Publishing Pulse 10/8/10

Agent Judged Contest on The QueryTracker Blog!

We know you're dying for the new agent-judged contest (judged by literary agent Joan Paquette) but you'll have to wait for October 27th. Use that time to polish up your first hundred words and your one-line pitch! You can read the details here.

QT Speed Boost
Submitting to agents may be a long process, but at least searching for them has gotten faster. On Thursday, the QT server was upgraded. It now has double the RAM and computing power as before, making it that much faster for you to find your future agent.

Also, check out the two new success stories from the QueryTracker community!

Elle Stone http://QueryTracker.net/elles.php
Kevin Winchester http://QueryTracker.net/kevinwin.php

Around The Web:

Nathan Bransford discusses just how much work goes into making art seem effortless.

Janet Reid recommends every writer run out and buy one of the very best books on writing ever (and for what it's worth, I agree -- I've read Betsy Lerner's The Forest For The Trees twice and intend to buy the updated edition as well.)

Mario Vargas Llosa wins the Nobel Prize in literature!

Fallout from the agency pricing model for ebooks: for the first time, some ebooks cost more than their hardback siblings. This has, of course, generated a lot of commentary about the future of ebook pricing.

Literary Quote of the Week:

"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." -W. Somerset Maugham

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Jane Lebak is the author of The Guardian (Thomas Nelson, 1994), Seven Archangels: Annihilation (Double-Edged Publishing, 2008) andThe Boys Upstairs (this December from MuseItUp). At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four children. She is represented by Roseanne Wells of the Marianne Strong Literary Agency.