A number of days have passed since my last post and that mostly is because I’ve been focusing on creating a website for myself… which included seeking out and finding a skilled web developer.  Although I spent a great deal of time trying to find someone locally through friends and family, I actually found the kind of web developer I was hoping for on Craigslist.  His name is Jarrett Holmes and his company is Social Media Titans.  Although Jarrett now lives about twenty minutes or so from us, oddly enough, he is from the same part of the Carolina’s where I grew up.  That’s a comforting thought because there are a LOT of really nice people from central North Carolina.  Jarrett is definitely one of those people.

At any rate… I know it must sound like I’ve jumped a bit ahead of the book proposal/business plan phase of the publishing process, but there’s a reason I’ve done so.  I didn’t know it at the time, but over the past several days I’ve decided that my website is the ideal place to share parts of my book proposal.  Not only does it give me a place to preview and share parts of my book with potential readers, but it also gives me a URL/web address to send to prospective literary agents and publishers.  Oh that’s right… I’ve also been busy researching my first group of literary agents to query… and part of what I’ve discovered is that almost no one is interested in the book proposal until you’ve cleared the first hurdle of peaking their interest with your query letter.  Of course I can understand why.  As with most initial introductions/sales pitches, potential agents want you to cut to the chase and sizzle REALLY quickly. By the way if you don’t already know, in the publishing world your query letter is essentially your elevator pitch.  You just have to hope your time on the elevator lasts for more than one floor.  And since literary agents are justifiably cautious with emailed query letters when it comes to opening attachments from unknown sources, the only way that made sense to me to get their attention was by inviting them to my web address.  Obviously…once they get there, I’ve got to do SOMETHING to keep their eyeballs interested for at least a few minutes… (Hopefully, more).