Working document
The submission packet checklist for agents, presses and contests
Everything that has to be true before a batch goes out, and the record that has to exist the moment it does.
Free resources
Resources for authors running submissions and small press projects
Free working tools for the parts of publishing that run on dates and arithmetic rather than on inspiration.
Everything here is meant to be used at a desk during a working session: a checklist you run before a batch goes out, a calculator you open when a print quote arrives, a comparison you read once when you are deciding where the submission record should live. Nothing needs an account and nothing asks you to change how you write.
The reporting in The Query Desk covers the wider questions of contracts, rights, market shifts and what a submission cycle actually costs in hours. These resources are the tools that sit under that reporting, built for the same reader: a writer running her own list, her own numbers and her own deadlines.
Free tools
Calculators for authors running submissions and print runs
Two small tools for the arithmetic that decides whether a book pays for itself and whether a query round fits inside the hours you actually have.
Comparisons
DraftAndQuery compared with the other ways authors track submissions
Three honest fit questions for a writer deciding where her manuscript versions, her open submissions and her follow up dates should actually live.
Main guide
Should I query literary agents or submit straight to small presses with this book?
It settles which door this particular manuscript should go through first, and what each route costs in time, money and rights before you commit a year to it.
Magazine
The Query Desk
Practical reporting on submissions, contracts, rights and production for independent authors and small press writers in the US.
About
Who writes all of this
The author page covers who writes The Query Desk, the query rounds and small press contracts behind the reporting, and how every guideline, reading fee and stated response window is checked before it appears here.
The checklist is free, the calendar is the hard part
Everything on this page works on paper and will keep working there. What paper cannot do is tell you on a Tuesday morning that the full request from March is now three weeks past the window the agency states in its own guidelines. If that is the part slipping, a demo runs on your own titles and takes about twenty minutes.