Submission Guidelines
Agent, Owner
Agent, OwnerFiction
- Cover letter. I like to see one as if you are writing a detailed query letter
- Short bio. As it would appear on book jacket
- Long bio. Tell me who you are! I want to know about you
- Short one-page summary of your book, a jacket blurb, about 1 paragraph
- Market analysis. Who is your target audience? BE SURE that you can answer this. Otherwise, how can you write the book
- Competitives. What books would garner the same readers as yours? 2 or 3 from within the last 5 years (the more current, the better)
- Marketing strategies. YES! The dreaded platform. It’s fine, don’t stress, but let me know how you are going to help a publisher market your book and what you are doing right now to network successfully? Not what WILL you do
- Synopsis. 2-3 single-spaced pages covering the entire story. For Love Inspired, 3-5 pages
- Emotional payload. What is the reader taking away from the story? Has he or she learned something they can apply to their lives like the characters did
- First three consecutive chapters
Nonfiction
- Cover letter. I like to see one as if you are writing a detailed query letter
- Short bio. As it would appear on book jacket
- Long bio. Tell me who you are! I want to know more about you
- Short one-page summary of your book
- Market analysis. Who is your target audience? BE SURE that you can answer this. Otherwise, how can you write the book
- Competitives. What books would garner the same readers as yours? 2 or 3 from within the last 5 years (the more current, the better)
- Chapter outline. Please, only a couple of sentences telling me about each chapter
- Marketing strategies. What makes you the right person to write about this topic? Why you and why now? And how are you reaching potential readers at this time? Not, what WILL you do. What ARE you doing now
- Felt need. The emotional payload of your book. What has your reader taken away from the book. Can they apply it to their lives
- First chapter and two more chapters of your choice
What does Linda want to see? Fiction: romantic suspense, suspense, contemporary, historic, historic romance. She does NOT handle: children’s (including YA), or speculative of any kind(at this time). Very little biblical. She also handles clean reads for the general market, but no swearing and/or graphic sexuality. She doesn’t handle projects that have already been published, including indies. Nonfiction: daily living, devotionals, but rarely memoirs, ONLY if the platform is very substantial. Also, at this time, I don’t handle any authors outside of the US and Canada.
A great proposal is done in a Word document (one attachment only) NOT as a cut and paste into the email. It will be produced in Times New Roman, 12 pt. It will be entirely single-spaced EXCEPT for the sample chapters which will be double-spaced. With 1″ margins all around, it will look professional and encourage an agent to sit up and take notice.
A great pitch/tagline included in your letter is a winning attribute if you can write one that hooks her and forces her to want to keep reading. One last little hint: give her a first page that tells her you know how to write, know how to develop amazing characters, and you have something wonderful happening. In other words, a FIRST PAGE THAT POPS! Don’t give her a chance to reject it because your first page is so slow that she’s snoozing before she passes GO.
You may email it to me directly at lglazagain@aol.com. Please ensure you put “Proposal” in the subject field. Please submit a Word .doc/.docx or .rtf only. No pdf. It will take me anywhere from a few days to a month to get back to you. If you haven’t heard anything from me by then, feel free to nudge me since occasionally, a proposal or query gets lost in the Spam folder. Please wait at least a couple of weeks before following up.