Description
Now my manuscript is complete, what do I do? How do I write a query letter that stands out? What are editors really looking for? Most importantly, how do I know my work is ready for submission?
Sam Hiyate will answer these and many other questions about the mysterious world of publishing. He’ll tell us about the publishing market’s needs, wants, and trends in the United States and internationally. We’ll learn what goes on in the trenches inside big and small publishers, and how acquisition and publishing decisions are made. Hiyate will share incidents and anecdotes from his own experience to illustrate best practices for pitching books, writing great query letters, and finding the right agents.
There will be time to critique query letters from the class. We’ll leave the workshop with a much better sense of the strengths and weaknesses of our queries.
About Sam Hiyate
Sam Hiyate is keen to discover new voices and help writers prepare their work for market and build lasting careers. In his past two decades with The Rights Factory, he has seen hundreds of book deals turn into such bestsellers as More, the memoir by Molly Roden Winter; This One Summer, the graphic novel by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki; Ditch the Diet by Oonagh Duncan; The Myth of Capitalism by Jonathan Tepper and Denise Hearn; Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close; and The Adult by Bronwyn Fischer. Host of the podcast Agent Provocateur, Hiyate regularly appears at writers conferences and also teaches publishing (Toronto Metropolitan University) and creative writing (University of Toronto).
Before coming to The Rights Factory, Hiyate ran the literary division of The Lavin Agency, building a client list and completing his first deals. He was editor and publisher for the small press, Gutter Press, from 1993 to 2002, and worked at the literary magazines Blood & Aphorisms and The Quarterly in the 90s.