Book Proposal - Multiple Cover Letters
While six copies of the proposal for Powerfully Recovered! are printing I thought it might be helpful to tell you how I’m generating multiple cover letters:
- I opened one of the cover letters in Word
- I opened WritersMarket.com, logged in and went to my Submission Tracker
- The submission tracker shows where I’ve sent queries because I’ve kept it up.
- I chose a publisher.
- I opened a second browser on WritersMarket.com and from Search Markets, entered the name of the chosen publisher and opened a third window (right click) on their website.
I spend some serious time on the website in question. If they have a search box, I enter recovery which brings up any 12 step recovery related books. Some of these are familiar and I saw a few of them at my bookstore trip.
Next I find their sumission guidelines. Sometimes the site had a direct link, sometimes it’s under the link to About the Site or some such. I read this very carefully. Some spell out the editor to send proposals to or have other instructions. My goal is to follow the instructions exactly. Fortunately, my proposal has matched the requirements. Reading the guidelines also revealed one publsher who wanted the propsal via email - that’s easy, just a one line note in the email, attache the proposal and send.
Then it’s:
- bang and copy the correct editor and address
- personalize the letter just a bit to show, if anyone cares, that I’ve read their guidelines
- save it under the publshers name and today’s date
- print the letter
So today I sent one proposal via email, am preparing four more for today’s goal of five. AND I found two cover letters from last week that I hadn’t sent. Looks like I’ll get those out today too.
Write well and often,
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POSTED IN: Book Proposals
2 opinions for Book Proposal - Multiple Cover Letters
Lovera
Feb 16, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Anne, enjoyed your comments. Question: I sent out several book queries to agents and to my surprise several have asked to see the full proposal. Is it considered good etiquette to send a proposal to several agents at the same time for the same project? thanks
Anne Wayman
Feb 17, 2008 at 8:41 am
They would rather you didn’t, but remember, they aren’t paying you for an option or for exclusivity at this point so my suggestion is you send the proposal to all of them saying in your cover letter only “enclosed is the copy of the proposal you requested.”
You’re putting them on notice it’s a copy which means you’re probably doing multiple submissions and you’re reminding them they asked for it.
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