Canter Bridge

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

Moira Allen’s well-written and attractively-presented guidebook hits time and again on a central theme: follow the rules.

Allen succeeds in communicating the editor’s task in facing an enormous quantity of queries and proposals. The quantity of work gives an edge to the proposer who has respected his intended publisher sufficiently to find out just how they want the proposal and then to follow those guidelines. There is more here, but staying between the lines is a recurring bit of wisdom. The good news: it’s not hard advice to follow.

Though Allen authors most of this reference guide’s 23 chapters, she has the good sense to call in expert help when addressing various niche markets. Each contributor’s work is well edited and so fits helpfully into Allen’s established format.

A substantial introduction outlines ten steps to writing the perfect pitch. The remaining chapters are grouped in five sections: `Querying periodicals’, `Columns and syndication’, `Selling a nonfiction book’, `The fiction proposal’, and `Other opportunities’.

`Querying periodicals’ (Section 1) establishes Allen’s method. She not only tells you how to do things correctly. She also provides examples of queries that worked, and then indicates her familiarity with her topic by offering sage counsel on tactics that backfire or simply fall like duds. Finally, she offers a wealth of contacts, some of them inevitably outdated five years from publication but many of them suggestive of others that have taken their place.

By the time you finish the four chapters of section one, you know a lot more about the topic than when you started, almost without feeling the effort you expended. Allen and her contributors facilitate the task with crisp writing that respects its reader. This also provides a sense of solidity that permeates the book. That is, Allen is more than a How-To Queen. She actually knows how to write.

Allen and Company carry this method forward to their various topics with agreeable consistency. They also throw in some items that you might not expect to find in a book like this (speaking opportunities, chat opportunities) and a delightful paragraph entitled `When to give up” (`As long as you find satisfaction in your work, the answer is, never.’)

There is a healthy number of books in this category on offer. Allen’s is one of the smartest, most in the know, and most satisfying of them. Buy it first.