Hey everybody,

I'd love to write more, but I've got a lot of pages to cover and not a lot of days to do it.

I will be taking a break, of course, this weekend to attend the Texas Book Festival. Hope to see many, many of you there!

Ally

How happy does this make me?

Very, very happy!

After much thought and work and worry the brilliant and talented people at Disney-Hyperion have developed what I think might possibly be the most GORGEOUS book cover in history.

I loooooove it!

If you'll remember, a few weeks ago I posted this behind-the-scenes peek of the photoshoot.

That's the model, Olga, and a whole crew of stylists and photographers and hair and makeup people who were tasked with the tremendous job of capturing a single picture that summarizes the tone, theme, and feel of an entire novel.

And you know what? They totally nailed it!

In fact, I think this might just call for a Heist Society miniexcerpt!

Any other student might have flinched in that bright spotlight, but from the moment Katarina Bishop had set foot on the Colgan campus, she'd been something of an enigma. Some said she'd gained her last-minute slot because she was the daughter of an incredibly wealthy European buisnessman who had made a very generous donation. Some looked at her perfect posture and cool demeanor, rolled her first name across their tongues, and assumed that she was Russian royalty--one of the last of the Romonovs.

Some called her a hero; others called her a freak.

Everyone had heard a different story, but no one knew the truth...

Oh, and for the occasion I think I'll turn the comments back on for a little while!

I hope you like it as much as I do. AND I hope you'll enjoy getting to know Kat and her crew just as soon as February 9th rolls around! It was a fun, challenging, and incredibly rewarding book to write. Hopefully it will be as much joy to read.

Take care!
Ally

* I should totally be walking now. But I'm not.

* Is anyone as excited about the premiere of that new USA show White Collar as I am? No, I didn't think so.

* Still working on GG4.

* Still totally wanting to show you the cover for Heist Society.

* Still can't.

* I hate to admit it, but I kinda thought Balloon Boy was a hoax as soon as I heard the words "Wife Swap."

* I walked 20 miles last week. If I'm going to do 20 this week I should be walking RIGHT NOW...

* But I'm not.

* And, finally, if anybody out there knows anyone in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area who has daughters in elementary school who might be interested in being MODELS in an American Girl Fashion show, please visit www.jltulsa.org for details.

later gators!

Ally

Like most working authors, I frequently get to talk to people who are in the process of trying to break into publishing. And, frequently, they want to know if I have any advice on finding literary agents. To this I have two answers.

SHORT ANSWER: 1. Write a great book. 2. Follow the submission protocols of agents who represent similar books. 3. Wait. 4. Get an agent.

But the short answer is awfully short, I know. It's TRUE, mind you. But lacking some details that people just starting out might benefit from hearing, so now I'm going to share with you the LONG answer that I shared with a friend just this afternoon.

(Modified for blog purposes.)

As frequent blog readers already know, I do not recommend being in this business without an agent. Getting an agent is actually a surprisingly straightforward process once you have the right book (note that this is the hard part) and have researched who will be the best fit.

You don't need to know someone. You don't need an introduction. Agents are very, very used to finding talent via the submission protocols outlined on their websites. In fact, agents relish submissions because that IS where they find their clients—they find them there all the time.

Since submissions and queries are so important, many new writers can be surprised to hear that a lot of agents don’t make the first pass through the inbox themselves. For example, my agent, Kristin Nelson, has a great assistant who looks through the submissions first and pulls out the ones that Kristin will be most interested in.

I know some new writers are stunned that agents aren't reading every submission themselves, but rest assured that the assistants who read the queries are very highly trained and prepped on how to do so. Their job is to wade through the thousands of queries they receive and remove the obvious “no-s” --books that are in genres the agent doesn't represent, queries full of typos and obvious grammatical mistakes, etc.

So one of the first "tips" to finding an agent is "don't be an obvious no". Proofread your materials. Make sure they're as strong as they can be. And, of course, query the right agents for your book.

To find the "right agents" I recommend starting with sites like agentquery.com where you can search for a few books like yours and find out what agents represent those novels.

Also, if you're serious about your research, it would probably be worth it to pay $20 to get a one month subscription to PublishersMarketplace.com. There, you can search their deal database and find out who is selling stuff like yours. This is especially important because it doesn’t help much to know who sold a big book five years ago. You want someone who is selling stuff NOW.

Go to the websites for every agent you're interested in and look at their complete client list--read a few books from it (if you haven't already). Study the agent's blog (if he or she has one). Read and re-read and re-re-read their submission procedures. In short, do your homework.

The next step is to get your query materials in perfect shape. You’ll probably need an assortment of things. Some agents will require a one page synopsis, some will need a sample chapter (and the whole book should be as perfect as possible at this point, so this is the easy one). Almost all agents will require a query letter of some kind, so start working on one of those too. (And Kristin has some great examples here.)

It’s important to note, I think, that the term “dream agent” is really a fickle one. There are a lot of factors that will make an agent dreamy. Some people want an agent with the biggest possible agency and a history of doing the biggest possible deals. Some writers are better served by smaller agencies where you get more individual attention.

It really varies immensely, and I highly recommend you think a lot about they TYPE of agent you want--someone who is hands-on? Someone who is growing their business? Someone who is established? Someone who represents the big megastars of our industry? Or someone who is in a position to find the NEXT stars?

This isn't an easy process--not at all. But do you want to know a secret? Nothing in this business is. And if you've already written a great, killer, marketable book then this SHOULD be easy in comparison!

So, in conclusion, pick an assortment of agents who are currently selling books comparable to yours, research their query preferences, send them EXACTLY what they ask for. Wait. Repeat.

And that's really all there is to it.

Good luck!
Ally