Sarah Alderson's Blog: Writing and all the bits in between - Posts Tagged "agents"
My story
Let me prefix this by saying I’m sorry. If you’re reading this and you are a writer (as in someone, published or unpublished who writes creatively), then you will probably read this and hate me. You might hate me loads, you might just hate me a tiny bit, but I think you will definitely hate me to some degree. Because I would hate me. And I like to think I’m generous and compassionate though not quite the light being that living in Bali should have made me by now.
You see, I never imagined being a writer. I didn’t staple paper together when I was 6 and write stories about fairies that lived at the bottom of the garden, I didn’t wile away time as a teenager writing angsty novels about loving and losing. Ok, I wrote some really, really awful poetry for a while which I think my ex boyfriend still has and hopefully won’t put on ebay when I’m famous. When I was about 10 I was asked to write a story about an invention – any invention that we could think of – and the page stayed blank. When I was 18 my English teacher told me not to bother applying to read English at university.
I did write other things despite these early warnings to take up maths instead; diaries, newsletters, amusing emails to friends, love letters (sent and unsent) an early blog at the start of the century, countless essays about the Renaissance, the resistance and neo realist cinema, and then once I started work I wrote millions of words of wildly creative nonsense in the form of funding reports and applications to government for large amounts of money.
I honed my creative writing on the battlefield of the British voluntary sector. And I won a lot. Anyway, the point is I never really aspired to be a writer, other than that vague notion in the back of my head to one day write a book which I think I shared with 99% of the population. Just one of those things I thought would be cool to do but which I would probably never get around to.
Then in 2009 I got sick of working and sick of living in London and my husband John and I decided that we’d pack up our lives and head off around the world with our then 3 year old daughter in tow to find a new place to live. (That trip and our new life in Bali is documented at www.canwelivehere.com). About the time we were planning our route I started having panic attacks about what I’d do for money when we settled somewhere else. I was swimming one day and I thought to myself, right, gotta earn some money, or I’m screwed, so now, who’s rich? Richard Branson, but he’s a workaholic, oooh Stephanie Meyer, she ‘s rich and all for writing about vampires with angsty faces and quiffy hair, right I’m going to write a book.
And that, really is the first part of my story.
By the time I’d swum twenty lengths I had the kernel of a story idea. Every time I got stuck I’d think ‘what if…’ and so the story expanded and evolved. Having said that I always felt like the story already existed and that I was just tapping into it and writing it down. I’ll detail my writing process in another blog post later.
I started writing Hunting Lila in June. I wrote it naively, I wrote without really knowing what I was doing as is obvious by the final wordcount of my first draft (117,000 words – I had no clue that first novesl in YA should run 60-80K max – didn’t even think to google it). I finished it in November and started editing it. Then I began sending out letters to agents in London whose names I’d culled from the Writers’ and Artists’ Handbook.
I was good at writing letters – that was something I’d honed through long practice in the work place. I sent out my submissions and then I headed off with a backpack to India. Most people find themselves in India, and I was no exception, in India I realised that I wanted to be a writer, that writing was no longer just a means to an end but something that I couldn’t imagine not doing, it was my passion. I’d have daydreams where I had to choose what limbs to lose and I’d make pacts with myself that I’d be fine if I had an accident so long as I was left with my head and my right arm. If I lost my right arm I decided and could no longer write I would just want to die.
I hit the beach in Goa and started writing again – this time the sequel to Hunting Lila. I didn’t have a book deal, I didn’t have an agent but I had this story and these characters of Lila and Alex who I couldn’t let go. They haunted me. I felt like I was betraying them in some way just leaving them hanging, their story only partly told. They would actually talk away in my head, whole conversations with me as the eavesdropper and then I’d just write it down. It was an awesome way to write a book – feet buried in the sand, looking out over the Arabian sea.
Whilst I was there, I received replies from the agents I’d posted to. I had sent 12 letters. I received 9 rejections, 3 of which claimed to really like it but had no room on their lists, and I received 2 requests to read the entire manuscript.
I emailed the full manuscript through to these two agents in utter terror. At the point of getting an agent I could suddenly see the glint of light through the trees and with it came this sense that I would die if it came to nothing. (see melodrama in every aspect of my life, not just my writing). If you’ve ever got to this stage in writing you’ll appreciate how hellish the waiting is. Those points where I’ve been waiting – for an agent to get back to me, for a publisher to respond – have been the most stressful and godawful but also most exciting moments of my life, like being in the throes of labour but not knowing if the child you’re giving birth to is going to be born with a head or without one.
Anyway, both agents came back almost instantly to ask to represent me and I found myself in the amazing position of being able to choose my agent. I spoke to writer friends and asked them what I should ask and I scoured the net. Both were highly reputable, well established with excellent track records. Both were very excited about the book. It was an easy choice for me to make in the end after I spoke with both – I chose the person I got on with the most and who had clearly read the book more than once, knew it very well, and who loved the characters as much as I did.
So I signed with Amanda at Luigi Bonomi Associates in London (who last year won Literary Agency of the Year) and have had an amazing year working with her now. Having someone to whom I can dump creative ideas on and who knows the publishing world enough to tell me what to run with and what to ditch is more brilliant than I could have guessed. I will do a fuller blog post on literary agents later.
I spent about 2 months editing my mammoth manuscript down to 85,000 words and then after several more read throughs by Amanda we thought it was ready to send out. Amanda handles the publishers. My job was to wait. And finish work on the sequel.
She sent it to the top 11 publishers in the UK – Penguin, Hodder, Simon & Schuster, Harper, Orion etc – and then we waited for three weeks. And then another two weeks. And I got a lot of rejections that made me feel like puking. It came very close with publishers whose names I could barely whisper and only then in reverential awe. It’s an almost impossible thing to get my head around still – that editors at these publishing houses read my manuscript.
In July last year I received an offer from Simon & Schuster for Hunting Lila and its sequel.
It was a good offer, especially in this day and age, for a debut author. It wouldn’t have been enough to let me give up my day job in London (though maybe go part time) but it’s enough to live well on in Bali. We celebrated a lot. I think I may have cried.
In August we were on the final leg of our journey, a road trip of California. We were staying in a beautiful house in Montecito with friends and one day I started writing a new story. This time a stand alone novel. I’ve since found that after every book I need a 6 week break, at the end of which time I’m leaping to get back in front of a computer, almost feverish and manic with the need to write. So I started this new book and it came to me very quickly, needing very little rewriting. I had it finished by October and sent it to Amanda. She loved it but wasn’t sure that Simon & Schuster having taken such a big leap of faith on a two book deal with me already would buy a third book when the first two hadn’t yet been published.
But they did. I think I woke every person in our village in Bali, screaming about that one at 6am.
It’s February 2011 now. I’ve just finished final edits of Hunting Lila with my editor at Simon & Schuster. It goes to print next month and Hunting Lila will be released in the UK this August. The sequel will come out sometime in 2012 whilst the third book, still untitled, is due for release by Simon Pulse (S&S’s paranormal imprint) in January 2012.
I write this and then I read it back and I think bloody hell, was that the easiest ride to the top ever?
It’s true right? You hate me. Just a little bit. But hopefully if you're an aspiring writer you can also draw inspiration.
Good luck on your own journey and I hope you enjoy my books.
S
You see, I never imagined being a writer. I didn’t staple paper together when I was 6 and write stories about fairies that lived at the bottom of the garden, I didn’t wile away time as a teenager writing angsty novels about loving and losing. Ok, I wrote some really, really awful poetry for a while which I think my ex boyfriend still has and hopefully won’t put on ebay when I’m famous. When I was about 10 I was asked to write a story about an invention – any invention that we could think of – and the page stayed blank. When I was 18 my English teacher told me not to bother applying to read English at university.
I did write other things despite these early warnings to take up maths instead; diaries, newsletters, amusing emails to friends, love letters (sent and unsent) an early blog at the start of the century, countless essays about the Renaissance, the resistance and neo realist cinema, and then once I started work I wrote millions of words of wildly creative nonsense in the form of funding reports and applications to government for large amounts of money.
I honed my creative writing on the battlefield of the British voluntary sector. And I won a lot. Anyway, the point is I never really aspired to be a writer, other than that vague notion in the back of my head to one day write a book which I think I shared with 99% of the population. Just one of those things I thought would be cool to do but which I would probably never get around to.
Then in 2009 I got sick of working and sick of living in London and my husband John and I decided that we’d pack up our lives and head off around the world with our then 3 year old daughter in tow to find a new place to live. (That trip and our new life in Bali is documented at www.canwelivehere.com). About the time we were planning our route I started having panic attacks about what I’d do for money when we settled somewhere else. I was swimming one day and I thought to myself, right, gotta earn some money, or I’m screwed, so now, who’s rich? Richard Branson, but he’s a workaholic, oooh Stephanie Meyer, she ‘s rich and all for writing about vampires with angsty faces and quiffy hair, right I’m going to write a book.
And that, really is the first part of my story.
By the time I’d swum twenty lengths I had the kernel of a story idea. Every time I got stuck I’d think ‘what if…’ and so the story expanded and evolved. Having said that I always felt like the story already existed and that I was just tapping into it and writing it down. I’ll detail my writing process in another blog post later.
I started writing Hunting Lila in June. I wrote it naively, I wrote without really knowing what I was doing as is obvious by the final wordcount of my first draft (117,000 words – I had no clue that first novesl in YA should run 60-80K max – didn’t even think to google it). I finished it in November and started editing it. Then I began sending out letters to agents in London whose names I’d culled from the Writers’ and Artists’ Handbook.
I was good at writing letters – that was something I’d honed through long practice in the work place. I sent out my submissions and then I headed off with a backpack to India. Most people find themselves in India, and I was no exception, in India I realised that I wanted to be a writer, that writing was no longer just a means to an end but something that I couldn’t imagine not doing, it was my passion. I’d have daydreams where I had to choose what limbs to lose and I’d make pacts with myself that I’d be fine if I had an accident so long as I was left with my head and my right arm. If I lost my right arm I decided and could no longer write I would just want to die.
I hit the beach in Goa and started writing again – this time the sequel to Hunting Lila. I didn’t have a book deal, I didn’t have an agent but I had this story and these characters of Lila and Alex who I couldn’t let go. They haunted me. I felt like I was betraying them in some way just leaving them hanging, their story only partly told. They would actually talk away in my head, whole conversations with me as the eavesdropper and then I’d just write it down. It was an awesome way to write a book – feet buried in the sand, looking out over the Arabian sea.
Whilst I was there, I received replies from the agents I’d posted to. I had sent 12 letters. I received 9 rejections, 3 of which claimed to really like it but had no room on their lists, and I received 2 requests to read the entire manuscript.
I emailed the full manuscript through to these two agents in utter terror. At the point of getting an agent I could suddenly see the glint of light through the trees and with it came this sense that I would die if it came to nothing. (see melodrama in every aspect of my life, not just my writing). If you’ve ever got to this stage in writing you’ll appreciate how hellish the waiting is. Those points where I’ve been waiting – for an agent to get back to me, for a publisher to respond – have been the most stressful and godawful but also most exciting moments of my life, like being in the throes of labour but not knowing if the child you’re giving birth to is going to be born with a head or without one.
Anyway, both agents came back almost instantly to ask to represent me and I found myself in the amazing position of being able to choose my agent. I spoke to writer friends and asked them what I should ask and I scoured the net. Both were highly reputable, well established with excellent track records. Both were very excited about the book. It was an easy choice for me to make in the end after I spoke with both – I chose the person I got on with the most and who had clearly read the book more than once, knew it very well, and who loved the characters as much as I did.
So I signed with Amanda at Luigi Bonomi Associates in London (who last year won Literary Agency of the Year) and have had an amazing year working with her now. Having someone to whom I can dump creative ideas on and who knows the publishing world enough to tell me what to run with and what to ditch is more brilliant than I could have guessed. I will do a fuller blog post on literary agents later.
I spent about 2 months editing my mammoth manuscript down to 85,000 words and then after several more read throughs by Amanda we thought it was ready to send out. Amanda handles the publishers. My job was to wait. And finish work on the sequel.
She sent it to the top 11 publishers in the UK – Penguin, Hodder, Simon & Schuster, Harper, Orion etc – and then we waited for three weeks. And then another two weeks. And I got a lot of rejections that made me feel like puking. It came very close with publishers whose names I could barely whisper and only then in reverential awe. It’s an almost impossible thing to get my head around still – that editors at these publishing houses read my manuscript.
In July last year I received an offer from Simon & Schuster for Hunting Lila and its sequel.
It was a good offer, especially in this day and age, for a debut author. It wouldn’t have been enough to let me give up my day job in London (though maybe go part time) but it’s enough to live well on in Bali. We celebrated a lot. I think I may have cried.
In August we were on the final leg of our journey, a road trip of California. We were staying in a beautiful house in Montecito with friends and one day I started writing a new story. This time a stand alone novel. I’ve since found that after every book I need a 6 week break, at the end of which time I’m leaping to get back in front of a computer, almost feverish and manic with the need to write. So I started this new book and it came to me very quickly, needing very little rewriting. I had it finished by October and sent it to Amanda. She loved it but wasn’t sure that Simon & Schuster having taken such a big leap of faith on a two book deal with me already would buy a third book when the first two hadn’t yet been published.
But they did. I think I woke every person in our village in Bali, screaming about that one at 6am.
It’s February 2011 now. I’ve just finished final edits of Hunting Lila with my editor at Simon & Schuster. It goes to print next month and Hunting Lila will be released in the UK this August. The sequel will come out sometime in 2012 whilst the third book, still untitled, is due for release by Simon Pulse (S&S’s paranormal imprint) in January 2012.
I write this and then I read it back and I think bloody hell, was that the easiest ride to the top ever?
It’s true right? You hate me. Just a little bit. But hopefully if you're an aspiring writer you can also draw inspiration.
Good luck on your own journey and I hope you enjoy my books.
S
How to get an agent
I got an agent when I was just like you (and by that I mean Googling ‘how to get an agent’ when I should have been finishing my manuscript and / or working).
I got one of the best agents on the planet in fact. OK I’m biased but she just negotiated a deal for my 4th and 5th books on manuscripts I haven’t even written yet (well one was a half-way written mess and the other was a three sentence synopsis that went something like ‘think Drive crossed with Bourne Supremacy with a really hot boy and um, it’s set in New York’) so yeah, allow me to call her the best agent on the planet.
I actually got two agents in the space of a week – both wanting to represent me for Hunting Lila. It felt like all my Christmases had come at once. I actually got to choose my agent (how cool is that?).
I remember on my first visit to my agent’s office seeing the pile of manuscripts on the desk that they’d received that week (they get 100 submissions a week – do the math – that’s 5200 a year and they take on just a handful of those.)
The submission pile was a mountain of paper reaching almost to the ceiling. It took my breath away. And knowing that my own submission had made it all the way off that pile to an editor at Simon & Schuster and then to a happy two book contract almost made me weep. I mean, I’ve never won anything before in my life (except this crappy toy Ferrari in a raffle once. I was ten years old. I’m a girl. May as well have given me herpes.)
A lot of people ask me how they can get an agent. So here’s my advice on the topic (for what it's worth). I also asked my own agent for her top tips (those are worth a lot more).
1. Buy The Writers’and Artists' Handbook.
2. Read it.
3. Finish your manuscript (no agent is going to take on a debut author without a complete manuscript).
4. Make your first sentence really count. And then make every other sentence count just as much.
5. Tailor your submission letter to each agency. Read their website, find out who you’re submitting it to. Do they represent any authors that you admire? Do you think you would be a great fit for them? If so, why? Also – get their name right. Don’t mess up your mail merge.
6. It all counts!
Remember that everything you submit – the cover letter, synopsis and sample is there to make an impression. So, the cover letter and synopsis needs to be short and simple with the cover letter saying a little about the author and the synopsis short and attention grabbing (like a book blurb) and make sure that the sample material grabs the reader’s attention from the first page – you can’t have it getting going in the third chapter, as the likelihood is that the agent will have stopped reading before then if nothing happens in the first two chapters.
7. Always SPELLCHECK.
I asked my agent what makes her fire something straight in the bin? Her answer? ‘Although we’d never fire anything straight into the bin (!), it is off-putting when there are a lot of spelling and grammatical mistakes in the cover letter and the wording doesn’t make sense!’
8. Keep it short and snappy
‘An incredibly long synopsis / covering letter is a negative – it shows that the writer is unable to self-edit. Not laying the sample material out in a manner that is easy to read – ie small, difficult to read font & not double spaced is not a good idea. And when we ask for the first three chapters, we mean the first three chapters – not the 8th, 21st and 38th [how are we supposed to see the progression if we are given three ‘random’ chapters?].’
9. Know your audience
Show that you have a clear understanding of your target readership. Your genre and your competitors. 'If the author states that they have never read a YA novel, but their submission is a YA novel, that will set alarm bells off. So obvious research and knowledge in the area that the author is writing is crucial.'
Apparently, and this surprised me, a platform (goodreads profile etc) is not essential unless you’re a non-fiction writer. ‘With regards to fiction, writing and plot is more important [obviously if they have a background or something that ties-in to what they are writing then that is great – but it isn’t the be all and end all. Once the author has a publisher, then their platform comes into play much more and needs to built up considerably (if not there) in time for publication.’
I don’t think it can hurt though to talk about a platform if you do actually have one.
Hope that's helpful to you!
Good Luck!
I got one of the best agents on the planet in fact. OK I’m biased but she just negotiated a deal for my 4th and 5th books on manuscripts I haven’t even written yet (well one was a half-way written mess and the other was a three sentence synopsis that went something like ‘think Drive crossed with Bourne Supremacy with a really hot boy and um, it’s set in New York’) so yeah, allow me to call her the best agent on the planet.
I actually got two agents in the space of a week – both wanting to represent me for Hunting Lila. It felt like all my Christmases had come at once. I actually got to choose my agent (how cool is that?).
I remember on my first visit to my agent’s office seeing the pile of manuscripts on the desk that they’d received that week (they get 100 submissions a week – do the math – that’s 5200 a year and they take on just a handful of those.)
The submission pile was a mountain of paper reaching almost to the ceiling. It took my breath away. And knowing that my own submission had made it all the way off that pile to an editor at Simon & Schuster and then to a happy two book contract almost made me weep. I mean, I’ve never won anything before in my life (except this crappy toy Ferrari in a raffle once. I was ten years old. I’m a girl. May as well have given me herpes.)
A lot of people ask me how they can get an agent. So here’s my advice on the topic (for what it's worth). I also asked my own agent for her top tips (those are worth a lot more).
1. Buy The Writers’and Artists' Handbook.
2. Read it.
3. Finish your manuscript (no agent is going to take on a debut author without a complete manuscript).
4. Make your first sentence really count. And then make every other sentence count just as much.
5. Tailor your submission letter to each agency. Read their website, find out who you’re submitting it to. Do they represent any authors that you admire? Do you think you would be a great fit for them? If so, why? Also – get their name right. Don’t mess up your mail merge.
6. It all counts!
Remember that everything you submit – the cover letter, synopsis and sample is there to make an impression. So, the cover letter and synopsis needs to be short and simple with the cover letter saying a little about the author and the synopsis short and attention grabbing (like a book blurb) and make sure that the sample material grabs the reader’s attention from the first page – you can’t have it getting going in the third chapter, as the likelihood is that the agent will have stopped reading before then if nothing happens in the first two chapters.
7. Always SPELLCHECK.
I asked my agent what makes her fire something straight in the bin? Her answer? ‘Although we’d never fire anything straight into the bin (!), it is off-putting when there are a lot of spelling and grammatical mistakes in the cover letter and the wording doesn’t make sense!’
8. Keep it short and snappy
‘An incredibly long synopsis / covering letter is a negative – it shows that the writer is unable to self-edit. Not laying the sample material out in a manner that is easy to read – ie small, difficult to read font & not double spaced is not a good idea. And when we ask for the first three chapters, we mean the first three chapters – not the 8th, 21st and 38th [how are we supposed to see the progression if we are given three ‘random’ chapters?].’
9. Know your audience
Show that you have a clear understanding of your target readership. Your genre and your competitors. 'If the author states that they have never read a YA novel, but their submission is a YA novel, that will set alarm bells off. So obvious research and knowledge in the area that the author is writing is crucial.'
Apparently, and this surprised me, a platform (goodreads profile etc) is not essential unless you’re a non-fiction writer. ‘With regards to fiction, writing and plot is more important [obviously if they have a background or something that ties-in to what they are writing then that is great – but it isn’t the be all and end all. Once the author has a publisher, then their platform comes into play much more and needs to built up considerably (if not there) in time for publication.’
I don’t think it can hurt though to talk about a platform if you do actually have one.
Hope that's helpful to you!
Good Luck!
5 things to know when pitching to literary agents
1. Make sure you’re pitching to the right agent.
Buy the Writers’ and Artists’ Handbook (in the UK). Identify those agents that rep your genre. Google them and find out what their submission guidelines are.
Check out who their clients are. This will give you an idea of how big a player they are — how much influence they have in the publishing world.
An agent with lots of high profile authors might not have as much time for you as an agent with fewer clients. On the upside a bigger agent will have more influence with publishers and be able to get your MS onto desks quicker.
Don’t go overboard with contacting every agent in the book. I contacted 12. I had 7 responses, two of which were very polite no thank yous, three of which were ‘we really think this has potential but we have no room on our list’, and 2 who wanted to sign me immediately.
I signed with the agent who I felt I had the best rapport with but she also happened to be very established with a great client list.
2. Have a complete manuscript
If pitching fiction you MUST have a complete manuscript. It must be edited to the best of your ability and as good as you can make it. Don’t waste an agent’s time by submitting a partial.
3. Keep your cover letter brief and to the point
Keep your cover letter to a maximum three paragraphs. In the first para introduce yourself briefly. Try to think of a hook about yourself — what sets you apart from the thousand other people on the slush pile alongside you. I mentioned in my letter the fact I had just quit my job and was going travelling around the world with my family to find a new place to live.
Mention any cool awards or work you’ve had published (but only if they are impressive — leave out any High School awards etc).
In the second paragraph talk about your book. Do NOT say that you think it is the next ‘Harry Potter / Hunger Games / Dan Brown’, nor that everyone you’ve shown it to thinks it’s guaranteed to become a bestseller. No surer way to send your MS to the bottom of the pile.
Detail what the genre of your book is (young adult / new adult / literary fiction / contemporary / sci-fi), how many words the manuscript is and, if for kids, what age it is aimed at.
- In the third paragraph detail how you can be contacted and why you are interested in working with that agent (without being sycophantic).
4. Follow the individual submission guidelines to the letter.
Never submit a handwritten MS. Make sure it’s formatted neatly in Arial or similar, at 12pt, with 1.5 spacing (and not on pink paper).
5. Don’t harass the agent for an answer.
They will respond if they are interested.
Sarah Alderson is repped by Amanda Preston at Luigi Bonomi Associates. She has published 5 books with Simon & Schuster UK & US and 1 book with Pan Macmillan under the name Mila Gray.
www.sarahalderson.com
@sarahalderson
Buy the Writers’ and Artists’ Handbook (in the UK). Identify those agents that rep your genre. Google them and find out what their submission guidelines are.
Check out who their clients are. This will give you an idea of how big a player they are — how much influence they have in the publishing world.
An agent with lots of high profile authors might not have as much time for you as an agent with fewer clients. On the upside a bigger agent will have more influence with publishers and be able to get your MS onto desks quicker.
Don’t go overboard with contacting every agent in the book. I contacted 12. I had 7 responses, two of which were very polite no thank yous, three of which were ‘we really think this has potential but we have no room on our list’, and 2 who wanted to sign me immediately.
I signed with the agent who I felt I had the best rapport with but she also happened to be very established with a great client list.
2. Have a complete manuscript
If pitching fiction you MUST have a complete manuscript. It must be edited to the best of your ability and as good as you can make it. Don’t waste an agent’s time by submitting a partial.
3. Keep your cover letter brief and to the point
Keep your cover letter to a maximum three paragraphs. In the first para introduce yourself briefly. Try to think of a hook about yourself — what sets you apart from the thousand other people on the slush pile alongside you. I mentioned in my letter the fact I had just quit my job and was going travelling around the world with my family to find a new place to live.
Mention any cool awards or work you’ve had published (but only if they are impressive — leave out any High School awards etc).
In the second paragraph talk about your book. Do NOT say that you think it is the next ‘Harry Potter / Hunger Games / Dan Brown’, nor that everyone you’ve shown it to thinks it’s guaranteed to become a bestseller. No surer way to send your MS to the bottom of the pile.
Detail what the genre of your book is (young adult / new adult / literary fiction / contemporary / sci-fi), how many words the manuscript is and, if for kids, what age it is aimed at.
- In the third paragraph detail how you can be contacted and why you are interested in working with that agent (without being sycophantic).
4. Follow the individual submission guidelines to the letter.
Never submit a handwritten MS. Make sure it’s formatted neatly in Arial or similar, at 12pt, with 1.5 spacing (and not on pink paper).
5. Don’t harass the agent for an answer.
They will respond if they are interested.
Sarah Alderson is repped by Amanda Preston at Luigi Bonomi Associates. She has published 5 books with Simon & Schuster UK & US and 1 book with Pan Macmillan under the name Mila Gray.
www.sarahalderson.com
@sarahalderson
Writing and all the bits in between
I have a blog at www.canwelivehere.com which documents my life living in Bali, writing, drinking coconuts, dancing ecstatically and meeting crazy people.
I have a website at www.sarahalderson.com where ...more
I have a website at www.sarahalderson.com where ...more
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