It’s one thing for your writer’s group to critique your story because you can pick and choose what you think is best, but this is a query letter. This decides your fate and everyone has different opinions as to how it should look. I need help
Anna Faktorovich, director
Anaphora Literary Press
5755 E. River Rd, Unit 2201
Tuscan, AZ 85750
Dear Ms. Faktorovich.
Sisters with a Secret is a 50,000 word novel that is a paranormal fantasy, young adult novel with series potential.
I’ve been writing all my life and starting a few years ago, I’ve been to numerous writers’ groups. Each of which have been extremely helpful and members have said I have improved greatly. I wrote a few articles for my school paper; interviewed people and even drew a picture for an article I wrote. I even wrote a poem assigned in school that was published in a book of poetry in 2012, Famous Poets of the Heartland.
Sisters with a Secret is about two sets of sisters discover they’re witches and have magical powers. The girls will be put them in danger if the wrong people, a group of witch-hunters find out about them. The witch-hunters had killed their mother and the girls fear the hunters will come after them. So they have to keep their powers a secret as long as possible.
Sisters with a Secret is perfect for your collection because it has fantasy, suspense and action.
This story is aimed at an audience between the ages of 12-18, however I believe this could be great for age groups who have experienced or are experiencing high school drama; homework, cheating, jealousy, breakups, or good experiences, loving someone, making friends. I plan my target audience via Facebook; others marketing plans include approaching bookstore managers before book signings.
Thank you for considering Sisters with a Secret
Please find attached manuscript
Sincerely,
Phylicia Bozzi
214 Desmond Dr
Schaumburg, IL 60193
angels2flyhigh@aol.com
847-923-0818
Here’s the link to the Anaphora Submission Guidelineshttp://anaphoraliterary.com/about/
Categorized | Affiliate Marketing 101
Help Edit My Query Letter Please?
Posted on February 28, 2013.
Are you sure you want to submit to Anaphora Literary Press? They don’t seem like a legit publisher. Many of the practices they use are not normal practices in the publishing world.
Delete the first paragraph because no one cares. Publishers and agents only want to know about the novel you’re pitching them, not your life story and especially don’t turn them off by including it at the top of the query. WOrds in a query is at a premium because you have only a limited amount of words in which to catch their attention and entice them to read pages.
When you get into what the book is about, I feel that you’re telling instead of showing. Who are your characters? What do they want? What happens if they fail? You need to answer those 3 questions in your query. THe YA paranormal market is hard to break into at the moment so make sure you show the unique parts about your novel so it’ll stand out amongst all the other paranormal queries and stand out if it’s on a bookstore shelf. Show, don’t tell, them how it’s unique.
Your novel might have fantasy, suspense and action, but what is the plot??? Never leave out the main thing a query is supposed to have – what the story is about. yeah, it’s about two sisters who are running from hunters, but there’s no detail other than that. It’s very generic and is more of a premise than plot.
Delete the last paragraph. You already said i’ts YA, so no need to repeat yourself by saying its for 12-18 y/o. The rest that comes after it – yeah, what teens don’t experience those things? Its unneeded repetition.
My advice is to read every single post on the queryshark.blogspot.com blog and read every single query in Writer’s Diggest successful queries series to get the gist of how a great query is written. Good luck!!! http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blog…
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Yeah, i wouldn’t submit there. The fact that they want “continuous” rights to your book is never a good deal. That means, you give them non-exclusive rights to publish your book and they say you can pursue other publishers so it’s a good deal for you. Um, no it’s not, because another publisher isn’t going to pick up a book that already has the rights tied up with Anaphora in a non-exclusive deal. Plus, how long do they want non-exclusive rights? Is it for duration for copyright without a reversion clause – if so, run the other way because you’ll never get your book published by anyone other than Anaphora if you give them non-exclusive rights for duration of copyright without a chance to have the full rights revert back to you. These are some thing you need to make sure of before you sign anything with them.
“However, purchases of copies of the book by authors at the 25% off from the cover price (shipping included) are very helpful in off-setting the costs of publication..”
— this is another red flag. They’re asking nicely and definitely making sure that you know you don’t have to do it, BUT so does PublishAmerica (the biggest book publisher scam currently in operation). No legitimate publisher asks you to purchase books and says it’ll go a long way in offsetting their costs (hint, hint). What they’re doing is charging you on the backend instead of the front end and I wouldn’t be surprised if they put a bit of pressure on you buying your own book (or selling to friends and family) once it’s published. Authors do get the chance to buy copies of their book from publishers (large and small), so that alone isn’t out of the ordinary, it’s the extra language they’ve added to add a bit of pressure on the authors to buy their own books. This may or may not be anything, but large publishers offer their authors steep discounts of 50% off if the authors choose to purchase more books.
Lastly, they say you have to give them names of the people to send the press release to and that you have to approach bookstores on your own if you want to be stocked there. they obviously have no distribution. Most legitimate small and large presses have distribution and the distribution company have a sales force that goes to different bookstores trying to get them to buy your book (the author doesn’t do this). This means you’re really going to have to hustle to sale to your book (which is fine if you have it in you), or you’re better off submitting to other small presses that have distribution and can get your book in bookstores. Now, there’s nothing wrong with them saying you need to handle all the marketing and promotion of your book. Most publishers require this nowadays, including the big publishers, so that part doesn’t bother me. I didn’t read further with their submissions guidelines.