Agents & Editors Recommend

You’re ready to submit your manuscript to agents and excitedly or nervously working on your pitch. The Author Bio is looming large and you’re trying to figure how to funnel your entire essence, your whole life, into one paragraph that will prompt the agent to say, Yes, this author is solid! For so many of us, writing about ourselves is a painful process because we are self-conscious about trying to find that fine line between not wanting to sound pompous or downright dull. If you’re stuck crafting the bio, my advice is to find that place within you when you’re most relaxed—say, after

I don’t know where I’d be without my writers group. We’ve been meeting every week—to critique each other’s work, give advice and pep talks, and troubleshoot this fickle industry—for almost three years now. We’ve helped each other through manuscript revisions, agent searches, submission blues, prepublication anxiety, and the publicity whirlwind.

Go ahead, judge that book by its cover. And judge it by its back cover, too. Today I want to talk sizzle, or, more properly, “copy.” Much depends on the text that surrounds the book through each step of the publishing process, from the query the agent reads, the pitch the editor will read, to the jacket copy on the back of the slab. 

As I consider these awful times, I’ve wandered into the trap of asking, “What’s the purpose of poetry?” Unfortunately, it’s a too-familiar question: What can words on a page or screen possibly offer against crises of such scale? Bookstores are currently closed because of the pandemic, things are looking grim for publishers. Teachers and students are adrift without a classroom to gather them into community. Readings are depersonalized by the homogenizing screen. There has to be a better way. What might poetry offer that might help us all?