8 Jobs of Modern Writers–Plus One: DOGGED TRUTHSEEKER

Posted by Jody on Dec 13, 2011

8 Jobs of Modern Writers–Plus One:  DOGGED TRUTHSEEKER

Spotted an excellent essay on the consistently fine My Name is Not Bob blog by Robert Lee Brewer, in which he lists these 8 Key Jobs of Modern Writers: Writer; Editor; Copywriter; File Clerk; Negotiator; Accountant; Marketer; Speaker.  I believe Bob left out one key skill:  RESEARCHER (or, more accurately, ”Dogged Truthseeker“).

ALL writers must be master researchers. This is harder than it looks (and it looks pretty darn hard).  Today, information is everywhere and truth is hidden.  The online world is filled with hamster-wheels of mock expertise.  Yet without

Query Letters #2: That First Sentence (or, Writers, it’s Attitude Adjustment Time)

Posted by Jody on Nov 11, 2011

Query Letter Scans--It's Strictly Business

This is the Second Entry in Our Queries Series.

Literary Agents. Do. Not. Have. To. Read. Your. Query Letter.

I write this so stridently to reduce your anxiety.

Time and again I run into unpublished writers who believe, sincerely, that the literary agent’s job is to read and respond to to their unsolicited queries. This is NOT the agent’s reality.  The lit agent’s job is to effectively and collaboratively guide the careers of the clients who have hired her to represent them.  She is paid for this work, either

Query Letters: Jody’s Seven Goals

Posted by Jody on Nov 7, 2011

Don't Sweat the Query

Query letters.  Yet again.

Holy smokes there’s a lot of query letter advice out here on the World Wide Web.   

And like everything in information-overload-land, that’s good and bad–it’s terrific for writers to have easy access to models and thoughtful counsel, but at the same time I’m a little concerned about the stressing out I see–the agony over each detail in each query; and the stridency of the dogma.  As in, “All query letters must start with x, end with y, and never, never include Popsicles.” 

Query letters are crucial, don’t get me wrong.  And yes, each book pitch does have to include some standard elements, like, well, the title of the book. 

But ultimately each letter is as individual as the book that is being pitched and the author who is writing it.  So rather than trying to fit your query into someone else’s mold, I suggest you sit back, take a deep breath, scribble out a quick rough draft, and

Literary Agents and Self Publishing Q & A

Posted by Jody on Aug 10, 2011

Sue Collier, a friend and maven in the indie book world, kindly ran a a short interview with me to help promote my Writers Digest Webinar on agents and self-publishing.  The Webinar is over, and I don’t think the On Demand version is available yet (sigh), but for those interested in the topic, here’s a teaser & link to the whole thing.  I love talking about this stuff. 

Why would a happy self-publisher want an agent? A Q&A with agent Jody Rein

Sue: Ok, the big elephant in the room…Why would a happy self-publisher want an agent?

Jody: Well, you know that there are hundreds of thousands of self-publishers out there, and each one has a different story. In brief, a literary agent is a good choice for a self-publisher who hopes to publish some or all of his or her books through a traditional house, or who needs help and access to sell subsidiary rights (such as film or foreign) to his or her self-published work, or, possibly for a self-publisher who seeks career management.  The services I just listed are all in flux as I type—the whole publishing world is in the midst of a massive identity shift.

I’ve been thinking lately that what we’ll see, at least in the near future, are increasing numbers of people who jump in and out of self and traditional publishing over the course of their careers…READ MORE

Serenity Prayer for Overwhelmed Book People

Posted by Jody on Aug 4, 2011

Fess up.  I can’t be alone.  It’s just too much sometimes, isn’t it?

Because I must be informed, and it all looks so important, I subscribe to email updates from Digital Book World, Hubspot, assorted LinkedIn conversations and the TechRepublic  along with PublishersMarketplace, the Observer’s book column and the requisite NYT book& other news, along with ten or twenty other feeds.  It doesn’t matter whether the source is techno or literary–most of them make me feel like I jumped on the wrong bus–or, more accurately, like I was sitting on the right bus but the driver sneakily changed the route, so all of us folks happily chatting away in the back didn’t even notice we were on the wrong street.