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Last week I officially started sending out queries for my epic fantasy novel Under the Darkened Moon.  I started by selecting five literary agents and sent them all queries.  I followed their submission guidelines and sent what they requested, whether it was just a query, a query plus a synopsis, or a query plus a synopsis plus sample pages.

A couple days later I got my first official rejection.  It was a rejection based only on a query letter and a synopsis and not the actual story itself, but a rejection none-the-less.  Now I am looking at my set of next five lit agents to send letters to. Read more…

Selling books is just like selling any other product.  First you have to have something to sell.  Then, you have to convince people to buy it.

One way to convince people to buy your book, or any product for that matter, is to establish trust with your potential readers.  Trust is valuable.  It is so valuable, that it should be guarded as though it were the most precious thing in the world.  Give your potential readers a reason to distrust you, and you may find it hard to ever sell another book.  Or, at least sell enough books to make writing worth your time.

There are some really quick ways to loose trust.  But, in our zest to sell our product, we might not even realize that we are doing them.  That is dangerous.  So let’s look at some of the ways we lose our reader’s trust, shall we?

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The Fantasy-Faction Anthology has begun releasing it’s long list of 30 stories from which the six for publication will be selected.  The anthology received about 1,700 submissions.

The first five titles for consideration were released yesterday, and over this week the remaining 25 will also be announced.  And no, my submission Second Chances did not make the cut as of yet.  With so many submissions, the odds were never really in my favor, but I thought I would try anyway.

So far, the fist five titles on the long list are:

You Have Only One Chance by Vasso Christou

Winter Unicorn by Rose Taylor

Alderwood Bodies by Steve Erdal

Ninety-nine Macaws by Leslianne Wilder

The Dealer by Miah Saunders