How to Sell Your Memoir to a Literary Agent…

I am off to a writing conference where (from past experience) many in attendance will be hoping to find a literary agent for their “memoirs.” Although memoir writing is a common format, not everyone knows how to market his/her story. Literary agent, Janet Reid, offers some specific ideas on how to best “sell” your story to a publisher.

To read the complete article, join Janet Reid at http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/2012/08/querying-memoir.html

 

THURSDAY, AUGUST 02, 2012

Querying memoir

A unforeseen but lovely benefit of the New Wrinkle Experiment is that I can hear back from writers about things that were confusing in the directions, on my website, or other places where I’ve yammered about queries.

One such confusion is about how to query memoir.

Memoir is sold like novels (they have to be finished before you query) even though it is non-fiction.  Several people read that sentence and interpreted it to mean they should write the query letter in the third person.  This makes sense when you think of how many times you’ve heard not to write your query in the first person of your character (and since your memoir’s main character is you) so, ok third person it is.