Tip: A Truly Useful Site for Writers

The first most useful tip I want to give everyone is to explore the site

www.publishersmarketplace.com

.

Publishing is like any other industry. You need contacts. Getting an agent or getting published is like getting a job or landing a contract. So if you want these things, you need to research the industry and the companies you want to work with. Publishers Marketplace lets you do that. It has grown from a daily list of deals and gossip to a site and email service that almost everyone in publishing uses daily.

Some of the site's features are free, and many more are included for the minimal fee of $15 per month. What they offer is worth every penny. On the site, you can sign up for "Publishers Lunch," which is a free daily email of the dish on the publishing world. Besides being almost as much trashy fun as Hollywood gossip, there are interesting bits of info for anyone trying to keep up on the industry. They also report -- with good news links -- on lots of freedom of speech issues, like the Al Franken case and the edict that libraries reveal what books you have taken out when asked by the government. Almost everyone in publishing gets this email.

If you pay, you get a Web page, which is ridiculously easy to set up and maintain. This is a nice place to put your best face forward for the industry. You also get access to the list of publishing deals made every single day. You can choose to have this emailed to you, including a weekly wrap-up (which is all I ever have time for), or can just check the ongoing list whenever you want. This is invaluable because it lets you know what agents and editors are buying and selling what kind of projects. Also they have searchable archives of all these deals. So, let's say you think your writing is a lot like Neil Gaiman's. You can search the archives for his name, or maybe search on "Coraline." And up will come summaries of deals that have been made for his work, telling you who his agent is and what editor is buying his stuff. You can then know who the best agent and editor are for you to send your next query letter for your Neil-Gaiman-like novel to.

Agents and other publishing professionals also often have Web pages, so you can research those before you send out query letters, too.

I know this sounds like a commercial, and as you can see on my links I'm a member and I have a Publishers Marketplace Web page, but I swear this has been the single most useful site to me in my career as a writer.

Warning: on the lists of deals, there is ALWAYS some young newcomer who got a million dollars for his/her first book. DON'T LET IT GET YOU DOWN! Let it go, let it go . . .