QueryTracker Blog

Helping Authors Find Literary Agents

Friday, April 17, 2009

Publishing Pulse: Week of 4/13/09

A Big Thank You

The QueryTracker blog's first contest was a resounding success and created quite a stir. Thanks to all the agents who tweeted about it, and to Galley Cat for posting an article. It has been an uplifting experience to work with our readers, and we here at the blog can't thank you enough for your entries and support. We also want to shout out a BIG thank you to Joanna Stampfel-Volpe. She has been absolutely amazing to work with. Winners and prizes will be announced on the blog this Monday.


Agent News

Lauren McLeod joined the Strothman Agency. Ms. McLeod is drawn to highly polished literary fiction. Her specialties include young adult and middle-grade fiction and nonfiction of all types. You can also find her on Twitter.



Ethan Bassof has moved into agenting at Inkwell Management. He's looking for literary and commercial fiction, narrative nonfiction, science writing, pop culture, humor and religion books.



Congratulations to Meg Thompson for her promotion to agent at LJK Literary Management, where she has been working since its inception. She is interested in new media projects, narrative non-fiction, politics, and books on popular culture and humor.



After 18 years of experience in the publishing world, Lisa Leshne can be found at LJK Literary Management. Ms. Leshne is especially interested in non-fiction, memoirs, literary fiction and popular fiction, plus historical novels and business, political and popular culture topics.



Contests

Blooming Tree Press has announced its annual Bloom Award writing contest. This year's genre is middle Grade mystery, adventure, or who-done-it. The grand prize will include a book contract. Check out Cynthia Leitich Smith's blog for all the details.

Writer's Digest has opened its Annual Writing Competition. Entry details regarding genres, prizes, deadlines, etc., are available on their website. The grand prize winner gets $3000 and a trip to New York to meet with agents and editors.

The Knight Agency's Book in a Nutshell contest ends the 20th, so this is your last chance to enter!


Book Giveaway and Interview

Next week on the QueryTracker Blog, Carolyn Kaufman will be interviewing Steve Weber, author of Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors, Book Publicity through Social Networking. Stay tuned for details about how to win your own copy!






Blogs of Interest

AmazonFail made waves on Twitter over the holiday weekend.

Ginger Clark of Curtis Brown Literary and Talent Agency weighs in on AgentFail. Check out her comments on Gretchen McNeil's blog.

Query Fail: How Not to Land an Agent sums up everything that makes an agent hit the eject button.

Jessica Faust of BookEnds sheds light on the recent Rise in Queries.


Have a fantastic weekend!

Suzette Saxton's idea of a perfect day includes a picnic lunch, laughing children, and her laptop. When she's not writing books for kids, Suzette can be found gardening, doing finish carpentry in her home, or walking in the canyon in which she lives.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

excellent post...as always

Stina said...

Great post, Suzette! I always love the agent news, and can't wait to read the interview with Steven Weber next week. His book sounds promising. The article, Query Fail: how not to land an agent, was perfect. Follow all the points and the requests for partials and full will come. ;0)

Have a great weekend!

Suzette Saxton said...

Thanks, Christine and Stina. :)

Amanda Bonilla said...

Suzette:
Publishing Pulse is one of my favorite posts! Keep up the good work!

Anonymous said...

Does anyone know if all the confirmation E-mails for the contest have been sent out by now? I never heard if mine was received or not...

Suzette Saxton said...

No worries, Phoeflame. We received so many entries that we had to stop sending out confirmation emails. Our poor Elana had to devote two full days just to data entry. You can contact me off-list, if you'd like, and I'll verify that your entry made it.

suzettesaxton@querytracker.net

Michelle D. Argyle said...

Thanks for keep us posted!

Tess said...

Thanks so much! I look forward to the friday 'publishing pulse' post. It is always great stuff. Always :)

A.L. Sonnichsen said...

Hey Suzette,
Thanks for the great post. I'm so curious about how many submissions you actually received for Ms. Stampfel-Volpe. I guess we know what she's going to be doing this weekend - poor thing! I think I'd go cross-eyed.

Anyway, thanks again to all the QT team for making that competition happen (especially Elana!). I like having something fun to do that's different from the traditional query route. Keeps me excited about the whole (grueling) process.:)

Elana Johnson said...

I believe that most confirmation emails were sent. However, I have been receiving submissions all week - even today. For the first day (Tuesday), I responded telling the person that the contest was closed. But this got to be too much, and I simply started deleting the entries. If you submitted after 9 AM Eastern time on Tuesday, April 14, the contest was already closed.

I spent most of Tuesday copying and pasting and formatting the entries (TNR, 12 point font, before you freak out over what "formatting" means) for Joanna. They went out to her on Tuesday afternoon, and now...we're all waiting to hear!

Thanks for such a great response to our first contest. We can't wait for the next one.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Suzette--I've sent you an E-mail offlist, as you suggested. I definitely sent my initial entry within the deadline, so I was okay on that score. Look forward to hearing from you!

Anonymous said...

Suzette, your perfect day and mine sound pretty similar!

Thanks for including my blog in this week's publishing pulse. I'll be sure to check out all the other great links. Thank you!

Suzette Saxton said...

Gotcha, Phoeflame. ;)

You are welcome, Tara. Folks should be sure to check out your blog for a summary of Query Day!

http://taralazar.wordpress.com/

Rebecca Knight said...

Great post, Suzette! We love you guys and everything you do on this fabulous blog.

I participated in the new-and-improved Queryfail ("Queryday" to its friends), and had a blast! I blogged about what I learend if you guys want to check it out:

http://rebeccaknightbooks.blogspot.com/2009/04/queryday-lessons-sharing-is-caring.html.

Agents rock!

Thanks again for the awesome post!

Suzette Saxton said...

Excellent blog post, Rebecca. Thanks so much for sharing it! And one space after a period - who knew?!?

Rebecca Knight said...

Thanks, Suzette! That blew my mind, too O_o.