Why Agents Reject AI-Generated Book Proposals (4 Tells)
Free AI templates are flooding agents’ inboxes, and they’re easy to spot. Here are the four tells that get a proposal passed on before your writing is even read.
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How to Break into Publishing: Four Lessons From My Path Into the Industry
I want to tell you how I came into this career — not because my story is unusual, but because I think there are lessons writers can take from it.
8 Lessons I Learned Writing and Publishing a Book for the First Time
Get Signed: Find a Book Deal, Land an Agent, and Become a Published Author (Hay House; February 2024) is a playbook for aspiring authors looking to find an agent and land a book deal. But what happens after that? Author of Get […]
What Today’s Agents and Editors Want From Authors
In May, we hosted Lucinda Literary’s 2026 Writers Symposium in New York City, bringing together a small group of writers, agents, and editors for a weekend of candid conversation about publishing today. We opened the Symposium with one of my […]
What Publishers Look for in a Book Deal Today
Lucinda Halpern notes that understanding what publishers look for in a book deal is often the missing piece for authors trying to navigate today’s publishing landscape. Sometimes the idea follows an existing platform, and the writing follows from there. For […]
The Skill Writers Should Build Before They Start Writing
Most people think the hardest part of becoming a writer is discipline, showing up every day, producing pages, pushing through doubt. In reality, the most valuable thing you must learn comes before all of that. It is discernment. Discernment is […]
Literary Agent Shares Tips for How to Write A Book Synopsis That Stops Readers In Their Tracks
I have an experiment for you. Tell me what your book is about in a couple lines, as if you had just met me in an elevator and you only had a minute to spare. This, of course, is the […]
How to Write a Book Proposal: Why You Must Revise Relentlessly
If you’re wondering how to write a book proposal that stands out to agents and publishers, start here: it’s a process. Even after an agent signs your project, expect multiple rounds of revision. In fact, the ten-page Overview—the centerpiece of […]
My Book is on Submission with Publishers. Now What?
Some useful activities that will help you, and/or your agent, as you await the verdict from publishers.
What Does Genre Mean in a Book: Literary Agent Walks You Through Determining Your Book’s Genre
Excerpt from Get Signed by Lucinda Halpern. All Rights Reserved Let’s talk about looking at your book’s genre with an open mind. How certain are you that you are writing narrative nonfiction versus a memoir? Or a literary novel versus commercial fiction? […]