Barbara Scott, Agent, Word Serve Literary, Welcome to Seekerville!

Impromptu Seekerville Contest Alert!

Yes, we've done it again! Barbara Scott has graciously offered to  look at your queries via a Seekerville contest! We'll choose the top five queries to go on to Barbara marked
"Special Attention!"

Barbara is avidly looking for completed manuscripts only, please and thank you!
Send your contest entries as two attachments to:


seekerreadme@aol.com


Please take note:
Send us your query letter as an attachment to an e-mail.
Send us the last page of your completed manuscript the same way, please and thank you!
You must be polite and stop by and leave a comment in today's comments section. That's the sociable thing to do, right?
Un-agented (unrepresented) authors only eligible.


How easy is that?
Barb's guidelines are printed at the bottom of her post and bio.
Contest is open as of midnight tonight, 1/31/2012.
Entries must be received as of midnight February 4th, 2012...
Please note posted rules for further instructions.


Winners will be announced by March 3rd, 2012 and announced in the Weekend Edition.
Possibly earlier. You just never know.  ;)


The winning entries will be sent to Barb who will then decide if she wants to see more.


Feel free to read about Ruthy's prize-winning query letter HERE
And if you scroll down past Ruthy's post, you'll find Tina's double post from 2008 on writing a great query.


And just so you know, your success is the best payback we can possibly have here at Seekerville. 
Working with the lot o' youse?
Makes our day!

When Ruthy asked me to write a blog about “firsts,” I was stumped. I’ve been involved in every area of publishing from newspapers to magazines to books, having logged in almost forty years as a journalist, writer, author, and editor. My firsts, I thought, had come and gone long ago.

Actually, now that I think of it, I wrote my first obituary for The Joplin Globe as a college intern in 1968 on a Remington manual typewriter in a noise- and smoke-filled newsroom. Computers had not yet been invented. Cell phones? Non-existent. Reporters called in their stories to me on pay telephones. Hot-lead linotype machines were used to make up each newspaper line on the page. As an editor I learned to read type upside down and backward when I had to cut a story. I must admit that I’ve seen my share of firsts in this lifetime.

However, as I wait patiently to see what waits for me in the New Year, I realize my life will always be filled with firsts. This year I retired as a fiction acquisitions editor at the top of my game, successfully launching the first fiction line published by Abingdon Press. I experienced retirement for the first time. I also experienced the angst of re-entering the work force as a literary agent: another first.

When I agreed to join Greg Johnson at WordServe Literary Group in mid-September, I wondered if there were any authors left without an agent. 

Would I have a first client? Oh, yes. In the first two weeks after the announcement went out, I had more than five hundred queries pour into my in-box, and they haven’t stopped, although they have slowed down to at least fifty or so a week. Yes, I receive that many queries.

How will you ever stand out in that crowd? Write a publishable manuscript first. I will not consider a fiction query without a full manuscript to back it up. Nonfiction is different. Write a proposal with a chapter-by-chapter synopsis and two cogent, interesting chapters.

Then do your homework about what types of projects each agent is looking for. Check out www.wordserveliterary.com for a list of what I will consider.

Now that you have a list of possible agents, write your query letter. Revise it, then revise it, and then revise it again. Are you unsure about how a word is spelled? Look it up and spell it correctly. If you can’t write a grammatically correct sentence in a query, I suspect your manuscript will be just as bad.

Dazzle me with a clean query letter that piques my interest in the first sentence and keeps me reading until the end of the letter. How do you do that? Read the back cover copy on a number of books in your genre. Then write a couple of paragraphs that are just as compelling in your query letter. Include a short bio paragraph, but you don’t need to let me know you’ve been writing since the age of nine. What have you written lately? Have you published on blogs, in magazines, or even a book? Are you active on social media?

Don’t forget the most important ingredient of a terrific query letter: prayer. I pray for my current clients daily, but I also pray that I will notice the authors that I should sign on. God has been faithful in answering my prayers. He will do the same for you.

I told Ruthy I doubted that I would have my first sale to report in this blog post, but I was wrong. I am not only negotiating my first nonfiction contract, but I just received my first offer for a three-book fiction series. God is a God of firsts. If you follow God’s will and work on your craft, your first sale is just around the corner.

BIOGRAPHY

Barbara J. Scott is an agent with WordServe Literary Group. She has been a book editor for more than thirteen years and has more than thirty years of experience in publishing: newspaper, magazine, and book. She is the best-selling coauthor of Sedona Storm, which sold more than 30,000 units in its first year of release, and the sequel Secrets of the Gathering Darkness, both published by Thomas Nelson.

She kicked off and acquired bestselling authors such as Brandilyn Collins and Melody Carlson for the Y.A. fiction line at Zondervan, and many authors in her fiction launch at Abingdon Press received rave reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and Library Journal. Two of her most recent authors at Abingdon Press, Cynthia Ruchti and Richard Mabry, have both been nominated for Carol Awards by ACFW in 2011. The launch at Abingdon Press exceeded all sales expectations. One of her authors at Zonderkidz/Zondervan, Nancy Rue, has sold more than one million copies of her various children’s and YA series there.

Barbara’s educational background include a M.A. in English from National University, a B.A. in English from Missouri Southern State College, a Certificate in Film from the Mass Media Institute at Stanford University, a graduate-level course in child development from Calvin College, training in screen development with the Robert McKee Story Seminar in L.A., and numerous sales, management, customer service training courses.

PUBLISHED WORKS

Sedona Storm                                                                               Thomas Nelson, 1994

Secrets of the Gathering Darkness                                             Thomas Nelson, 1996

Is There a Man in the House (ghostwritten)                                 Higher Dimensions, 1997

A Good Sense Guide to Happiness in Your Business & Personal Life  Honor Books, 1998

(ghostwritten)

God’s Little Book of Proverbs                                                      Honor Books, 1999

God’s Little Book of Blessings for Graduates                              Honor Books, 2002

God’s Daily Answers for Teachers                                              Elm Hill Press, 2003

Promises for You Today                                                               Elm Hill Press, 2004

Mothers of Influence                                                                     Honor Books, 2005

Contributor to Daily Grace for Teachers (2005) and Through the Night with God, In the Kitchen with God, and the Godspeaks Devotional, (1999-2000) all published by Honor Books.

What Barbara is Looking for:

Adult Fiction:
Full-length fiction, 65,000 to 100,000 words. General market or Christian market.

Genres: Women's, Romance, Suspense/Thriller, Mystery, Romantic Suspense, Historical, Family Saga, Amish, Political Thrillers, Mainstream, Supernatural/Speculative, including End Times.

Short contemporary and historical fiction, 40,000 to 65,000 words. Christian market.

Genres: Romance, Historical, Romantic Suspense. Will accept queries for Barbour, Steeple Hill Love Inspired, Summerside Love Finds You, and Avon Inspire.

Kids:
Middle grade and YA books

Non Fiction:
Both Christian market and general market projects. Current Affairs, Political, Management, Sales, Money, Home Life, Marriage, Family, Parenting, Health & Diet, How-to, Popular Culture, Psychology, Science, Self-Help, Women's Issues, Devotionals. Author should have established social media, consulting, or speaking platforms.

Christian theology, apologetics, pastoral, spiritual growth:
I will only take on this type of project if the author has well-known credentials and/or a large established platform.

What am I NOT looking for?
• Gift books
• Poetry
• Short stories
• Screenplays
• Graphic novels
• Children's picture books

So guys, there you have it! In a nutshell, Barbara is telling you what she does and doesn't want and how to approach her! Fresh coffee and a la carte breakfast being served on the sun porch... Let's give her a great big Seekerville welcome and polish those entries!