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WHAT WE SEEK, AND HOW TO SUBMIT
WE DO REPRESENT
Narrative nonfiction: Compelling tales of true events in history, science, or adventure. Think Perfect Storm or Beethoven's Hair or Longitude or The Professor and the Madman. These are difficult books to write, requiring the skill of a novelist and the tenacity of a fact-checker at The New Yorker. But they can be great reads.
Commercial nonfiction: We are looking for exciting, fresh, and responsible new ideas in the fields of business, health, psychology, inspiration, parenting, science, relationships, history and sociology. Think You Just Don’t Understand rather than Men are from Mars.
Memoir: Only if it's rare and wonderful; to date we’ve only found two memoirs to represent.It’s a tough field. Remember (in our opinion) when it comes to a memoir, it’s more important to be a great writer than to have a great story, although of course the story matters.
Literary Fiction: Our tastes lie solidly in what is now called the "literary commercial" category. We love novels that tell a great story-and give you something to think about when you close the book.
Commercial Fiction: We're looking for big books-big plots, memorable characters, and impossible-to-put-down page-turners. We don’t handle genre fiction (no romance, no boy books, no Westerns, no horror, no true crime). We’re somewhat open to mysteries, and learning more about the category. Nothing too bloody; Jody has strong feelings about putting more violence out there in this world, even for art’s sake.
Exceptions : Jody’s sensibility is personal and quirky. We’re not actively seeking humor, for example, but she loved Bruce Cameron’s work and therefore took on 8 Simple Rules. If you truly have a fresh and qualified voice, a reachable market and the means to reach it, give us a try.
WE DON'T REPRESENT
Notwithstanding the above, please do not send: poetry, romance, horror, children’s books, science fiction, fantasy, or men's adventure.
WHAT TO SEND
Send us a one-page query letter, with a SASE, through the mail.
Your query letter should be clear and direct. We need to know exactly who you are, what your book idea is, why you are qualified to write this book, and why there is a market for the book. Your query letter does not have to be fancy, titillating or splashy. It has to be extremely professional, thorough, and knowledgeable. It has to be well-written.
Of course, a query letter for a novel is trickier than one for a nonfiction work. Writing style plays a bigger role. Nonetheless, your goal in writing this query is to entice us to ask to see more, and nothing is more enticing than professionalism.
E-Mail: We do not accept e-mail queries. We tried for awhile and learned that while e-mail is great for casual correspondence, it just doesn't work (for us) for a formal book query.
WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR QUERY LETTER
Your letter is initially read by Johnna. If she believes the book might be something we would represent, she passes it on to Jody, who makes the final call. While it can take us a few weeks to get to your letter, we can usually tell very quickly if it's right for us or not (See tips below.)
If you do not send an SASE, we do not send a response, and occasionally unsolicited queries can fall between the cracks. But we do our best. If your proposed book is not something we believe we can sell for you, our response is most often a form letter. And our responses can take 4 to 6 weeks.
Or, we may request additional material.
IF WE ASK FOR A PROPOSAL, OR FOR 60 PAGES OF YOUR NOVEL
We always expect exclusivity when we ask for lengthier submissions. However, we also do not believe an agent (or anyone) has the right to get in the way of an author's earning his livelihood. Therefore, we ask for a two-week-only period of exclusivity, after which you can either submit your work elsewhere, or continue to work exclusively with us. We also believe that if we have asked you to send us your work exclusively, and we choose not to represent it, we owe a clear and thoughtful response, which we do our best to provide.
Suggested nonfiction proposal contents:We appreciate proposals that contain expanded sections mirroring the things you’ve highlighted in your query letter: who you are, what your book idea is, why you are qualified to write this book, and why there is a market for the book.In addition, we need a clear positioning of your book vis a vis other similar books, a detailed table of contents and sample writing (at least one chapter.)
We don't accept telephone or e-mail queries.
Please send your query letter to:
Jody W. Rein
Jody Rein Books, Inc.
7741 S. Ash Court
Centennial, CO 80122
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