The Final Touch

…I know some of you are because you’ve talked with me about it. Per­haps oth­ers are, too. The online arti­cle “How to Get an Agent’s Atten­tion,” by Chuck Sam­buchino of the Writer’s Digest com­mu­nity, caught my atten­tion for just that rea­son. I hope you will find it a help­ful resource.

A cou­ple of points that I really appre­ci­ate from Chuck’s post and from the agents interviewed:

• A query let­ter is essen­tially a cover let­ter to apply for a job; the resume is your man­u­script. Be as pro­fes­sional as you would in writ­ing up a job appli­ca­tion.
  
• A use­ful for­mula for a query let­ter is “The Hook, the Book, and the Cook.” To find out pre­cisely what this means, read the arti­cle!
• If an agent rejects your man­u­script, it doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean it’s “bad”; it just means it’s “not his/her type” — just like when you’re dat­ing. Don’t take it per­son­ally if some­one isn’t totally, absolutely in love with your book; just move on and “date” some­one else until you find that per­fect “long-term rela­tion­ship.” After all, you don’t actu­ally want some­one rep­re­sent­ing your work who isn’t com­pletely head-over-heels in love with it, do you? Didn’t think so.

Many more insights where these came from! Check it out!

It’s a small world nowa­days, that’s for sure! Never did I dream I’d be con­nected to some­one who was con­nected to some­one who was on “60 Minutes”!

One of my clients teaches life skills at a unique char­ter board­ing school in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., called “Seed.” It was pro­filed this past Sun­day on CBS’s news pro­gram, “60 Min­utes,” and two of the stu­dents she teaches were part of the seg­ment! One is a doll of a young lady named Frances; you should watch through the seg­ment just for the delight of hear­ing and see­ing her! But more than any­thing, I invite you to click on the link below because the piece is so inspir­ing and because “Seed” is a school worth know­ing about; this is one of those rare, pos­i­tive news reports that gives hope that good does still arise out of bad cir­cum­stances and dif­fi­cult challenges.

We should all seek to be as com­mit­ted to oth­ers as the school admin­is­tra­tors and teach­ers pro­filed are to these kids! We should all seek to be as resilient and deter­mined as some of the stu­dents shown! If they can han­dle life and come out bet­ter for it, surely we can, too!

You won’t want to miss this video; it’s worth every one of its approx­i­mately 18 min­utes. And I am so hon­ored to know one of the teach­ers who serves at “Seed.” Thanks to her for pass­ing this video along.

“60 Min­utes” Seg­ment on Seed School in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

I have just learned about Wub​bit​.com. It’s new, and I can’t vouch for it per­son­ally yet… but word of it comes via a trusted source: Jane Fried­man, one of the edi­tors of the Writer’s Digest com­mu­nity (see the third bul­let down in Jane’s post for a link to a brief — and FREE — webi­nar to learn more about it).  If you search YouTube for “wub­bit,” you’ll find sev­eral dif­fer­ent videos — includ­ing the one below — to tell you what Wub­bit is all about and why authors, inde­pen­dent book­stores, and cus­tomers love it (or, as they say in the video, “why they wub­bit!”). Since many of you are authors — and per­haps have been won­der­ing how best to mar­ket your work with­out sac­ri­fic­ing most of the prof­its to mid­dle­men, I’ve cho­sen this video for you. (Do also check out the webi­nar; it’s not as ani­mated as the video, but it’s very infor­ma­tive.)

(Or view directly on YouTube.)

I’ve been using LinkedIn for sev­eral months now, and I have to say, it is eas­ily my favorite social net­work for pro­fes­sional pur­poses — largely because that is pri­mar­ily what it’s designed for. While Face­book and Twit­ter can also be use­ful for mak­ing busi­ness con­tacts, pass­ing on help­ful resources, and even offer­ing your ser­vices to oth­ers, they are also — as you likely know — widely used for keep­ing in touch on a per­sonal level and, in the case of Face­book, for fun and games. Noth­ing wrong with fun and games, but when I want to learn about someone’s pro­fes­sional cre­den­tials, dis­cuss a busi­ness topic with an online group, and offer glow­ing rec­om­men­da­tions about peo­ple I know oth­ers will love as much as I do… LinkedIn is just the thing!

It’s no coin­ci­dence then that on LinkedIn, in the Writ­ing and Edit­ing Pro­fes­sion­als group, I dis­cov­ered a link to a great arti­cle about Social Media, which in turn led me to a great piece about har­ness­ing LinkedIn for pro­fes­sional use.

Here are a cou­ple of my favorite tips from the article:

• Be unique: Don’t just list your job title beneath your name; instead, describe in brief how peo­ple will ben­e­fit by con­nect­ing with you and your busi­ness. For instance, the line below my name reads: “Glad to help you put the FINAL TOUCH on your writ­ing to make it the best it can be!”
• Link your LinkedIn pro­file to your blog. If you look down my pro­file, for exam­ple, you’ll see the head­ing for this very blog post! Read­ers can find my LinkedIn pro­file through my blog, and they can also find my blog through my LinkedIn profile.

Check out the arti­cle for more LinkedIn ideas!

Thought I’d pass along Bob Greene’s CNNOpin­ion arti­cle “Typos — no big deal? Think again,” which was first passed on to me by a sis­ter copy­ed­i­tor (thanks, Steph!). At the very least, Julia Louis-Dreyfus must be glad there are a few spelling-and-punctuation stick­lers like us around! Not to men­tion the pro­fes­sion­als who carved her name in stone!

You don’t have to be writ­ing a book to need a proof­reader. Pro­fes­sional business-people who come off look­ing as pro­fes­sional, cred­i­ble, and intel­li­gent as they are, sim­ply because they went to the trou­ble of hav­ing their cor­re­spon­dence or adver­tis­ing proof­read before it went pub­lic, know this. It may cost you a lit­tle bit to hire a pro­fes­sional proofreader/copyeditor, but it surely costs less than hav­ing to redo a star on the Hol­ly­wood Walk of Fame or los­ing cus­tomers or clients who won­der, if you can’t fig­ure out the right form of “then/than,” will you know how to pro­vide the type of ser­vice that is right for them?