Your Novel Proposal From Creation to Contract : The Complete Guide to Writing Query Letters, Synopses, and Proposals for Agents and Editors - Hardcover

And you thought writing your novel was difficult! Now you have to wade your way through query letters, synopses, outlines, agents, cover letters, proposals, and, with any luck, editors and publishers. There is an etiquette to gaining representation for your novel, and you'd be a fool not to follow it after all the hard work you've put in. Stellar agents are not exactly twiddling their thumbs waiting for the phone to ring or the mail to bring in the next batch of writers' queries; one wrong sentence or mistimed phone call (but you wouldn't really wake a sleeping agent, would you?) can foil your chances completely. Blythe Camenson and Marshall J. Cook, authors and teachers both, have enlisted published writers (Elmore Leonard, Dick Francis, Stephen King), agents, and editors to help them teach us everything there is to know about turning that manuscript into a published novel. "Getting your novel published," they warn, "will take the same sort of creative problem solving, the same determination and persistence, the same refusal to quit that you brought to writing the book." True. Except this time, you have their help. What qualifications should you include in your query letter? How do you portray a whole novel in a one-page synopsis? How long should you expect to wait for a response? Camenson and Cook cover it all. The keyword to success here is professionalism, and, if you follow the advice put forth in this book, you'll learn how to be a professional in this business, from the very first query to the "firing the agent who isn't working out" missive. --Jane Steinberg

From Chapter 1: Your Publishing Options

"Writing is not the lottery. New writers have to be realistic about what it takes to get published. But there is one similarity to the lottery: You have to play to win." --Lori Perkins, literary agent

Close to 60,000 books will be published in the U.S. this year. That's more than 160 books a day! We'll spend about twenty billion dollars buying those books. Book publishing is a big business.

Although popular fiction will account for more than half of all books sold, only about 10 to 15 percent of those 60,000 published titles will be fiction. A few fiction titles will account for a disproportionate number of sales: fifteen to twenty novels will each sell a million copies or more. In a typical year a handful of writers will account fo two out of every three novels sold. You know the names of these titans. Before you read on, see if you can name the seven writers who have dominated fiction sales in recent years.

Ready? They are in no particular order, -John Grisham
-Stephen King
-Michael Crichton
-Tom Clancy
-Danielle Steel
-Mary Higgins Clark
-Dean Koontz

No surprises there. Before you change your name to King, Clancy or Crichton, though, keep in mind that the market uncovers new and talented writers each year. Recent examples include Carolyn Chute (who had to borrow money for postage to submit her first manuscript to a publisher), E. Annie Proulx, Larry Baker and Amy Tan. Talented writers are still breaking the publishing barrier, and these folks prove it.