Book Review: From the Query to the Call

I know many of you are already readers and followers of Elana Johnson’s blog. If you’re not, why aren’t you? Go follow her now! Good stuff over there. Anyway, if you haven’t heard, she has a new ebook, From the Query to the Call, coming out next Monday, September 14th.

I’m very excited to be a Sneak Peek Reviewer! Now, I know I’ve talked about other books I’ve enjoyed, but never in an official book review. So please be nice, and keep your hysterical laughter to yourselves. ;) And please don’t let my inability to craft the most eloquent review ever, negatively affect your opinion of Elana’s ebook, because it is made of awesome!

When I first started thinking about querying, I spent hours online, researching how to craft my query letter and all the steps involved in getting published. There’s a lot of information out there, and just gathering a little here and little there, it was a couple of months before I felt like I had any idea what should be included. Even then, I was very overwhelmed.

If I could go back in time (though, using time travel to change the past is totally illogical for the perfectly sane reasons noted here, see #3), I would tell my fledgling writer self to buy this ebook and save myself a lot of time and a lot of headaches. Elana took all the information floating around out there in cyberspace, filtered out all the extraneous, contradictory, confusing tidbits and packed all the good stuff into a neat, concise little package.

In Elana’s always a pleasure to read, laid back style, she’s mapped out all the steps to crafting the most awesome query letter ever and everything leading up to that oh-so-exciting and totally nerve-wracking call from an agent. She’s also included examples and breakdowns of several successful queries and interviews with agented authors about their experiences in getting an agent. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one terrified by just the idea of that phone call.

It’s a quick read, only 63 pages, which is great, because then you can get back to the most important thing we do as writers--writing. (Or blogging. ;D) And you’ll walk away feeling totally prepared, maybe even excited to write your query letter. I know we all want every advantage and weapon available in this daunting process. So, if you're ready to submit your work to agents, I highly recommend adding From the Query to the Call to your arsenal.

For more information, check out the official website or Facebook page for From the Query to the Call.