Selling your novel to an agent or a publisher is not the fun part of being an author. It’s about strategy. It’s about condensing your entire book into a page. It’s about summarizing the highlights. It’s about categorizing your book into a genre so that an editor or agent will “get it” without having to read it. All in all, it can feel degrading. I know that my book is a living thing all its own. A multi-faceted meme, a catalyst that interacts with each mind in a different way (some with love, some distaste). It’s a work of art with many reflections that aren’t fairly represented in a single page query letter. Nonetheless, this is what I must do to sell my second novel to a publisher.

Elizabeth Lyon helps make the medicine go down with a great deal of sympathy and understanding. She is a fiction writer herself, and so she understands the dedication (and emotional effort) required to bring a work to life. As her introduction says, “Many authors emerge from the safe cocoon of writing a novel into the foreign realm of marketing, a realm that seems hostile, confusing and mercenary.” I also loved her for statements like “You will be asked to rewrite [by agents or editors:]. It will be up to you to define how much these changes improve your book or to refuse changes that would compromise your vision.” Now we’re talking! This is a much different attitude than you’ll find in a similar guide book Give ‘Em What They Want|590427|Give 'Em What They Want: The Right Way to Pitch Your Novel to Editors and Agentswhich focuses purely on selling. The book business is only as mercenary as you allow it to be. It all depends on how far you are willing to go to be published. We each must draw our own lines. (And also be careful not to get ripped off by unscrupulous agents and vanity publishers.)

The Sell Your Novel Tool Kit provides an excellent guide to: the writing and formatting of query letters and synopses, attending writers’ conferences, approaching agents and publishing companies, dealing with rejection, and even approaching book contracts.

Quibbles: I found several of the query letters she holds up as examples rather poorly written, but there were a few clear home runs as well. And she doesn’t recognize that authors have the option to self-publish. The last edition of this book seems to be from 2002 and much has progressed since then in the self-publishing realm. However, I published my book in 2000, so it was not unheard of in 2002. Most of her writers “put their novel in a drawer” and move on to their next book when they don’t get a “sale.” This to me makes authors far too dependent on others. Yes, try to find a publisher if you want, but I say if you believe in the value of your work, after a while, get it out into the world. Give it life, let it breath. And then start your next book. Life is too short to put all your words in a drawer. Self-publishing isn’t for everyone but an acknowledgement of that option would have been nice.

I highly recommend this book for anyone seeking to sell a work of fiction. ( )