Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Baby on the Market: Submitting Queries to Publishers

I've busted my tail during the past few weeks to write a decent query and synopsis for the third MS. I have had great input from my CPs in NoVA and I truly appreciate their help.

Now I am ready to, *gulp*, query again.

People have read my work, and they say I have a good voice for BLAZE. So once again, I am querying that house first in HQN. I hope I get in past the cracked door, but I know it's a long shot. 

I spent most of the morning editing my query for BLAZE--of course they require two pages single spaced and I have, 4.5 double spaced pages. Edit... edit... edit... but I think I have a passable one now. I'm pleased with my query letter-- happy to mail it. 

After finalizing what I wanted to send to BLAZE, I checked out the websites for my next print publishers and e-publishers. I printed out their guidelines for submission and stacked them in order of query. Now I have 8 houses to query. Whew.

Next I work on getting each submission ready to mail out. And I am creating a spreadsheet for the task. My baby's ready to fly out the door. In the days ahead I will revise and polish the rest of my MS. I will also ignore the GH scores sure to dampen my day when they arrive at my door. I am filing them in the BOX and will refrain from looking at them until Sept. 09.

After I send off my submissions, I am targeting a few contests I feel will generate interest in my book. 


2 comments:

Helen Ginger said...

You have a great plan, Christine. I hope you get lots of positive responses. Waiting can be excruciating.

Christine said...

Thanks Helen! I revised my plan a bit after talking with a CP about it. I'm going to the RWA Conference, so first I'll set up my appointments with the editor/agent. As soon as I get through that process, I'll either be requested to send my story or not. If not, then on to the next people on my list and query, query, query. I figure it's two months away, so that will give me time to compile my submissions and have them ready to mail. Also, I can polish that MS a bit more :)