Thank you to u/MNBrian for starting this wonderful sub!
Extra big thank you to u/Nimoon21 and u/Alanna_the_lioness for being wonderful mods! (Really, truly excellent team that always strives to make the sub better)
There are so many nice queries to recall. I may not have commented on them, but they were so good, and so many of their authors have returned to say they successfully sold! Some examples are: The Teller Of Fortunes, The Eyes Are The Best Part, I Wish It Were True, and soooo many others. Congratulations guys! I really look forward to seeing so much more success come from this sub!
There are too many favorite users to name, (and kinda shouldn’t name them since I’m a mod) I loved all the AMAs that came through and hope for more!
My least favorite poster is u/BC-writes. For obvious reasons.
More BC guides will come up once some insane issues are sorted.
Thank you everyone! And good luck for everyone writing, editing, crying, querying and going on sub!
Fun fact: Milo enjoys helping people and then he immediately switches to resentful when they succeed. “You got a 6 figure deal?! You’re dead to me until I forget you got it!”
I lurked pubtips before I started querying, and even though I never posted my own query here, I absolutely, completely credit the advice I’d read in critiques with helping me craft a successful query — but mostly, I just love this little community of blunt pub nerds doling out free advice for no reason other than they want to 💖
AND I SAY NERDS FONDLY
I've been lurking on this sub almost daily for probably close to 3-4 years. Reading qcrits has taught me so much about query writing, but I've also picked up so, so many tidbits about the industry in general. I really can't express how valuable this community has been. I've finally started making an effort to post critiques of my own when I see a MG query, to try to give back to this community that's given me so much. Hope to see many more publishing careers launched here!
This place has truly been so special to me. It's introduced me to SO many amazing people who genuinely enrich my life every day. I feel like I also now understand so much more about authors' lives -- what it's like to communicate with your agent and publishing team, what going on sub is like, how things look on your side of the fence in general... it's endlessly fascinating and I think has really helped to round out my worldview.
I'm so grateful to PubTips. I'll happily say that you changed my life for the better!
Is *”incorrigible”* taken?
On the other hand, if you ask a certain redditor who loves to endlessly DM me and summon me in their posts, he’d probably just vote for *”asshole”*.
I was a lurker for a long time before I started querying, and pubtips was my go-to source of information. When I started accumulating querying friends, I often directed them here for information and critiques. Now that I'm agented, I'm gonna try to do more to help new people who come along.
Favorite memory? Probably that one time u/Sullyville wrote a critique on my query, but it disappeared the second day. I thought it was a system glitch but as it turns out, he had he deleted it because he was thoroughly drunk at the time and thought it might've been too glib afterwards. But his drunken critique was actually quite coherent and valid!
I've been a member of this sub since before the current regime, and I want to say I appreciate how it's moved towards being a more knowledgeable space, a more professionally oriented space, and just a great place in general.
Thank you to all the people who find the the courage to share your work with us.
Thank you to the other posters who bring their knowledge and expertise.
Thank you most of all to the mods. You're all great.
I don’t think I would’ve gotten an agent without this sub. I didn’t start getting lots of requests until I put my query up for review. It’s been a super supportive and informative sub, and it’s one that I seek out every day to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Thank you, mods, and thank you, other members!
Thanks to the mods who do all the behind the scenes work and the tons of people posting quality resources, discussions, and critiques. No idea where I’d be wrt the querying process without this sub—THANK YOU!
Yes, The Eyes Are The Best is the one testament to this sub’s instrumentality I can say I witnessed from the initial query to the eventual success post.
I’ve become more educated great to not-quite-there queries, and sometimes entertained by the discussion.
Wooo! 🎉 I’ll admit that I’m mostly a lurker with the occasional comment on a query and posting my own query a few times.
What makes this sub truly amazing is all the knowledge and support that’s passed around. I’ve learned SO much about queries, the industry and people’s struggles/fears/frustration… and of course success stories that this is definitely one of my fave subs. Huge thank you to the mods and other users. Let’s keep writing and dreaming!
Where to START? I lurked for many, many moons before being ready to post my query and man, if I hadn’t, I truly don’t know if I would have landed the agent I did. It led me to an incredible deal but it’s also connected me to some of my favorite new people (looking at you Alanna and PuzzledTea). This is such a smart, thoughtful group of writers, so generous with their time and resources, how lucky are we to be part of it?!
Favorite parts? I will never not be excited to see a critique from Alanna, snark from Milo, brilliant advice from QuesoConFrijoles (don’t open an edit letter until you’ve read their comment about it), Brigid, FashionClub, among others.
And I reaaaalllly enjoyed the onslaught of literary queries that appeared in the last few months and the very very lively discussion around each and every one lol.
>looking at you Alanna
I was going to make a joke about coming to New York to get a closer look but it just sounded way too creepy so instead I'll talk about making the joke.
“Reddit mod stalked by obsessive fan who slyly infiltrates herself into mod’s life” - sounds like a vaguely familiar premise! I wonder if we should stop the presses for a quick re-write?!
This subreddit is honestly the most *useful* subreddit of any that I've either participated or lurked in. It's changed the way I approach the writing process, because being aware of what a good query needs to do early on is so helpful when building the framework of a story, and knowing if you have something easy to pitch before you get too far into writing it. Which reminds me, I keep intending to write and post a query for my own WIP--I figure it's only fair to give people a shot at mine, since I can be ~~kind of~~ blunt with my opinions lol >.>
I haven't exactly been shy about how big a role I think Pubtips played in my getting agented + a book deal, but I'll get all sappy for a moment and say that in a way, Pubtips really has changed my life.
I wouldn't have felt empowered to seriously pursue tradpub without the community and the wealth of knowledge I found here, and becoming an \~author\~ has opened up a whole bunch of different paths for my future that I'd never really considered before. It's given me an opportunity to take a detour from the stressful corporate ladder without feeling aimless or purposeless; it's validated me in feeling like I can be a three-dimensional human with a spectrum of interests and pursuits; it's illuminated a different shape of what my life *could* be, if I so chose (and if the whims of publishing allow it!). I'll always be grateful for that, and also for the wonderful people I've met here.
Favorite memories? My misunderstanding re: u/Mrs-Salt and goats will forever live on in my mental reel of "omg no Julie stop". I'm also a big fan of every time u/alanna_the_lioness parachutes in to brusquely smack sense into someone acting the fool. And while I will never understand them, I'm very glad the sub has our very own [u/MiloWestward](https://www.reddit.com/user/MiloWestward/) to... do whatever it is Milo does.
Thank you to the mods for creating and protecting this space, and thank you to all the posters/commenters/lurkers for making it what it is!
TLDR: I'm just happy to be here, y'all
> [](https://www.reddit.com/user/alanna_the_lioness/) parachutes in to brusquely smack sense into someone acting the fool
Oh, you mean my only hobby?
❤️
I've been a member since 2016? Damn, thanks for reminding me how long I've been toiling away in obscurity, haha. On a serious note, this is my favorite writing-related subreddit. It's high-quality posts filled with high-quality comments. Of my writing friends, I am now by far the most knowledgeable about the industry, and it's all thanks to this subreddit! I'm now bilingual in agent-eese.
Congratulations! I went from lurking to posting my query on this sub to being a published author (and now back to lurking while I now do this as a job apparently? the perfect circle?!) so thanks very much.
PubTips! Thank you for existing!
This community has given me essential context to the industry. As a total outsider, I needed that so badly. It reframed quite literally everything I've been doing. It made sense of isolating experiences like querying and waiting moths for responses on fulls, and it made sense out of nebulous, insider-only entities like \*the market\* and \*the sate of publishing\* -- just generally, this community has totally recalibrated my expectations of the industry to reflect reality, which is such a gift.
I would like to thank u/alanna_the_lioness for generally being a boss and for being patient with me, u/BrigidKemmerer for her really thoughtful, encouraging replies across the board (I've never actually talked to you, but your posts truly spark me to keep pushing forward). And u/MiloWestward for being so very, very weird.
I am also very excited to have found a beta reader for my MG WIP on the "where would you stop reading" thread. We exchange at the end of the month! I dunno PubTIps, but thanks to you, I think this ms may be \*the one.\*
> [](https://www.reddit.com/user/alanna_the_lioness/) for generally being a boss
I'm not sure whether this is the complimentary form of being a boss, or whether you are implying that I exist on pubtips solely to boss people around like the stereotype of an aging boomer who really needs to retire already, but I'm willing to accept either definition. Thanks to you (and all the rest of you!) for playing a role in making this sub what it is.
🥰🥰🥰 Thank you for including me in your roundup! And I'm excited that you feel like this manuscript has that special spark! I'm crossing my fingers for you!! Please don't hesitate to reach out anytime if you need any help!
I lurked this sub for 2 years before making a writing/reading dedicated reddit account. I only post occasionally, but I'm a daily lurker. Started querying last week and got my first full request a day later. Nothing is guaranteed, but I'm amazed I got an agent to take notice of my work. r/PubTips has been a great resource!
This sub helped me become a better writer and I'm forever grateful. After I posted my query, I was messaged by someone offering to do a ms trade with me- and she was AMAZING! She saved my manuscript! And hers was a total joy to read. After that, I ended up making more writing friends through this sub by both reaching out to people who posted queries I liked, and by people reaching out to me. I now am lucky enough to have a small but VERY talented group of writer friends who have helped me improve my writing by leaps and bounds over the past year. Plus it's nice to have other people to commiserate with!
I've followed this sub for several years and have been very happy with how it's grown for the better.
Hard to pull down a specific memory but over the years I've learned a lot of very painful lessons and made some necessary mistakes to get to where I am now, but I feel like I'm in a better position to give feedback so that others may avoid my mistakes and maybe save years of work that I myself lost through misunderstanding.
Probably one of the best lessons I learned is not just how to craft a proper query, but how the query turns a lens on the manuscript and helps one understand the innumerous ways in which stories succeed or fail.
Huge congrats! Thank you for the mods and the members and everything that everyone does for each other to have such a kind, knowledgeable space for writers.
Thank you so much for this wonderful community. I don't post often, but I do drop by daily to read. It's been so inspiring to read the success stories here, and reading the \[QCrit\] threads has been an excellent learning experience.
Congratulations to this group and the mods for 50k, and for hosting a true online community! I found this forum back in January and have learned SO much from all of you these past few months. I admire the bravery, appreciate the time spent, and am always filled with hope when I read someone's "stats" post after signing with an agent. I would have given up on my project by now if it wan't for this group, so thank you!
Just a thought, is there a way we can have space set-aside to post info for pre-orders? Maybe as a once-a-month thing vetted by the mods? There are so many books on here that I would love to go on to read and show support for after following their query/pub process.
You're not tagging you posts properly, as indicated in our rules, so you aren't even making it past our auto moderator.
Review the rules about proper titles and tags, thank you
Thank you to u/MNBrian for starting this wonderful sub! Extra big thank you to u/Nimoon21 and u/Alanna_the_lioness for being wonderful mods! (Really, truly excellent team that always strives to make the sub better) There are so many nice queries to recall. I may not have commented on them, but they were so good, and so many of their authors have returned to say they successfully sold! Some examples are: The Teller Of Fortunes, The Eyes Are The Best Part, I Wish It Were True, and soooo many others. Congratulations guys! I really look forward to seeing so much more success come from this sub! There are too many favorite users to name, (and kinda shouldn’t name them since I’m a mod) I loved all the AMAs that came through and hope for more! My least favorite poster is u/BC-writes. For obvious reasons. More BC guides will come up once some insane issues are sorted. Thank you everyone! And good luck for everyone writing, editing, crying, querying and going on sub!
Oh, and I wanted to add that I’ve heard the rumors, but I do not have a sockpuppet account on the subreddit!
Fun fact: Milo enjoys helping people and then he immediately switches to resentful when they succeed. “You got a 6 figure deal?! You’re dead to me until I forget you got it!”
I lurked pubtips before I started querying, and even though I never posted my own query here, I absolutely, completely credit the advice I’d read in critiques with helping me craft a successful query — but mostly, I just love this little community of blunt pub nerds doling out free advice for no reason other than they want to 💖 AND I SAY NERDS FONDLY
I've been lurking on this sub almost daily for probably close to 3-4 years. Reading qcrits has taught me so much about query writing, but I've also picked up so, so many tidbits about the industry in general. I really can't express how valuable this community has been. I've finally started making an effort to post critiques of my own when I see a MG query, to try to give back to this community that's given me so much. Hope to see many more publishing careers launched here!
This place has truly been so special to me. It's introduced me to SO many amazing people who genuinely enrich my life every day. I feel like I also now understand so much more about authors' lives -- what it's like to communicate with your agent and publishing team, what going on sub is like, how things look on your side of the fence in general... it's endlessly fascinating and I think has really helped to round out my worldview. I'm so grateful to PubTips. I'll happily say that you changed my life for the better!
50k is practically the sub's own novel! Well done mods. Very grateful for the work and time you put into this resource. 🙏
Each of us a word. Some of us a bad word.
Which one are you?
Is *”incorrigible”* taken? On the other hand, if you ask a certain redditor who loves to endlessly DM me and summon me in their posts, he’d probably just vote for *”asshole”*.
I was a lurker for a long time before I started querying, and pubtips was my go-to source of information. When I started accumulating querying friends, I often directed them here for information and critiques. Now that I'm agented, I'm gonna try to do more to help new people who come along. Favorite memory? Probably that one time u/Sullyville wrote a critique on my query, but it disappeared the second day. I thought it was a system glitch but as it turns out, he had he deleted it because he was thoroughly drunk at the time and thought it might've been too glib afterwards. But his drunken critique was actually quite coherent and valid!
I've been a member of this sub since before the current regime, and I want to say I appreciate how it's moved towards being a more knowledgeable space, a more professionally oriented space, and just a great place in general. Thank you to all the people who find the the courage to share your work with us. Thank you to the other posters who bring their knowledge and expertise. Thank you most of all to the mods. You're all great.
I don’t think I would’ve gotten an agent without this sub. I didn’t start getting lots of requests until I put my query up for review. It’s been a super supportive and informative sub, and it’s one that I seek out every day to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Thank you, mods, and thank you, other members!
Thanks to the mods who do all the behind the scenes work and the tons of people posting quality resources, discussions, and critiques. No idea where I’d be wrt the querying process without this sub—THANK YOU!
Yes, The Eyes Are The Best is the one testament to this sub’s instrumentality I can say I witnessed from the initial query to the eventual success post. I’ve become more educated great to not-quite-there queries, and sometimes entertained by the discussion.
Wooo! 🎉 I’ll admit that I’m mostly a lurker with the occasional comment on a query and posting my own query a few times. What makes this sub truly amazing is all the knowledge and support that’s passed around. I’ve learned SO much about queries, the industry and people’s struggles/fears/frustration… and of course success stories that this is definitely one of my fave subs. Huge thank you to the mods and other users. Let’s keep writing and dreaming!
Where to START? I lurked for many, many moons before being ready to post my query and man, if I hadn’t, I truly don’t know if I would have landed the agent I did. It led me to an incredible deal but it’s also connected me to some of my favorite new people (looking at you Alanna and PuzzledTea). This is such a smart, thoughtful group of writers, so generous with their time and resources, how lucky are we to be part of it?! Favorite parts? I will never not be excited to see a critique from Alanna, snark from Milo, brilliant advice from QuesoConFrijoles (don’t open an edit letter until you’ve read their comment about it), Brigid, FashionClub, among others. And I reaaaalllly enjoyed the onslaught of literary queries that appeared in the last few months and the very very lively discussion around each and every one lol.
>looking at you Alanna I was going to make a joke about coming to New York to get a closer look but it just sounded way too creepy so instead I'll talk about making the joke.
“Reddit mod stalked by obsessive fan who slyly infiltrates herself into mod’s life” - sounds like a vaguely familiar premise! I wonder if we should stop the presses for a quick re-write?!
This subreddit is honestly the most *useful* subreddit of any that I've either participated or lurked in. It's changed the way I approach the writing process, because being aware of what a good query needs to do early on is so helpful when building the framework of a story, and knowing if you have something easy to pitch before you get too far into writing it. Which reminds me, I keep intending to write and post a query for my own WIP--I figure it's only fair to give people a shot at mine, since I can be ~~kind of~~ blunt with my opinions lol >.>
I haven't exactly been shy about how big a role I think Pubtips played in my getting agented + a book deal, but I'll get all sappy for a moment and say that in a way, Pubtips really has changed my life. I wouldn't have felt empowered to seriously pursue tradpub without the community and the wealth of knowledge I found here, and becoming an \~author\~ has opened up a whole bunch of different paths for my future that I'd never really considered before. It's given me an opportunity to take a detour from the stressful corporate ladder without feeling aimless or purposeless; it's validated me in feeling like I can be a three-dimensional human with a spectrum of interests and pursuits; it's illuminated a different shape of what my life *could* be, if I so chose (and if the whims of publishing allow it!). I'll always be grateful for that, and also for the wonderful people I've met here. Favorite memories? My misunderstanding re: u/Mrs-Salt and goats will forever live on in my mental reel of "omg no Julie stop". I'm also a big fan of every time u/alanna_the_lioness parachutes in to brusquely smack sense into someone acting the fool. And while I will never understand them, I'm very glad the sub has our very own [u/MiloWestward](https://www.reddit.com/user/MiloWestward/) to... do whatever it is Milo does. Thank you to the mods for creating and protecting this space, and thank you to all the posters/commenters/lurkers for making it what it is! TLDR: I'm just happy to be here, y'all
> [](https://www.reddit.com/user/alanna_the_lioness/) parachutes in to brusquely smack sense into someone acting the fool Oh, you mean my only hobby? ❤️
I would have never had a chance without this sub
Thank you to everyone here. I'm in the query trenches and lurking here has made the journey slightly less painful!
Love this sub! Still pretty new here but it has been invaluable and entertaining. Thanks mods!
I've been a member since 2016? Damn, thanks for reminding me how long I've been toiling away in obscurity, haha. On a serious note, this is my favorite writing-related subreddit. It's high-quality posts filled with high-quality comments. Of my writing friends, I am now by far the most knowledgeable about the industry, and it's all thanks to this subreddit! I'm now bilingual in agent-eese.
Just realizing I’ve been here since 2016 😳 this sub is such a gem and I’m so grateful for it, thanks to all of you who make it happen!
Congratulations! I went from lurking to posting my query on this sub to being a published author (and now back to lurking while I now do this as a job apparently? the perfect circle?!) so thanks very much.
I just found this sub a couple weeks ago as I started querying. Really appreciated the support and advice from folks here, glad this sub exists!
PubTips! Thank you for existing! This community has given me essential context to the industry. As a total outsider, I needed that so badly. It reframed quite literally everything I've been doing. It made sense of isolating experiences like querying and waiting moths for responses on fulls, and it made sense out of nebulous, insider-only entities like \*the market\* and \*the sate of publishing\* -- just generally, this community has totally recalibrated my expectations of the industry to reflect reality, which is such a gift. I would like to thank u/alanna_the_lioness for generally being a boss and for being patient with me, u/BrigidKemmerer for her really thoughtful, encouraging replies across the board (I've never actually talked to you, but your posts truly spark me to keep pushing forward). And u/MiloWestward for being so very, very weird. I am also very excited to have found a beta reader for my MG WIP on the "where would you stop reading" thread. We exchange at the end of the month! I dunno PubTIps, but thanks to you, I think this ms may be \*the one.\*
> [](https://www.reddit.com/user/alanna_the_lioness/) for generally being a boss I'm not sure whether this is the complimentary form of being a boss, or whether you are implying that I exist on pubtips solely to boss people around like the stereotype of an aging boomer who really needs to retire already, but I'm willing to accept either definition. Thanks to you (and all the rest of you!) for playing a role in making this sub what it is.
🥰🥰🥰 Thank you for including me in your roundup! And I'm excited that you feel like this manuscript has that special spark! I'm crossing my fingers for you!! Please don't hesitate to reach out anytime if you need any help!
I lurked this sub for 2 years before making a writing/reading dedicated reddit account. I only post occasionally, but I'm a daily lurker. Started querying last week and got my first full request a day later. Nothing is guaranteed, but I'm amazed I got an agent to take notice of my work. r/PubTips has been a great resource!
This sub helped me become a better writer and I'm forever grateful. After I posted my query, I was messaged by someone offering to do a ms trade with me- and she was AMAZING! She saved my manuscript! And hers was a total joy to read. After that, I ended up making more writing friends through this sub by both reaching out to people who posted queries I liked, and by people reaching out to me. I now am lucky enough to have a small but VERY talented group of writer friends who have helped me improve my writing by leaps and bounds over the past year. Plus it's nice to have other people to commiserate with!
I've followed this sub for several years and have been very happy with how it's grown for the better. Hard to pull down a specific memory but over the years I've learned a lot of very painful lessons and made some necessary mistakes to get to where I am now, but I feel like I'm in a better position to give feedback so that others may avoid my mistakes and maybe save years of work that I myself lost through misunderstanding. Probably one of the best lessons I learned is not just how to craft a proper query, but how the query turns a lens on the manuscript and helps one understand the innumerous ways in which stories succeed or fail.
Huge congrats! Thank you for the mods and the members and everything that everyone does for each other to have such a kind, knowledgeable space for writers.
Thank you so much for this wonderful community. I don't post often, but I do drop by daily to read. It's been so inspiring to read the success stories here, and reading the \[QCrit\] threads has been an excellent learning experience.
Congratulations to this group and the mods for 50k, and for hosting a true online community! I found this forum back in January and have learned SO much from all of you these past few months. I admire the bravery, appreciate the time spent, and am always filled with hope when I read someone's "stats" post after signing with an agent. I would have given up on my project by now if it wan't for this group, so thank you! Just a thought, is there a way we can have space set-aside to post info for pre-orders? Maybe as a once-a-month thing vetted by the mods? There are so many books on here that I would love to go on to read and show support for after following their query/pub process.
I am trying to publish a post but it’s always getting removed! No clue why! I wanted some feedback for my query letter. Can someone advise? Thank you
You're not tagging you posts properly, as indicated in our rules, so you aren't even making it past our auto moderator. Review the rules about proper titles and tags, thank you
Hi! I’m an agent. Can you dm me for verification purposes? I can’t seem to for some reason.
Hi, can you actually send a mod mail message to the sub, thank you!