Today's fiction market is tighter than it has ever been. Consolidation within the publishing and book distribution industries has meant that far fewer major houses take submissions. Where dozens of different houses once looked for books to publish, now only three or four remain, all with subsidiaries under them that originally were individual houses. A strikeout at one of the subsidiaries may limit your opportunities to submit that work to others under the same corporate publishing umbrella.

A query letter tells the editor many things, including whether the manuscript is suitable for the publisher's lines, whether the writer has researched both what the house publishes and what line/genre that particular editor handles, whether the writer has any previous writing experience, whether the writer has a grasp of language and grammar, and whether the manuscript fits that house's present needs.

To make the most of your first contact with any agent or editor, you want a strong sales letter to set you and your work apart from stacks of mail reaching editors every day. Your query letter sells the editor on your story idea and your ability to write it, making this initial contact extremely important.

Your well-written book proposal may sell your fiction or nonfiction book. Even after an editor wants to buy your book, your synopsis helps sell it to the buying committee and may be used by artists and copy writers to create the cover.

Because your book proposal is often the first sample of your work that an agent or editor sees, and must represent and sell the part of your book not included, it should be a showcase for your writing abilities. Our published writers will read your manuscript, or work from a synopsis/summary that you provide, to help you write or revise a synopsis to represent your work at its best.

Our experienced, published writers (many of whom were, at one time, acquisition editors) can help you present the best overview of your book idea and confirm your ability to write it. We can help you decide what features of your written work and experience are most likely to convince an editor that this is a manuscript worth reading. With proper format and accuracy of style, your query letter can impress an agent or editor with your professional approach to writing.

You want your first contact to do the best possible job of convincing an agent or editor to read your manuscript, and we can help.

Bruce Bortz is a journalist, book editor, ghostwriter, and literary attorney. He also assists writers with contract negotiations and book marketing. His clients are unpublished and published authors, and agents. Besides offering manuscript critiques as a starting point, he edits for structure, content, and grammar. He can assist with marketing plans and book proposals. He knows how to get the attention of acquisition editors. He can create and put together a proposal package that includes materials such as a query letter, book outline, author biography, polished chapter samples, marketing plan, and any other ancillary materials that will help close the sale of your book.

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D.J. Bruno. My years of experience with top literary agents can help you write your best-selling query, synopsis, and/or proposal. I'll help you avoid common mistakes, steer clear of the slush piles, and learn which agents are looking for books like yours. It's a highly competitive market out there. Let me help you make your book, your marketing material, your selling points stand out from the rest.

I specialize in nonfiction book proposals, targeting to agents (providing you with a customized contact list), and queries in all genres, especially women's lit., literary fiction, travel, health and nutrition. Recent success in selling to children's and YA publishers.

What I can do . . .

• Read your manuscript and write the materials required for submitting to agents and publishers, including proposals, queries, synopses, and bios.
• Consult with you and edit material you’ve already written.
• Research agents or publishers that are appropriate for your market, provide resources, and offer guidance.
• Research the legitimacy of agents or contacts you’ve already made.
• Prepare your manuscript for submission—i.e., format according to industry standards.
• Review and critique the manuscript to determine if it’s ready for submission.

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Faith Brynie writes and edits both nonfiction and fiction. She can assist writers with book proposals, query letters, and synopses.

In nonfiction, she specializes in science, health, medicine, and related fields. She recently contributed to the PBS series The Secret Life of the Brain, and she was the editorial director for the Patients Beyond Borders project.

In her fiction work, Faith Brynie writes and edits mainstream, literary, mystery, and science fiction stories and novels. She is the author of three published novels and has won several awards for her short fiction. She is highly experienced in critiquing novels and in providing copyediting and developmental editing services.

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Bonnie Hearn Hill is a writer-friendly editor/mentor who has helped numerous authors break into print. She teaches workshops for Writer's Digest Online Workshops and speaks at writing conferences across the country. Her workshop members have won awards (such as the Hackney Literary Prize for fiction) and sold everything from novels to nonfiction books, essays and cowboy poetry to top publishers such as Woman's Day, Cosmopolitan, Writer's Digest, Story Line Press, Santa Monica Press, and Simon & Schuster.

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Floyd Largent specializes in history, natural history, anthropology and the sciences on the non-fiction front, and speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, horror, and allied fields) otherwise.

Mr. Largent can provide publishing assistance (especially with short stories and journal articles), content development, manuscript evaluation, and mentoring services, supplemented with advice concerning manuscript mechanics, query letters, book synopses, and proposals.

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Ron Marmarelli is a specialist in nonfiction, especially biography, history, and literary journalism, with expertise in scholarly writing and documentation (MLA, Chicago/Turabian, APA). He also is experienced in editing fiction manuscripts, especially historical fiction and literary fiction, and can assist in preparation of book proposals, synopses, and queries.

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Dorrie O'Brien focuses on mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, thrillers, adventure, and horror titles. She has considerable experience with trade non-fiction. As Editorial Director of her own publishing house, Dorrie published almost 100 titles, garnering several awards in "Best Of" categories. Almost half of the titles were bought for paperback reprints, and two were optioned for TV/movies.

She has invaluable knowledge about the industry, the type of people who run it, how to work within it, and tips for getting your foot in the door. She’s reviewed, evaluated, and edited thousands of manuscripts through the years, and uses that knowledge to help her clients produce results-driven manuscripts, query letters, and synopses.

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Mark Orrin has authored ten published books. He has written door-opening queries (i.e., ones that got manuscripts solicited, at Doubleday, Jove, Algonquin, etc., plus numerous agencies) for adult suspense and sword-and-sorcery fiction, adult non-fiction (including health, medical and investigative), adult and juvenile fantasy fiction, adult inspirational.

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Arlene W. Robinson has developed and edited 200+ full-length manuscripts in a variety of genres. Arlene welcomes new or published authors as clients, and enjoys helping journalistic, business and academic writers transform their writings into marketable, polished products for mainstream readers. She also takes pride in helping non-native-English writers produce topnotch fiction and nonfiction works. .

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