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Agents are a canny bunch, and usually you don’t know if they’ve so much as sniffed at your bait. You pull up your line, only to find that the minnow is gone—or dead. But once in a blue moon, you’re going to get a nibble. It usually comes in the form of an email response…

Putting together a great query letter is almost as hard as writing the whole damn book. And it’s a lot less fun. The good news is that you’ve already done the hardest part: you’ve written the pitch. At this point, you’ve identified a number of agents whose interests are arguably aligned with yours, and all…

Remember how this series started out like a little fishing trip with Grandpa? And then it turned tougher and tougher, with a load of brambles along the way, a skinned knee, and then a leaky boat, a threat of rain, and maybe the wrong tackle? Like lots of adventures, it got worse the further you…

Hoo boy. This is a big one. Some people say that all agents are the same, and the main thing is to have one. As for me, I say, “Remember that time you went fishing for walleye in Minnesota, and all you kept catching was bullheads and crappies? Did you shrug and tell yourself it…

OK, this seems simple enough: You need an agent to sell your book, so you need a book in order to find an agent. Right? Right. Except when it’s wrong. Let me explain. If you’re writing fiction, yes: you need to have your book completed. And I don’t just mean that you plowed through that…