The First Five Pages
Noah Lukeman's book is very helpful for aspiring writers. He helps you to make it past the Assistant To the literary agent. The Assistant To's job is to read all the queries, all the synopsis and sample chapters and then recommend .1% to the agent. The Assistant To has a tremendous reading load and because of this is inclined to reject, reject, reject to get through the pile.
Lukeman's book tells you the techniques the Assistant To uses to quickly and efficiently do the initial screening. He does this with clarity and directness.
Aspiring writers are a huge market for "how to"
advice. This advice seems to have fallen into a pattern which is repeated over and over again. In my opinion Lukeman's book is well done and useful. By the way, my favorite rejection was, "Alas, it's not for us. So sorry."
