In This Issue
- Open Call for Book Submissions
- Where I’ll be this fall: Autumn Savvy Author’s PitchFest, Moodboard Pitchfest
- Status of Current Books
- What It’s Like on the Other Side of the Table: My Experience Attending the PNWA Conference as a Publisher
- My Hatred of Grammarly: A Short Rant
- My Latest Book Review: Book Lovers by Emily Henry
Open Call for Book Submissions
I’m looking for finished books in romance, women’s fiction, poetry, and fiction. Please spread the word to any authors you may know. Submissions can be made via email with a query letter and the first twenty pages of the novel inline (no attachments). Check out my submission requirements at egretlakebooks.com/submissions. If you have already submitted to me, I’m working on reading through my current submissions so hang tight until I have a chance to respond.
Where I’ll be this fall: Autumn SaavyAuthor’s PitchFest, Moodboard Pitchfest
This fall I’ll be attending two pitch events. Both are online only. The first is the SaavyAuthor Autumn PitchFest from October 26-28. The second is the Moodboard Twitter Pitchfest on November 3. I hope to get some good submissions and find a match for the kind of content I’m looking to publish.
Status of Current Books
Hope and Languish: Poems
Last month, Author Chenelle Bremont created boxes full of free items and sent them to social media influencers along with a copy of her book. The influencers “unboxed” it and posted it on their social media accounts. This was a creative way to market the book. I especially love the tiny Converse shoe keychain!
Untitled Romance Novel
This month I hired a proofreader to do a final readthrough of my romance novel. It’s back to the revisions desk for me as she uncovered a lot of mistakes and inconsistencies. I can’t wait to share more about this book with you, but it’s not quite ready yet.
What It’s Like on the Other Side of the Table: My Experience Attending the PNWA Conference as a Publisher
I’ve pitched as a writer at various conferences and online events. But this year was different. This year I was, gasp, on the other side of the table.
How do writers get matched up with agents and publishers? Enter the age-old tradition of the verbal pitch. This is an event wherein an introverted writer (capable of long stretches of seclusion) morphs into an extroverted marketing guru who explains their story with elegance in a five-minute verbal diatribe. Oh, what’s that, all you other bookish writers have no problem socializing and pitching that thing you’ve been tinkering with over the past three years? No? It’s just me? Okay then.
Well here’s what I learned being on the publishing side of the table for the first time. Surprise! It was just as nerve-wracking being an editor and listening to pitches as it was as an author. Editors have to juggle several things while listening—getting a full sense of the story in a short period of time, developing good relationships, keeping company goals in mind of what would be the best fit, being compassionate about often sensitive and personal story material. It was a balancing act.
But overall, listening to pitches was… incredibly fun! Sitting and talking to authors all day was literally my dream come true. There were so many amazing and interesting story ideas–talking about them I felt fully in my element.
Meeting with authors is the very first step toward publishing new books that you will all get to read, and I’m having fun searching for the perfect match for the kind of stories I want to submerge myself in working on over the next year.
My Hatred of Grammarly: A Short Rant
Why doesn’t Grammarly let me view only spelling mistakes? I’m sick of their comma suggestions. Leave me alone with my commas already! No I don’t have 200 mistakes in my document. I LIKE IT THAT WAY. If you have any information on how to fix this pressing issue and use Grammarly for spelling only (turning off all grammar suggestions), please message me immediately. As you can see, this is a very important and pressing matter. Stop laughing. Seriously. End rant.
My Latest Book Review
Book Lovers by Emily Henry
I read this as part of my Women’s Fiction online bookclub (join me for our next book!) I loved this book. The story was fun and romantic, but it also had unexpected depth with astute observations about sister relationships, grief, and adulting. Nora is a book agent who goes to a small town to spend time with her sister, unexpectedly finding romance in the process. But it’s not the perfect romantic story you’d imagine. Instead… Read full review of Book Lovers on Goodreads
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Talk to you soon!
Tess Jones, Editor, Egret Lake Books
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