So I realized I may have gotten a little carried away with last week’s post as, technically, this post is the one detailing my first round of submissions, making it the official ’1/100′ post. Oh well. We’re back on track now!
Book 1′s first voyage was off to the Meredith Bernstein Literary Agency in New York. Her agency handles a variety of literature but specializes in young adult, women’s lit, and mystery/crime fiction. Meredith Bernstein is a power house in the literary world and I’d be both extremely happy and extremely lucky if she chose to pick up my manuscript. She accepts proposals via an online submission page on her website and response time varies from 2-8 weeks.
Book 2′s first voyage was (maybe a little over ambitiously/optimistically) to the house of Curtis Brown Ltd. There are two option when you submit to Curtis Brown, either snail mail to their offices where your manuscript is then sent around to see where it might be placed, or via specific agents with their own submission requirements. I chose to send to an agent specifically because I just like the idea of a person reading my manuscript than having it passed around the office (although that might be a better way to get it read). The agent I chose was Ginger Clark, who specializes in horror, paranormal, and fantasy fiction. Response time apprx. 2 weeks.
Come back next week for the next round of submission! And if you’re interested in taking on this challenge yourself let me know and I’ll add a link to your posts on Thursdays!
Now, I have to be honest. This challenge is a lot tougher than I anticipated. It’s easy to find 100 agents/publishers, but it’s the actually submitting that’s like…painful. Something about clicking that send button on putting that envelope in the mail is just petrifying. I deleted these emails twice before sending and I only went through with it because I made myself accountable and didn’t want to disappoint my blog-friends. But it’s tough. I’m hoping that keeping this blog, making myself accountable to people other than myself will keep me from just giving up and hiding. So far it’s working…
