Ok, so I may be late to this party, but our office is finally making the leap to Kindles and mine has just arrived via the kindly UPS man. And I'm not ashamed to admit that it's love at first sight.

As any publishing industry professional will tell you, up until the advent of eReaders and Kindles, we all had a permanent crick in our necks from carrying around a tote filled with manuscripts and proposals. I don't know how many times multiple manuscripts were delivered on the same day, and I had to let one sit because it couldn't fit in my "to read" bag. Now I can load this tiny thing up with all my manuscripts and take them wherever I'm headed (hopefully, the beach) and toggle through at will.

But, I have a confession to make: I don't think the Kindle can shake my love of actual, physical books. I just put in an order for some titles from my local indie bookstore, and there is something thrilling and unreplaceable about going in and chatting with the owner and leaving with some good old paper in my hands. So maybe this is the happy medium- manuscripts and quick emergency reads on the Kindle, and "forever" books at home on my shelf.

-Michelle Brower

I recently did a query workshop with Jason Ashlock of Moveable Type and Colleen Lindsay of FinePrint for the Backspace Conference, and it was our job to read author queries and ring a bell when we would have stopped reading. Out of all the queries we workshopped (I'd say we got to at least 30), there was only one that we actually got all the way through. We kept seeing the same problems over and over, so here's a redux of our top ten query red flags:

1) Never, ever, ever say you have a "fiction novel". All novels are fiction. For that matter, never say you have a "non-fiction novel" either.

2) Don't include a mock up of what you think your cover will look like. It won't look like that in the end anyway, and some of them are- to be kind -not very good looking.

3) Don't tell agents how you have been writing all your life, since you could first hold a crayon, and that's why we should take you on. This is not an important piece of your bio.

4) Don't pitch a trilogy. Trilogies are pretty outdated, and most publishers are not going to buy a trilogy when you don't already have a strong sales history. Pitch the first book, which should be able to stand on its own, and say you would like to continue on in a series instead.

5) Word count! Nearly all of the queries I looked at in the workshop were clocking in at or above 120,000 words. That is almost always too long, and makes me think you haven't edited enough. I think an appropriate length for most adult commercial fiction is between 75,000 and 100,000, and YA is between 60,00 and 80,000. Literary fiction usually is harder to pin down; it just has to be super special.

6) Don't call your work literary fiction if it isn't. Sometimes, it's hard to categorize what you're working on, but literary fiction is its own special animal. It's about the language, the craft, and more than just the reading experience. Usually, if you're writing literary fiction, you've got some great journal credits, like Glimmertrain or Tin House, or have studied in an MFA program. Those things aren't necessary, but don't jump to label your work literary if it's just hard to describe.

7) Know your audience. I often see things listed as "mainstream fiction" or "family saga" or "general fiction" and these are very broad terms that don't really tell me much. If you were to go into the bookstore, where would your book be shelved? Who is the person who is most likely to read it?

8) Don't mention that your book has been professionally edited or copy-edited. In fact, why get it professionally edited? Frankly, I want to see what your writing is like on your own. Work shopping is absolutely great, but if I see something professionally edited by someone you've hired, I don't get a good sense of how good or not good you actually are.

9) Don't use a weird font or paper with a picture of a pen in an inkwell on it. This is a business letter, just be straightforward.

10) Tell us what happens in the book. We always see query letters where "something tragic happens". We need to know what that something is! Don't worry about giving away the story, we need to know this information at some point and it's probably your hook. Don't hide the hook!

And here's a bonus 11th don't: Don't start with a rhetorical question.

Now, get out there and spiff up those queries!

-Michelle Brower