Jeff Herman's Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents: Who They Are! What They Want! How to Win Them Over! (Jeff Herman's Guide to Book Editors, Publishers, and Literary Agents)

by Jeff Herman

Jeff Herman Is Every Writer's Best Friend More than 500,000 copies sold Writers, agents and editors agree that Herman's Guide is in a league of its own. It unravels and clarifies a complicated and intimidating process, and provides innovative strategies and road maps for maximum success. Knowledge will displace mistakes and power will displace fear. The names, personalities, and specialties of thousands of editors and agents, the so-called gatekeepers,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 140226061X
• ISBN13: 9781402260612
• Release Date: October 2011
• Publisher: Sourcebooks
• Length: 1104 Pages
• Weight: 2.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 2.0" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

REMARKABLE BOOK WRITTEN BY A REMARKABLE WRITER AND LITERARY AGENT

How I wish I'd had this book when I first started writing! It would have saved me years of hounding agents and submitting proposals to publishers. The only bright side is I made great bathroom wallpaper out of all my rejection letters. If I'd had "Jeff Herman's Guide to Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents," I could have saved a fortune on buying stamps, nursing paper cuts, and pulling all-nighters trying to figure out where to send my proposals. All I can say is, if you're crazy enough to want to be a writer, click "Add to your shopping cart" right now. Express delivery.

The best book publishing reference

I consider this the best reference on book publishing. I have used it myself as a literary agent and recommended it to authors for over a decade. It offers detailed information on what individual imprints and editors are seeking to acquire, and also educates new authors about query letters, proposals, contracts, collaboration agreements, and making a living as a writer. I own plenty of other reference books on my field, but this is the indispensable guide. The one suggestion that I would make is that Jeff should allow purchasers access to a website that would provide up-to-the-minute information about where the editors are currently working. This is a business that is always in flux so the book, though updated yearly, is somewhat out of date even when just purchased.

A must-have!

This book has everything. What agents are looking for (from the agents themselves), their addresses and phone numbers, whether they accept email submissions/queries, which agents handle which genres, other books represented by said agents, etc. (The rest is true of publishers, but I spent most of my time researching literary agencies.) The agents and publishers reveal not only what they're looking for in submitted work, but also in the writers they hope to represent. Small interviews with the agents and publishers, if read, will greatly increase your chances of finding an agency (or publishing house) willing to look at your work. I'm not sure when I'll next be looking for an agent or a publisher, but when I do, if my version is outdated I'll be buying the new one.Homefront

THIS EDITION HAS AN INDEX

This new edition (2007, #17)has an excellent index. The previous edition (2006, #16) did not have an index. Complaints about a missing index are only referring to last year's edition, not this new edition.

This book literally changed my life!

This book - and its predecessor editions - literally changed my life. No more sitting on slush piles, unread by junior executives in publishing houses! I am now a published author with a great literary agent - and all this is thanks to reading Herman's book. As he says, and as I can say more easily on his behalf, this really does knock the daylights out of Writer's Digest. If you want to get a book published, read, buy, mark and inwardly digest everything that Herman says - and good luck to you thereafter! Christopher Catherwood, author of CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS AND ISLAMIC RAGE (Zondervan 2003) and lots of books in 2004 that I was able to get contracts for after reading Herman's book