Submission Advice

Adventures in YA & Children’s Publishing has an excellent article on queries, synopses and first pages. Seven agents talk about the most common submission mistakes. 

My favorite query mistake was from Katie Grimm. She advised against writing a query that "Makes you sound mentally unstable. Maybe you think you sound quirky or that you’ve really done your research, or you’re just that enthusiastic, but show your feet are on the ground and you haven’t been stalking us!"  

It reminds me of an author event I attended with Ruth McNally Barshaw. The audience was small, so we had a chance to chat with the author. (I won’t mention her name here, but she’s a friend of Ruth’s.) The author announced that the second book in a series was about to be released, and I said I was looking forward to reading it. The conversation didn’t go well after that. 

Author: You’ve read [name of first book in series]? 
Me: I’ve read all your books. 
Author: stunned silence. The look on her face said, “Oh, no. It’s a stalker.” 
Ruth (trying to help): Ann reads a lot. 

That’s right. I stalk lots of people.