How to get a book agent: navigate the submissions process to land a book deal and launch your writing career!
Do you want to become a traditionally published author
What you’ll learn
- Understand what a book agent does and how they work with writers and publishing houses..
- Learnt what a book agent wants you to know about genre, the hook, the importance of reading and “comp titles”..
- Created a shortlist of agents to approach who are right for your novel, based on the resources and processes that top agents themselves recommend..
- Populated an Agent Approach spreadsheet, which will guide you through all the steps and timings of submitting to agents..
- Used Sarah’s templates to create your own cover letter and synopsis, two vital parts of the submission package..
- Worked on your mindset by examining your relationship with rejection to develop all important resilience..
Course Content
- The Introduction –> 3 lectures • 11min.
- Down to Business –> 4 lectures • 21min.
- Doing Your Research –> 2 lectures • 7min.
- Get Ready to Submit –> 2 lectures • 11min.
- The Conclusion –> 1 lecture • 4min.
Requirements
Do you want to become a traditionally published author
- But have no idea how to break into the publishing industry, which feels like a closed door.
- Or you’ve been told you need to get a book agent, but have no idea how to go about it.
Course creator, Sarah Revivis Smith, has read tens of thousands of submissions from writers just like you to top book agents over nearly ten years, and has based this course on the most common mistakes and pitfalls she sees.
Sarah has worked as a literary reader for literary prizes, top agents and literary magazines, and has discovered writers who have been published by Big 5 publishers, and gone on to win some of the most prestigious literary prizes in the UK, including the Costa Short Story Prize, the Society of Authors’ Betty Trask Prize and be listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
In this comprehensive course, which is designed to be accessible and to the point -leaving you more time for writing – Sarah covers everything you need to maximise your chances of being accepted at the top level of publishing, based on her years of experience.
You’ll learn about what works and what doesn’t work in submissions. Sarah’s work as a literary reader means she is often the first person to read a submission and therefore the first person to decide whether to reject writers, ending their dreams of being taken on by that agent, or pass them on to the book agent with a recommendation.
Through concise but information-rich lectures, downloadable course materials, templates and tools, you will be taken step-by-step through the processes of getting yourself ready to submit to agents, including:
- Understanding what a book agent does and how they work with writers and publishing houses
- Learning what a book agent wants you to know about genre, the hook, the importance of reading and “comp titles”.
- Creating a shortlist of agents to approach who are right for your novel, based on the resources and processes that top agents themselves recommend
- Populate an Agent Approach spreadsheet, which will guide you through all the steps and timings of submitting to agents
- Use Sarah’s templates to create your own cover letter and synopsis, two vital parts of the submission package
This isn’t just hours of endless theory and being spoken at; the course is designed to see you through creating your own submissions package, with a particular focus on hand-holding you through creating or refining your cover letter and synopsis.
But what also makes this course stand out is its focus on building you into a writer who believes in the importance of your writing, without sugar-coating the difficulties that come with navigating the industry.
Much of succeeding in publishing comes down to mindset, attitude and perseverance. The industry is inspirational and uplifting, but it is a business after all and gaining cut through as a new writer is, in many ways, harder than ever.
That’s why this course includes two dedicated lectures on:
- Challenging your mindset around rejection, helping you to reframe it into a learning opportunity rather than seeing it as a defeat
- Helping you understand why your story is important to build resilience that will see you through the years-long process of publishing
How to use this course:
- The lectures are short but dense, and are designed for you to watch them through in a one-hour sitting, but with a view to going back over them to pull out the detail at your own pace.
- If done correctly, the activities included will take longer than watching the course. They are designed to guide you through actually creating your submission package, rather than just talking about it and remaining theory.
Who is this course for:
- People who feel ready to start querying agents with their completed novel, or want to plan for when they’ll be ready
- People who have an idea for a novel, but haven’t started writing or are in the early stages of writing, and want to understand the process of being traditionally published
- People who have been querying agents without luck and want to see where they can change their approach