Course: Getting Submission-Ready

Get your book ready for submission!

Hi all,

I've led this workshop a couple of times and, as people are finding it helpful, I'm going to be doing it on Substack too. By the end of it, you'll have every tool you need to polish your submission and get ready to submit your book to agents (or publishers!).

A submission to an agent or a publisher will usually feature three things:

• Finished book for fiction or a proposal for non-fiction

• Synopsis

• Query Letter

We will go through tips on how to make these three elements the best they can be in preparation for your submission.

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Every Saturday starting on 16th November, you will get a post of tips and some exercises to help you polish your submission and craft your query letter.

Have a peek at the programme:

Submission-Ready Course - Session One

• Looking at the finished book/proposal

• How to edit it

• What you should focus on for the writing sample

Submission-Ready Course - Session Two

• Looking at the synopsis

• The timing of your submission

• Exercise: Find comp authors and books

Submission-Ready Course - Session Three

• Turning our eye to the query letter and all its parts

• How to write your biography

• The elevator pitch

• Exercise: Find adjectives to describe your book and write a biography

Submission-Ready Course - Session Four

• Still on the query letter, we'll be looking at the description of the book

• What I call the ‘pitch paragraph'

• Exercise: Write a description

Submission-Ready Course - Session Five

• Discussing personalisation

• Exercise: Pull all our exercises together to draft a query letter using my template

Submission-Ready Course - Session Six

• Now that we have everything, let's look at how to polish and format your submission

• Which agent to query?

• Do's and Don't's

I will be answering questions on a weekly basis by email, DM or chat. I will also be organising a drop-in Zoom session for all paid subscribers in January where you'll be able to ask any questions.

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This course will be open to paid subscribers only, so do consider becoming a paid subscriber to access all the content.

In case it's useful for you to know, my next Substack course will start in January 2025 on how to craft a non-fiction proposal. This one will continue for three months.

If you feel you really this course but can't afford the fee, do message me as I'll be giving away some comp subscriptions.

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If you’ve enjoyed reading this post and found it useful, please do consider supporting me in two ways:

* By donating to a cause that’s important to me:

I have set up a monthly donation with Medical Aid for Palestinians in their appeal for donations for Palestine and Lebanon and encourage you to do the same. Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) works for the health and dignity of Palestinians living under occupation and as refugees. They provide immediate medical aid to those in great need, while also developing local capacity and skills to ensure the long-term development of the Palestinian healthcare system. 

* By buying one of my authors’ books:

Non-Fiction

Moving Mountains: Writing Nature Through Illness and Disability, edited by Louise Kenward

Some of Us Just Fall: On Nature and Not Getting Better by Polly Atkin

The Ghost Lake: A Memoir of Grief, Nature and Ancestry in Rural Yorkshire by Wendy Pratt

The Company of Owls by Polly Atkin

Poetry

Them! by Harry Josephine Giles

At Least This I Know by Andrés N. Ordorica

Another Way to Split Water by Alycia Pirmohamed

Too Hot to Sleep by Elspeth Wilson

Fiction

Bucket List by Russell Jones

How We Named The Stars by Andrés N. Ordorica