Bill Gibbons is the second subscriber/writer who made it past round one of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Writing contest. Like Dale Myers whose novel made it through round one in the 2012 contest, Bill credits the quick query critique he received here for helping him get there. Thanks Bill, so glad to hear good news from one of our MarketingtheMuse tribe members!

Marla,

I wanted to let you know that, out of 10,000 initial entries, my novel, The Fourth Marker, made it to the second round of competition, among 2,000 novels.  Advancement was based on a 300-word pitch while other advances will be based on 5,000-word excerpts and the full manuscripts. Since the novel is my first attempt at fiction, much less a novel, my goal was simply to make it to the second round.

Because this advance was based on the pitch, similar to the pitch in a query letter, I credit you with making me aware of the need to be concise – and more importantly, clear – in pitches.  Around July, 2012, (I can’t locate the link in your archives) you did a quick query critique of my query letter for the novel and stated that the premise sounded interesting.  You also pointed out the need to be more clear in the query about some salient points in the novel. I worked on the weak points and apparently was able to describe the novel in less than 300 words in a way that grabbed the interest of the Amazon reviewers.

I want to thank you for your input and for pointing out the need for authors to treat queries as if the reader has yet to read the novel – which, of course, they haven’t.

Thank you,

Bill

Website: http://www.LWilliamGibbons.com

Blog: http://l-william-gibbons.blogspot.com/

 

Click here to listen to my Quick Query Critique of Bill Gibbons novel, The Fourth Marker.

Query letters matter, writers. You may hate to write them but they do, so get over it! Learn how to  write hook-able query letters  because they may help you get this kind of attention, too!