Few literary agents expectquery lettersto be 100% perfect—especially if the author is new.

That said, most literary agents DO expect a certain level of competence and a fundamental understanding of publishing industry etiquette.

If you’re a writer hoping to get a book published, Writer’s Relief explains the query letter mistakes you must avoid.

9 Things Writers Do Wrong In Query Letters

Can you actually hook a reader in two sentences? I have problems with my elevator speech and that’s a lot longer than two sentences. However, the answer is yes, and I know from experience, you had better hook your reader, or literary agent, right away if you want to make a sell.

The next question for me, is how do I write a 2-sentence hook? My story is complicated, and I don’t even know where to begin.

A 2-story hook has three components. These not only provide the gist of your story, but also an abbreviated outline of what you are trying to accomplish.

1. Character –  Who is your hero or heroine? You don’t want to give that character a name in your 2-sentence write up. Give them an identity.                     Not Anne, but a young orphan girl.      …

In my Elemental Worlds books. Pettic, a farmer’s son is the best friend of the Crown Prince. although there is mention of how this came about in the books, I thought I would give you a fuller account of their meeting.

Pettic woke up early. It was still dark, but he could hear his mother moving around in the downstairs room. Today they would have to get their chores done early. Today they were going to take the two day journey to the capital city of Ponderia.
Pettic had never beem to Glitton. In fact he had never been further than a half day’s journey from the farm that his parents owned. This journey was to celebrate his thirteenth birthday.
He poked his little brother in the ribs. ‘Derkil, get up. We need to do our jobs quickly. Don’t forget that today is the day we’re going to Glitton.’
The…

As those of you who are self-hosting your websites will probably know, beginning this month (July) with the release of Chrome 68, Google Chrome will start marking all HTTP sites as “not secure”:

Depending on your traffic, this may or may not be an issue. Still, many of you will upgrade your hosting with an additional security measure called a Security Socket Layer–or SSL. As the rather technical name suggests, what this does is make sure that the communication between your server and a visitor is secure. As far as web users are concerned, the only difference is that the prefix to their website address will now be HTTPS instead of HTTP, the extra S indicating this is now a Secure server.

Some hosts already provide this free of charge, while others will charge for the upgrade. But there is a snag: the moment you make the move to HTTPS,

by Richard Risemberg

This is the way it is: if your book does not enjoy extensive publicity, it will not sell.

This is not a hard and fast rule, as miracles do happen through word of mouth, but the odds favor ads in this word of white noise that we live in. Sure, Moby Dick is a classic now, but it was a flop in Melville’s lifetime, even though he had already published two bestsellers!