If you've had your finished
book workshopped, shown it to family and friends, maybe to other
writers, and while they may love it, you've got the nagging feeling
that there's still some work to do on it yet.
Perhaps you've been sending
the first 3 chapters & synopsis to the appropriate agents and
publishers who have similar books out. No one's nibbling at your
masterpiece. You don't know why, and they're not sharing.
I've been there and done that!
If you knew what was
wrong, you'd fix the problems and try, try again.
Rejections happen for a
reason. Whatever the reason, an editor usually spots it right away
in the opening pages. She doesn't have the time to explain why, just
sends a polite (one would hope!) form rejection and moves on to the
next submission in the slush pile.
If that sounds familiar, then
I'll look at your opening pages. Not your prologue, but the opening
pages of the first chapter.
You may not like what you
hear, but I will be honest. I'll tell you the same thing an
acquisitions editor would tell you.
Make sure to clean up obvious
problems: use the spell check and correct punctuation. Manuscripts
get rejected because of basics like that. Writers who think a great
story will overcome such details never sell books.
Critique Rates
My opinion is free, but my
time to write one is worth money.
Cost is .0075 a word, 1500 word
minimum, no more than 2000 words.
That's about 6-8
double-spaced manuscript pages.
Industry definition
of a "page" is 250 words. It never comes out quite that neatly, so I
charge by the word.
So your rate will be
$11.25-$15.00
A 1,557-word submission will
be $11.67.
No, do not include
the title or your name in the count.
Round off to the end of a
sentence, don't stop in the middle just to get the 1500-word
minimum. It's just 75% of a penny, after all. ;-)
I'll need to look at your
synopsis, which should be formatted to:
- 2-3 page single-space
- double-space between paragraphs
- 1-inch margins
- 12-point font (I prefer Times New
Roman
That's industry
standard, so don't shrink to fit. If your synopsis won't fit, rework
it until it does.
No charge for my
reading the
synopsis. Include it as a separate file.
Critiques are
confidential.
Your file is deleted
when the critique is completed.
Don't think that 1500
words is a fair enough length? Think again. Most books sell from the
first page, sometimes from the first line.
If you hook a reader
on those first pages, they will follow you through to the end of the
book and demand more.
In the original opening for
Bloodlist I had the main character slowly waking on a beach,
staggering around confused for about five pages, and then he got hit
by a car.
Little wonder it collected a
box of rejections. Books and stories that begin with a character
waking up is a tired trope. Avoid it.
However, when I
rewrote with the character being hit by a car in the very first
line, then getting up to tell his tale, the book sold.
I tell new writers to open
their book in such a way as to make an eyesore, tired, and hungry
editor so involved in the story that she misses her subway stop
home. Do that and you've got a good chance to make a sale.
Think of how YOU read books.
Editors do.
Do we curl up with a hot drink
and our favorite music playing softly in the background with hours
of unbroken reading time before us?
Nope.
We're reading on the fly to
distract us from our surroundings. We squeeze it in during lunch,
waiting in lines, during commercial breaks. Few of us ever get to
just settle down and focus on a book.
Write the kind of book that
you love to read, something that offers escape, that compels
readers to steal time to finish it. Have them cursing you for
keeping them up all night to see what happens next!
During the London Blitz, when
people huddled in subway tunnels, cold, scared, bombs falling,
destroying whole neighborhoods and wiping out their homes and lives, the most
popular books of the time were Agatha Christie mysteries. They
offered escape. Her books are still doing that.
That's the
kind of book an editor wants!
Write one!
Submission Process:
Query first to
mystikmerchant@sbcglobal.net with the subject header
Critique Service.
State how many words, what
genre.
Ask questions! It's totally
okay!
First chapter
openings only.
No excerpts from the
middle of the book.
I'll send you a Paypal
invoice. You pay that and send the submission + the synopsis and
I'll have a look at them and get back to you as soon as possible.