Submissions, Submissions, and More Submissions...

Um, yeah. I think you can guess what I've been doing. :)

Submitting my book to literary agents is definitely a nail-biter kind of thing to do, because honestly, it's very difficult to wait for a response; you really are left with yourself and all your questions, many including: "Did I do everything right?", "Is my query good?", and, perhaps one of the biggest, "Will they like my sample pages?"

Trust me, you're not at all alone when you ask yourself these questions. But just remember that every rejection is a step closer to the YES we all really want to receive. ;)

Now, I'll let you in on how I go about my submissions, besides the typical "e-query" that I'm pretty sure many, many aspiring authors out there utilize.

Don't get me wrong, the e-mail query is definitely simple and quick, but, when I kept receiving more and more rejections, I kept asking myself what else I could do in terms of submissions.

And that, oddly enough, is when I discovered a website: WEbook! :)

I discovered it around Christmas, and, in fact, got an account on Christmas day!

Now, before I post the link, I'll tell you a bit about this website. In short, it's basically a website that allows writers in all stages to post their work, receive feedback, give feedback, submit work, and do many other things. It's home to PageToFame, which is an interesting competition-like tool that allows you to post a first page of whatever it is that you are writing (novels, they prefer) and watch that very first page get rated by others on the site (you can rate other pages as well on a scale of 1 to 5). There are four rounds, and if your first page receives high enough ratings and the site's algorithm predicts it will move on, it ascends to round two! And (this is the good part) once your page passes on to round two, participating literary agents look at your page and rate it! They can also "follow" your page if they'd like.

In addition, as you progress through the rounds, you add more and more pages until you're up to round four (the final round) and your entire manuscript is available for literary agents to check out!

I've used this twice now, and it really is great. :) So, I'd recommend checking it out.

Lastly, before this post gets too long, I'll tell you about WEbook's other amazing tool they have in place that I've been using for my submissions.

It's called AgentInbox.

It's a little difficult to explain, but basically it's a way to reach out to literary agents that have an account on WEbook by submitting a query, sample pages (if they ask for it), a short synopsis, and an author bio. Best part is, you can track which agents have opened your submission, and you're notified immediately when an agent makes his or her decision.

I'd recommend checking both PageToFame and AgentInbox out! (You'll need an account on the website to use these.)

Well, here's the link: http://www.webook.com/

That's it for now!