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Book Review & Contest Insights from Real Reviews and Submissions

What separates great books from the rest? Below are articles with insights from real reviews and contest submissions—what works, what doesn’t, and how to improve your book. You’ll also find a wide range of articles covering writing, publishing, marketing, and more. Each article has a Comments section so you can read advice from other authors and leave your own.

Why Some Books Win Awards (And Most Don’t) — Insights From Real Contest Submissions New!

What separates award-winning books from the rest? After evaluating contest submissions across a wide range of genres, certain patterns become clear. Some books consistently rise to the top. Others, even with strong ideas and clear effort behind them, fall short. The difference is rarely dramatic—it...

What We’ve Learned From Reviewing Hundreds of Thousands of Books (And Why Most Don’t Stand Out) New!

After reviewing and evaluating books across thousands of submissions over the past two decades, certain patterns become impossible to ignore. Some books immediately stand out to reviewers. Others—even well-intentioned ones—fade into the middle or fall short. The difference is rarely luck. It comes down to...

Q & A – Querying a Literary Agent – Part 3

Welcome to the final part of this series. By now, you should be getting a good idea of what you should and shouldn’t be doing in your query letter. Just a few more questions and you will have the whole picture. I’m Pitching a Novel; Do I...

Q & A – Querying a Literary Agent – Part 2

Welcome back to part 2, let’s jump straight in with a few more questions. Do Agents Need to Know, in a Query, if I am Writing a Series? As a matter of courtesy, yes, but you could also mention that it can be a standalone book too....

Q & A – Querying a Literary Agent – Part 1

When you are ready to start contacting literary agents to represent you, the process is not quite as cut and dried as you may think. It certainly isn’t a case of keep on emailing because something positive will happen sooner or later! There are plenty...

Manuscript Rejection – Dealing With The Feedback

You’ve sent your manuscript to several agents and now the feedback is starting to come back. One thinks your characters need a bit of pizazz but your setting is perfect; another loves the story but feels your voice is all wrong. How do you deal with...

Six Steps to Getting a Literary Agent – Part 2

Welcome to part 2 of this mini-series on finding a literary agent. Without wasting any more time, let’s start with step 4. Step 4 – Introduce Yourself to Your Targets You narrowed your list down, now find them and introduce yourself. You might find your target agents...

Six Steps to Getting a Literary Agent – Part 1

You’ve written your book, or you have at least written a great book proposal and now you need a literary agent to go the next step. So, how do you get one? How do you make a good literary agent sit up and notice you,...

Top Ten Ways to Annoy A Literary Agent

Pitching for a literary agent is a tough job and it must be done right if you are to succeed. There is plenty of information available on how to approach an agent, on what they want to see and hear, but do you know how...

Writing A Selling Book Proposal

At its absolute basic, a book proposal is nothing more than a sales pitch. It is how you sell your book idea to an editor and is required if you are intending to try to sell a non-fiction book to a publisher. Publishers are in business...

How To Write The Perfect Query Letter Part 2

Once you have a well-crafted byline, the next step is creating a professional, eye-catching query letter to send directly to agents, managers and publishers. However, for your letter to be successful you need to send lots of them. An initial query letter is essential before you send your full...

How To Write The Perfect Query Letter

I have written many query letters while I was searching for a publisher and later a producer for my film work. I have tried and tested many versions of a query letter and the following is a checklist I use in my query letters today,...