Publishing Pulse 3/26/10

Upcoming QT Blog Agent Pitch Contest

Jason Yarn with Paradigm Literary Agency is judging our next contest!

The contest will open on Monday, March 29 at 12 Noon EST. Entrants will submit a one-line pitch and the first paragraph of a completed manuscript. The contest is open to all genres except short stories and romance. Mr. Yarn is accepting 100 entries.

For helpful tips, check out this article by literary agent Joanna Stampfel Volpe who guest blogged for QT on the topic of one-line pitches.

Some advice from Mr. Yarn as you prepare your submission for Monday:

Be careful if you make your one-line pitch a question. It’s not verboten, but asking me something I can answer ‘No’ to is always a dangerous thing.

Don’t be flabby – be concrete. Meaning, your pitch line shouldn’t be full of generic clichés like ‘Fate’ and ‘Doom’ without being tied to a concrete story element or character.

Your pitch should drive me to read your first paragraph and your first paragraph should make me feel like I’ll die if I don’t see more – you don’t need to tell you entire story in either part, just addict me to wanting to find out what happens next. Good luck!

Mr. Yarn will review the entries and choose up to five winners. Winners will receive a critique of their queries and first ten pages. We anticipate announcing the winners on Friday, April 9.

The New QueryTracker Success Stories

QT Member Lindsey Leavitt's debut novel, Princess For Hire, was just released by Hyperion Books. A link to her book on Amazon and a link to her original QT interview can be found on the main page of QueryTracker.net.

New success story interviews were posted for Stephanie Bowman, who recently signed with Alyssa Reuben of Paradigm Agency, and J.J. Murphy, who signed with John Talbot of Talbot Fortune Agency, LLC.

New Agents Added to the QueryTracker Database

Several new agents and publishers have been added to the QT Database recently. Check out the box labeled "New and Updated Listings" on the front page of the main QueryTracker.Net site and view their profiles for website links and genres they represent.

Tips, News & Other Interesting Info from Around the 'Net

Galen Kindley guest blogged at Terry's place and gave a QueryTracker a nice endorsement. Thanks for the shout out, Galen and Terry.

For those of you in the query stage, Chuck over at Guide to Literary Agents shared 5 Query Letter Tips.

Nathan Bransford addressed the Amazon Review Controversy this week. Amazon is reworking its review requirements to prevent negative reviews from people who have not read the books they review. He also blogged about self-publishing.

And my favorite this week was this video from Penguin UK regarding the state of publishing (Be sure not to click off before you watch the second half. It's very clever). Click HERE to view video.

Wishing everyone a fabulous weekend.

Mary