The Best Tools for Publishing

Now that I've ranted at you about how awful publishing trends are, I'm going to give you writers out there some of my favorite, most useful tools for getting published. Despite my continued stream of rejections (80, baby!), I actually know a good bit about this. So here are some things you might want to check out. Click the pictures for links!

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Preditors and Editors
I've mentioned this website before. Preditors and Editors is a good website for those of you sending out to publishers and agents. Though often slightly outdated, P+E covers pretty much every publishing agency, editor, or agent out there in terms of risk and legitimacy. It talks about some other stuff too once in a while, but that's the important part. This is the website to use so you don't get caught up in a scam. Because that would be stinky.

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QueryTracker
Where I've been using P+E for years, QueryTracker is a new thing I found. Basically, it helps you keep track of who you've sent out to, the deadline for their reply, and their responses. That way you can see just how pathetic you are! Just kidding, it's really, honestly useful. It also gives stats on various editors and agents, and some information about submitting to them. Good stuff!

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Writer's Market
This is a set of reference books, put out yearly, with lists of publishers and agents, their genres, and how to contact them. There are also a lot of useful articles at the beginning of each volume. Writer's Market has been a great tool for me to find people to send out to. There are a couple genre-specific versions too. I go for the Children's one, naturally. I recommend it for the beginning of your search.

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That's pretty much it for publishing tools. I do have some other writing tools that I'll probably talk about, sometime. 

Anyway, hope that helps those of you on the track to publishing, and thanks for reading! Check in next week for New Year's and some resolutionizing that does NOT involve losing weight. Ciao!

Images via linked websites and Goodreads.