Tuesday, September 15, 2009

How to submit to Elana Roth

Elana tweeted this morning that she was receiving lots of queries without sample pages. In case that's people from our region doing that, here are the submission guidelines from the Caren Johnson Literary Agency blog.

It's smart to check submission guidelines--and recheck them--with each agent you query. There is no one-size-fits-all rule and agents create guidelines that make their jobs manageable. If you ignore the guidelines, you make their jobs harder and you make yourself look like someone who doesn't pay attention (or can't read). Not so much the impression you want to create, right? And here, people querying without sample pages are losing an opportunity to impress.

To submit to CJLA, send us a query letter describing your book and yourself. Make sure all query letters are in the body of the email and not attached to a short note indicating it as an attachment. You may include 3-5 sample pages from your manuscript or your overview/idea pages from your proposal directly in the body of your email following your query letter. Attachments will not be opened unless specifically requested. We only accept email queries; all snail mail queries will be discarded without being opened.

We do not accept re-submissions. In addition, we will only consider one manuscript at a time (no listing three or four manuscripts at a time that aren't part of a series), to one agent at a time. Simultaneous submissions to CJLA will be declined, and as we work together closely, a rejection from one agent is a rejection from the agency.

Our response time on queries is running 2-4 weeks, and on requested partials and manuscripts, you can expect to hear back from us in 4-8 weeks. If for some reason you haven’t heard back from us beyond that time frame, please feel free to follow-up by email.

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