Comments on: ISBW #119 – Are You a God? / Seth Harwood Interview

By: Andrew Jack

Andrew Jack — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:54:31 +0000

I use Write It Now writing software in combination with word. Word is very powerful when it come to micromanaging a single chapter, but it’s godawful when you try to skip around your book. Write it Now is FAR from perfect, but its reasonably cheap and does what it says on the box.

Really enjoyed the interview with Seth, thanks Mur.

By: MickBordet

MickBordet — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:21:28 +0000

Just a quick point about writing long documents (i.e. novels, technical papers, etc.) in Word. There is a facility called ‘Outline View’ which displays all the headings and sub-headings in a document within a separate window. It’s far from ideal and I’ve only resorted to it at work because they have no alternatives, but if you _have_ to use Word, it will make life a little easier. It lets you click in the outline panel and jump straight to that chapter or section instantly, avoiding excessive scrolling.

OpenOffice has a similar facility called ‘Navigator’.

By: Carrie

Carrie — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:54:35 +0000

To the author who was worried about printing costs…

Yes, it is AgentQuery.com where authors can search for agents who accept email queries. Some agents ONLY accept email queries, so printing costs will never be an issue with them, and in fact unsolicited mail is thrown away without review by these agents… do your research! I love AgentQuery.com for doing research on agents… find agents who are looking for new clients, who are looking for your genre(s), all in one place. It rocks.

Next, please keep in mind that I have not yet seen even ONE agent who wants an unsolicited full printed manuscript. Each agent has his or her own guidelines that can be found on AgentQuery.com and the agency websites, and the MOST I’ve ever sent out (absent a specific request for more material) is the first 3 chapters and/or 50 pages. The vast majority of agents don’t want more than the 1-page query letter to start of with.

Here’s a quick summary of the 74 agents I’ve sent queries to:

Query letter only: 37 (50%)
Query + 1-5 pages: 18 (24%)
Query + first chapter/10-20pgs: 15 (20%)
Query + first 3 chapters/30-50pgs: 4 (5%)

Re: printing costs, only 11 of these 74 agents (15%) wanted mailed materials instead of email, and only one agent has asked me to mail additional materials after getting my initial query by email.

So, GO DO YOUR RESEARCH ON WHAT AGENTS WANT! Then worry about printing costs. (Disclaimer: this applies to novels only, not short stories, about which I know nothing.)

By: Carrie

Carrie — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:20:36 +0000

Word count = manuscript in 12pt Courier x 250???!!?!

As you and certain listeners may remember, I’m the writer who was struggling to get to 60K words, but with this method of calculation, I’d be at 68K!!! Have I been sending the wrong info to all the literary agents that I’ve been querying? I’d feel like such a cheat sending out a “word count” that was 13% higher than the actual number of counted words…

I wonder if I can write back to the agent who nixed me for having too short a novel, and ask her flat-out if this makes a difference? Sigh. I thought this was one thing I didn’t have to put that much thought into!