Your writing is amazing. You’ve edited your manuscript until the reflection alone will blind.

Congratulations!

But without an equally shiny submission, those agents/editors will never know about you, and that you could have been their next great author.

This course will teach you what you need to know to make a professional submission that will impress.

There will be homework! You will receive edits from the instructor as well as other class members, and you'll be expected to give feedback as well.

Please note: This class will not include synopsis writing – that would be a class by itself.

What You Will Learn:

• Finding and researching Editors/Agents
• We will be writing queries and critiquing them in class – you will leave with a professional, polished query
• Reviewing your complete submission, including formatting and what to include
• Tracking your submissions and staying organized
• Agent/Editor etiquette
• Strategies for dealing with rejection

Who Should Take This Course:

• Writers with completed manuscripts
• Writers seeking publishing contracts
• Self-published writers – a query is a solid foundation for wonderful back cover copy

Lesson Plan:

LESSON ONE: Prepare to Succeed

• Making sure you’re ready for submission
• Getting organized – creating submission folders and subfolders
• How do you know your novel is ready?

LESSON TWO: Your Query – The Bedrock of Your Submission

• The parts of a query and how to structure it
• Hooks and Loglines
• Comparing your book to others
• What’s in a name? Using names in your query
• How to boil your book down to one or two paragraphs
• Your bio

LESSON THREE: What to include in your submission and who to send it to

• Building blocks of a submission
• Email etiquette
• Where to find agents
• How to ‘vet’ agents to be sure you’re not taken advantage of
• Be clear about your goals – ranking agents

LESSON FOUR: Organizing your submissions

• Send all at once, or in groups for beta testing?
• Tools for organizing – based on your personality
• How to track your submissions

LESSON FIVE: The follow up – and etiquette in general

• Guidelines
• Social Media contact
• Do & don’t of follow up
• Simultaneous and exclusive submissions

LESSON SIX: Rejection Strategies and how to power through

• Cold, hard facts
• I am not my book
• What to do while you wait
• Be clear about your goals – and your fallback position

Teacher

Laura Drake is a New York and self-published published author of Women's Fiction and Romance.

Her romance series, Sweet on a Cowboy, is set in the world of professional bull riding.  Her debut, The Sweet Spot, was a double-finalist, then won the 2014 Romance Writers of America® RITA® award. She’s since published 11 more books and is under contract for two more. She is a founding member of Women’s Fiction Writers Assn, Writers in the Storm blog, as well as a member of Western Writers of America and Women Writing the West.

Laura is a city girl who never grew out of her tomboy ways, or a serious cowboy crush. She gave up the corporate CFO gig to write full time. She realized a lifelong dream of becoming a Texan and is currently working on her accent. She's a wife, grandmother, and motorcycle chick in the remaining waking hours.

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Reviews

Laura is the best!

Rated 5 out of 5

April 1, 2021

Writing a novel is hard, but I think writing the query is often harder! Laura gave us a ton of information and assistance and never left a single student behind. As the lagger...I’m especially appreciative. The novel I’m writing won’t be for everyone or every agent/publisher/etc, so the query had to be just right. I think we got there, even as the last seconds ticked.

Elaine Gallant

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