Query Stats from Nathan Bransford

Today in St. Peters, MO: Sleet and snow, high 33 degrees.

Over on literary agent Nathan Bransford's January 28 blog, he posted some interesting query stats. Nathan is an agent with Curtis Brown and one of the two agents mentioned in Chuck Sambuchino's article from yesterday about word counts. I am among the almost 3,000 who follow Nathan's blog. I've found a lot of useful news and information about writing and publishing on his blog--plus it's very entertaining.

In one week while Nathan was on vacation, he received 327 queries, which he has broken down into genres, word counts, and miscellaneous factiods. Genres include the usual, plus mangst (I had to click on that link) and "no freaking clue." Word counts for manuscripts ranged from fewer than 25,000 words to 200,000 plus. Some factiods mentioned in his post are: the number of queries that begin with a rhetorical question (which he does not like), the number of queries addressed to another agent, and the number of queries that misspelled the word "query."

It's an interesting post, if you want to check it out.

WOW! Call for Query Submissions: YA Issue

Today in St. Peters, MO: Flurries, high 40 degrees. Brrr it's cold outside.

It's cold outside, but here is a hot market!

My good friend Margo Dill e-mailed asking me to spread the word for query submissions. She is the guest editor for a special YA issue of WOW and needs your query submissions. WOW is a paying market. Here's Margo's call for queries:

"Young adult (YA) books are selling despite the economy. Adults and teens both seem to enjoy reading these books, which can be about many of the typical teen issues: suicide, peer pressure, dating, drugs, and cliques. Vampires and werewolves have practically taken over the YA section at the bookstores right now thanks to the Twilight series; and YA authors, like Ellen Hopkins author of Crank, are constantly on Twitter, Facebook, and their blogs, talking about censorship.

"Angela has decided to dedicate March's WOW! issue to YA! She has also asked me to be a guest editor for the issue. I am thrilled and can't wait to work on this exciting issue about the YA market. I love YA!Here are some ideas we had about topics for articles/interviews in the YA issue:
Interviews with YA authors about the craft of writing and marketing YA.
Interviews with YA editors or agents and what they’re looking for. What aren’t they getting?
Should YA authors find an agent or editor or does it matter?
YA authors and social networking/blogs: Do they target their teen fans or their writing colleagues or both? Special challenges of having teen fans.
What makes a book YA? The difference from tween and middle grade.
Edgy subjects in YA: are there any that are too edgy? What about language?
The use of technology in YA books—when does it date your ms? Do you need to put in e-mail, texting, Twitter and so on in contemporary novels now? How does having cell phones change the plots of novels?
YA non-fiction: What types of subjects are authors writing about now for teens? Is this an 'easy' sale for authors and publishers?
Trends: Is everybody writing about vampires? What’s the hot thing coming up? Should you write about trends?
We’re open to any ideas you may have for this issue. Please review our past children’s issues to check for YA topics we’ve already covered:
http://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/27-issue.html
http://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/14-issue.html
If you have an idea for an article or interview, please query us at submissions (at) wow-womenonwriting (dot) com.
Writer’s Guidelines: http://wow-womenonwriting.com/contact.php
Pay: $50 - $150 per article.
Looking forward to reading your queries,"
Margo Dill
http://margodill.com/blog/

Thanks for letting us know about the opportunity, Margo

And good luck to everyone who gets a query accepted,

Donna