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Hope In The Slush by Callie Deitrick

If you have written a book or a proposal, let me start by offering you my congratulations! Writing a book is no small feat and even the most experienced of authors struggle with the process. But, now, as I’m sure you know, comes another daunting challenge: the slush pile. Unless you have an inside connection, it is likely that you will be sending your work through an unforgiving email portal from which you may never hear back. This is, no doubt, quite frightening and often discouraging.

Depending on the agency, the slush pile might get tens or hundreds of new manuscript pitches and proposals a day. Since agents are already pressed for time, the importance of making your submission stand out at a quick glance goes without saying.

While the odds may seem unfavorable, I am here to tell you that they are not impossible. This past April when I was reading through the slush, I found a nonfiction proposal that immediately caught my attention. The letter was crisp, the book had a clever hook, and the author had exceptional credentials. We immediately reached out to the author, who was also being courted by other agents, and we successfully signed her shortly thereafter. After a few weeks of revising with the author, we sent the proposal to a carefully selected group of editors. Enthusiastic responses led to multiple meetings. In the end, the book was sold for six-figures! From start to finish, we sold the book in just 10 weeks.

If you send us a well-crafted letter and show that you’ve done your research, and present yourself and your project in a compelling way, I guarantee that your submission is already better than many of the submissions agencies receive. Emails that come to the slush often exhibit minimal effort in following our guidelines or researching our agency. Know your customer (us!) and what we are looking for. We frequently see wild conspiracy theories, genres we clearly state we don’t represent, and even the occasional scam (one scam tried to blackmail us into paying them in Bitcoin), so I promise that if you put the time and energy in, you will be carefully considered.

Try not to get discouraged. Just because you don’t hear back from one agency doesn’t mean that your book will never get sold. Agents want to find great material in the slush as much as you want to find a great agent. Trust the process and know that when you find the right agent it will all be worth it.

-Callie