Surfin' the Tsunami

Among the blessings of the digital age, at least for writers, is the ease of submitting manuscripts to agents, acquisition editors, or publishers. Easie-Peasie. Tuck your query, synopsis, and sample pages into one email and Shazaam! off it goes. Unfortunately, this ease of submitting manuscripts has created a tsunami of submissions. This impacts every writer.

Here's the situation. Non-writers with keyboards and typing skills, also submit their manuscripts to the same people. These author wannabees reason, "I have the tools of a writer, ego! I am a writer." HAHAHA! That's like deciding that owning a hammer and box of nails means you're a carpenter and can build a porch. Not on my house!

Right away you can see how the flood of submissions has become problematic. Agents have to scan everything submitted to them. Otherwise, they must might miss the next Clancy, Rowlings, or Patterson.

At first glance, your submission looks like every other one on the agent's inbox. UNLESS, you play it smart and craft an email subject line to compel the reader to click and open.

But, it doesn't end there. Your query letter first paragraph also must "hook" the agent and influence them to read more, more, more and then . . . whoopsie, I'm getting ahead of myself. That's a blog for another day.