. I got that feedback.... A lot. And I was able to fix it and eventually get an agent (woo!)

(even though my revisions are still centered around explaining oops-)

Anyway, I hope this was helpful! I hope I was able to give you a pretty good picture of my querying time! It was... Definately something!

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goddessvicky · 9 months

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*bites nails*

Just submitted my first book for publication for the first time.

Do I expect a quick response? Fuck no.

Is my stomach still filled with butterflies and bats? YEP.

#writer #writing #author #writing is hard #publishing #am querying

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ghostjelliess · 29 days

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If you date a writer, you don't get asked if you'd love me if I was a worm, you get asked if I murdered you and sent you to Timri eše, would you find a way to come back and get revenge after five thousand years, or just, like... Forget about me?

#hurrian mythology #pre-Sumerian #mythology #wip wednesday #current wip #am querying #creative writing #writing #yes i did actually ask #he said i guessss? probably #it triggered an existential crisis #sorry babe #would you love me if i was a worm

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