Literary Consultancy Recommendations

Cornerstones is good.

The Literary Consultancy also.

I've heard very good things about The Writers' Workshop.

However, don't use them until you've revised your book carefully, had feedback from a few beta-readers, and spent some time putting at least part of the book through some sort of workshop: for example, the Share Your Work boards here. You can learn so much from taking those steps, and it's a shame to spend money getting feedback on a book which isn't yet ready for it.

Note that literary consultancies will not help you find representation. Some claim to, and they do sometimes forward promising manuscripts to agents with the authors' permission: but if your book is good enough for an agent to be interested in it, you don't need a consultancy to make that happen.

Old Hack said:

if your book is good enough for an agent to be interested in it, you don't need a consultancy to make that happen.

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QFT.

When I first planned on querying agents I learned of a very excellent firm of this kind that had a good reputation and a good relationship with some agencies, that had managed to land several of their clients top tier agents. I was very interested in using them. But before I did, I decided I might as well try on my own first. If I got nothing but negative responses then I would consider spending the money and having a professional look at it. And I'm very happy I did that as without their services I managed to land a fantastic agent, and, well haven't looked back since.

Work with beta readers first. Once you get 50 posts here you can share your work - letter and chapters - for some thoughts as well. See if you can do it without having to pay the big bucks. You might just discover you don't need them after all .

bin_b0x said:

Fair points. I'd been looking mainly for insight into the quality of my first three chapters--the window into the novel, as many agents treat it--but you're right. Why pay when I can partake here?

Thanks, guys. You've saved me some cash.

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Our pleasure!

Btw an easy way to get up to 50 posts is to visit Share Your Work and critique other people's work. This can actually end up doing double duty for you because not only will you get to 50 quickly and be able to post your own work, but by virtue of dissecting the work of others you may see things in your own work you didn't notice and can take that back with you and dissect your own. Just a suggestion, there are other places here where you can participate if you don't feel comfortable critiquing just yet, but yeah.

bin_b0x said:

I've been looking into hiring a literary consultancy to critique my opening three chapters and my query letter...

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Build up your post count and you can get a decent review in the Share Your Work forums here. At no charge.

Welcome.

Jeff