Consolidation within the publishing and book distribution industries has meant that far fewer major houses take direct submissions. Dozens of different houses once looked for books to publish but now only three or four remain, all with subsidiaries under them that originally were individual houses. A strikeout at one of the subsidiaries may limit your opportunities to submit that work to others under the same corporate publishing umbrella.
A query letter tells the editor many things, including whether the manuscript is suitable for the publisher's lines, whether the writer has researched both what the house publishes and what line/genre that particular editor handles, whether the writer has any previous writing experience, whether the writer has a grasp of language and grammar, and whether the manuscript fits that house's present needs.
To make the most of your first contact with any agent or editor, you want a strong sales letter to set you and your work apart from stacks of mail reaching editors every day. Your query letter sells the editor on your story idea and your ability to write it, making this initial contact extremely important.
Your well-written book proposal may convince an agent to represent your fiction or nonfiction book. Your synopsis helps sell it to the buying committee and may be used by artists and copy writers to create the cover.
Because your book proposal is often the first sample of your work that an agent or editor sees, and must represent and sell the part of your book not included, it should be a showcase for your writing abilities. Our published writers will read your manuscript, or work from a synopsis/summary that you provide, to help you write or revise a synopsis to represent your work at its best.
Our experienced, published writers (many of whom were, at one time, acquisition editors) can help you present the best overview of your book idea and confirm your ability to write it. We can help you decide what features of your written work and experience are most likely to convince an agent that this is a manuscript worth reading and representing. With proper format and accuracy of style, your query letter can impress an agent or editor with your professional approach to writing.
You want your first contact to do the best possible job of convincing an agent or editor to read your manuscript, and we can help.
Notes
Visit LiteraryMarketPlace.com for names of agents and lists of publishers. Always check an agent's references before signing a contract, and never pay a reading fee.
Also check: http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/pubagent.htm
Bruce Bortz is a journalist, book editor, ghostwriter, and literary attorney. He also assists writers with contract negotiations and book marketing. His clients are unpublished and published authors, and agents. Besides offering manuscript critiques as a starting point, he edits for structure, content, and grammar. He can assist with marketing plans and book proposals. He knows how to get the attention of acquisition editors. He can create and put together a proposal package that includes materials such as a query letter, book outline, author biography, polished chapter samples, marketing plan, and any other ancillary materials that will help close the sale of your book.
D.J. Bruno works closely with authors to develop, liven, and perfect their books and articles. She provides manuscript critiques that offer extensive feedback on every aspect of a narrative, as well as ghostwriting, developmental editing, copy editing, proofreading, and marketing (proposal, query, and synopsis development and agent contact).
A fiction writer herself, she was an editorial assistant and reader at Ploughshares, had her fiction published in various literary magazines, taught literature and grammar, and edited a range of material from memoir to erotica, biography, short fiction, poetry, travel writing, personal essays, and literary and commercial fiction. She specializes in film and photography, food and wine, nutrition, travel, psychology, memoir, and literary fiction.
D.J. Bruno is currently on leave and is not accepting new submissions until September 15th
Bonnie HearnHill is a writer-friendly editor/mentor who has helped numerous authors break into print. She teaches workshops for Writer's Digest Online Workshops and speaks at writing conferences across the country. Her workshop members have won awards (such as the Hackney Literary Prize for fiction) and sold everything from novels to nonfiction books, essays and cowboy poetry to top publishers such as Woman's Day, Cosmopolitan, Writer's Digest, Story Line Press, Santa Monica Press, and Simon & Schuster.
Carol Hegbergedits, rewrites, critiques, and proofreads speeches, short stories or collections, articles, essays, poetry, and book manuscripts. Her specialties lie in juvenile/young adult fiction, Christian manuscripts, non-fiction, and poetry. As a journalist, she has worked in various jobs on newspapers. As a freelance writer, she has had several published articles, plays and scripts, anthologies, essays, poems, and a novel, Pen Pals. Her pictorial history book, Rochelle, Illinois, was published January 2007. The Today Show selected a client's CD children’s book as one of the top ten Christmas gifts under $10 for 2005. Her professionalism includes integrity and dedication to clients and their needs and deadlines.
As a freelance editor, half of her clients have published their edited manuscripts.
Floyd Largent specializes in history, natural history, anthropology and the sciences on the non-fiction front, and speculative fiction(science fiction, fantasy, horror, and allied fields) otherwise. He's published his own e-book on fiction marketing (100 Great Places to Sell Your Short Stories, Both On and Off the Web), and is intimately familiar with technical writing, having worked as a technical writer and editor for ten years. He's also been published in most of the popular American history magazines, including American History, America's Civil War, Old West, and True West. Mr. Largent can provide publishing assistance (especially with short stories and journal articles), content development, manuscript evaluation, and mentoring services, supplemented with advice concerning manuscript mechanics,query letters, book synopses, and proposals.
Dorrie O'Brien focuses on mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, thrillers, adventure, and horror titles. She has considerable experience with trade non-fiction. As Editorial Director of her own publishing house, Dorrie published almost 100 titles, garnering several awards in "Best Of" categories. Almost half of the titles were bought for paperback reprints, and two were optioned for TV/movies. She has invaluable knowledge about the industry, the type of people who run it, how to work within it, and tips for getting your foot in the door. She’s reviewed, evaluated, and edited thousands of manuscripts through the years, and uses that knowledge to help her clients produce results-driven manuscripts, query letters, and synopses. She works particularly hard at staying in the author’s “voice,” making sure the facts and dialogue match the time period in which the book is set, and “losing” excess verbiage. She's a good mentor, hard worker, and in many cases, has ultimately become a good friend.
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Mark Orrin has authored ten published books, scores of articles and poems, and taught writing on college and university levels. A seasoned publications editor, he has also mentored numerous successful American and international authors and poets. During a career in fund raising, Mark was considered one of America's leading copywriters, copy chiefs and creative/strategic consultants. He has been listed in Who's Who In the West, Who's Who In America, Who's Who In Entertainment and The Dictionary of International Biography. His services include mentoring, critiques and evaluations, substantive editing and content development; submission materials (synopses, book proposals, query letters); ghost writing; line editing; and help with "self-agenting" your own work. His fiction focuses are sci-fi, fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, Westerns, mysteries, adolescent and children's books, action-suspense; non-fiction includes memoirs, inspirational, public issues, self-help. Mentors projects into royalty-paying (non-"subsidy") print in the general book market.
Arlene W. Robinson has developed and edited 200+ full-length manuscripts in a variety of genres since 1996. Her clients include women's fiction author Angie Daniels, sociology professor Joyce Tang and college-success guide author Josh Richardson. The true crime memoir The Twelfth Man Standing received Turner Broadcasting Network's Trumpet Award in 2002, and 'PRESSIONS: Memoirs of a Southern Cat by Edith M. Holmes, won the YOUnity Reviewers Guild Top Honor Award. Arlene welcomes new or published authors as clients, and enjoys helping journalistic, business and academic writers transform their writings into marketable, polished products for mainstream readers. She also takes pride in helping non-native-English writers produce topnotch fiction and nonfiction works.
While not a professional humor writer, she could be. Arlene lives in the Deep South with her probation officer/journalist husband and two almost-adult sons, and looks forward to the day when her human offspring venture into the world as independently as she envisions her writings springing onto bookshelves.
Herbert M. Levineis a freelance writer and editor (nonfiction). His publications include 36 books and more than 75 articles. Subjects include: American government, state and local government, world politics, terrorism, arms control, state and local government, public administration, civil liberties, gun control, illegal drugs, chemical and biological weapons, and immigration. His articles have appeared in newspapers, magazines, journals, and reference books (including an encyclopedia). He served as a consultant for book projects on counterterrorism and evaluated and edited the work of academics and former government officials for that project.
He holds a Ph.D. in public law and government from Columbia University. He taught political science for 20 years at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He has edited numerous doctoral dissertations. He advised dissertation writers on the substance and style of their work and directed them to publishing markets. Dr. Levine is an expert in APA and Chicago writing requirements.
6. Describe your project: (e.g., book, business document, dissertation)
7. Describe the level of writing or editing required: (e.g., copyediting, proofreading, content editing, fact-checking, ghostwriting, formatting)
8. Current word count of document:
9. Your deadline date:
10. Required manual of style, if any: (e.g., Chicago Manual, APA, MLA, AP, AAA, CBE/CSE)
11. Number of charts, tables, and pictures:
12. Do you need charts, tables, pictures edited/formatted?
13. Do you have a budget for the project? (Please be specific.)
14. Number of footnotes and entries in reference list:
15. Do you want to contact a particular writer/editor?
16. How did you learn about our service?
16. Attach a sample chapter/section or other important documents related to your project. Please zip large files (max 1MB)
YOUR NAME MUST BE IN YOUR SAMPLE DOCUMENT OR IT CAN BE THE FILE NAME (e.g., johnsmith.doc).
The network coordinator will forward your submission (plus any attached files) to the consultant(s) you select. If no selection is made, your submission will be forwarded to several consultants who might be a good match. Final choice of consultant is yours.
If you do not get a response within 3 hours (M-F) of submission, send a follow-up e-mail to:
Coordinator @ Airmail.net
and/or
EditingNetwork @ gmail.com
You may also use the chat button and/or leave voice mail for the network coordinator: 469-789-3030.
Allow a longer response time if you sent your submission during the weekend or after U.S. business hours.
All of the consultants listed on this site are freelance. They are located throughout the U.S. The coordinator cannot answer cost/timeframe questions for each consultant. You must go through the submission process to receive direct responses from the consultants listed on this site.
