If you’ve been using LitMatch for a while, then you already know exactly what it is that we’re all about. But, if you’re new to the site, or perhaps new to how the traditional publishing system works in general, a quick overview may be in order:
What We’re Not: A Literary Agency. We don’t represent authors directly, nor can we accept submissions on their behalf. Despite that, we get a fair number of submissions sent to us, most of them via email. Unfortunately, as soon as we see these for what they are, we have to delete them without reading them.
What We Are: A great way to find agents you can submit to. We have searching and browsing features that will help you narrow down our list of over 1700 literary agents and find the ones who are right for your particular book. We allow you to search by the genres an agent represents, the projects and authors they’ve gotten published, and over a dozen other options. Once you find agents you like, you can add them to your hotlist to keep them on hand throughout your entire submission process.
What We’re Not: A Query Blaster. Query blasters, for those unaware, are services that charge you a fee to send your submission materials all at once to a list of agents and agencies that they control. At first, this may seem like a great way to save time. However, query blasters are almost universally frowned upon by agents, who prefer personalized contact and thoughtful selection of recipients. (For more on query blasters, see our blog on the subject.)
What We Are: A simple and powerful way to track the submissions you send. We designed our tracking system with ease of use in mind, and our built-in statistics and graphs allow you to see, at a glance, what your response rate is like, how many submissions are still outstanding, and how long it takes for agents to respond. Responses are anonymously gathered and aggregated in order to give users a sense of the response times for each agent.
For more information about who we are and what we do, please visit our About Us and FAQ pages.
Christopher Hawkins
LitMatch.net
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
What We Are and What We’re Not
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
New Survey - Publishing Options
We always look forward to getting your feedback here at LitMatch, and we get a lot of it. But from time to time, we like to ask you specific questions about your experiences in the publishing world, and your thoughts about our site and our services. That's why we put together surveys: to learn more about you, and how we can best tailor our site to fit your needs.
Where last summer's survey focused on your thoughts about LitMatch. Now we've posted a new one that focuses on the publishing industry as a whole, the options that are available to writers, and your impressions of each of them.
Like our last survey, we designed this one to only take about five minutes of your time to complete, and like our last survey, you'll need to be logged in to complete it. Your feedback is incredibly important to us, so I hope you'll check it out:
http://www.litmatch.net/survey.asp
Monday, February 9, 2009
Anniversary Giveaway Winners Announced!
Back in September, we announced the LitMatch Anniversary Giveaway as a way to say thank you to everyone who helped make our first year such a great success. The winners were drawn at the end of last month, and if you're a newsletter subscriber, you already know who they are. But just in case you missed it (and because good news bears repeating), here is the list of the lucky winners:
Free Subscription to The Writer Magazine
Jan Morrill
Barbara Florio-Graham
Maria del Mar Gomez
Maria Nestorides
Joann Mazzio
Free Membership to TheNextBigWriter.com
Charles Petterson
Michele Ivy Davis
Robert Hamilton
Free Online Class From The Gotham Writers' Workshop
Karen Simpson
The winners have been notified via email, so if you see your name here and haven't heard from us, please contact me at admin@litmatch.net.
Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to everyone who entered. And a special thanks to each and every one of you for the support you've given us in our first year (of many!)
Christopher Hawkins
LitMatch.net
