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So if you like books, and you like the Underground, go to the competition page and put in your vote for us! If you don't already have a Goodreads account, you'll need to get one. But don't worry, it's free.

Thanks for your support,

-The Underground Team 

You’ve finished your first novel. Good for you. Now, pull your hand away from the send button on your first query, because you’re not ready. You aren’t even close. Let me save you months, or even years, of painful heartache and frustration. I want to introduce you to a place that will prepare you and your manuscript for the realities of the publishing industry.

A few months ago we at Underground Book Reviews were invited to participate in a new concept called Author Salon. Author Salon is a website with four goals: 
1) Be the preferred source of discovery for literary agents, producers, and publishers  2) Serve as an online writers conference  
3) Provide a work space for the writing community
4) Become a source for myth-free news and facts on the publishing industry. 
Let me put it another way: If writing were like baseball, Author Salon takes you from the farm clubs to your first tryout with the Yankees. It doesn’t guarantee you a spot on the team, but it will show you how to hit, field, spit and wear the uniform like a big leaguer. This is how it works.

Joining Author Salon is intentionally detailed and time-consuming. This process forces you to delve deep into your manuscript and ask yourself serious question about your project.  The profile is broken into four major sections: Project Notes and Query, Writer Bio and Goals, Plot and Story Matters, and Prose and Narrative Elements. A step-by-step guide, employing a disciplined methodology, leads authors through the rigorous process of building their profile. Ultimately, a well-honed profile is a standing query that clearly describes your book in a way that gets the right attention.

If Author Salon does anything, it teaches you how to pitch your novel and craft a solid query.  The profile is about selling your book and selling yourself. Once you complete your draft profile the real work begins; now it’s time to tear it all down and start over in Author Connect.

After your initial profile is complete you’ll enter the world of Author Connect, Author Salon’s companion online workspace. Here you’ll collaborate with other writers in your genre to improve your profile and, by extension, your manuscript. This process begins with a “call for peers” where you invite other writers to critique your profile using a rigid methodology. You will also critique their work. These are NOT critiques of the novels, but of the profiles. How well do you understand and describe your novel? If done correctly, a feedback loop will emerge between your profile and your manuscript.

This improvement loop helps elevate your profile and manuscript to clearly defined standards. These standards are available to Author Salon members via guides, tutorials and templates. These critiques are painstaking, detailed, and often brutal in their honesty. Not only are your peers reviewing your profile, but so is Author Salon staff. Critiques are always professional and never personal. This is where the real learning occurs. You’ll probably discover you may have to rewrite your profile...and maybe even your whole novel.

As your profile and manuscript improves, you’ll eventually move up the Author Salon four-tiered system. These tiers indicate the quality of your profile and its readiness for both agents and publishers. You’ll enter Author Salon at “In Production I” and eventually progress up the ladder to “Marquee.” By Marquee-level, your profile has been through at least four rounds of peer critiques, peer votes, and an Author Salon advisor review.  This process is neither quick nor easy. Patience is a must.

Here’s the pay-off and what makes Author Salon truly different. Agents and editors roam the virtual halls of Author Salon. While they likely concentrate on the projects at Marquee-level, they can tap anyone at any level at any time. It’s not a given, but you may just get your big break here. Even if you don’t, upon reaching Marquee-level, you can feel confident in your ability to pitch your manuscript.

Now that I told you what Author Salon is, I can tell you what it is not. It’s not a writing circle or review site for people who are tinkering with the idea of becoming writers. This is for serious work-to-publish authors. It’s for professionals; those who don’t follow the rules are shown the door. It is also not for the faint-of-heart or thin-skinned. Your peers and the site facilitators will be blunt. If you do not heed their advice, you don’t move up the tiers. 

For those considering self-publication, I think Author Salon is a must. In Author Salon, you’ll learn how to write a hook line, a synopsis, define your conflict, and put your best samples on display. Author Salon is an excellent tool for any writer, regardless of desired publishing source.

Author Salon is still in early beta-testing with a small, but growing stable of writers. Like any emergent website, it’s still evolving. However, while it’s in beta-testing joining is free. After this widow closes it will cost $9.99 a month, or $79.00 a year, to join.

Only time will time will tell if Author Salon lives up to its potential, but so far it looks promising. We at the Underground will keep you posted as our journey continues. 

You can find Author Salon here.

If you enjoyed this post, you can follow Brian on Facebook or Twitter. You can also subscribe to the Underground.

For those of you who want to get updates from the Underground but don’t want to clutter your inbox, we now have a Weekly Newsletter option. The Weekly Newsletter will bundle an entire week’s worth of blog posts into one easy-to-read email, and will be delivered every Saturday.

If you’re interested, you can subscribe here.

Do you like the new logo? So do we! The design was created by Lisa Patrick from BitWizards, and she was truly a joy to work with. She listened to our input in order to create a personalized icon that embodies the spirit of the website while at the same time being simple and easily recognizable. It was a wonderful experience to see our words turned into art. We at the Underground would recommend BitWizards to anyone looking for a professional way to represent their website or business.

Happy holidays!

First of all, we’d like to thank those of you who took the time to nominate us at WritetoDone. Your votes are important! And if you haven’t gotten around to it yet, you still have time… the nominations are open until December 10th, and every voice counts. Please support the Underground and show your support by commenting on the Top Ten Writer’s Blog post at WritetoDone!

Here at the Underground, we need your support. For six years now, Leo Babauta, the author of the blog Write to Done, has compiled a list of the top ten blogs for writers. As an emerging new website, Underground Book Reviews hopes to be considered for this year’s top ten list. But first we must be nominated by you, our dedicated readers.

Please support the Underground by visiting the Write to Done nomination page  and posting your nomination in the comments section. Nominations must be received by December 10th.

So you want to be a writer? Have you done any market research yet? We at Underground Book Reviews have. Listen to these statistics: 44 million U.S. adults, 15 percent of the population, can't read well enough to read a simple story to  a child. More than 20 percent of U.S. adults read at or below a fifth-grade  level.  Nearly half of America's adults are functionally illiterate and can't carry out simple tasks like balancing check books, reading drug labels or writing essays for a job. 21 million American adults can't read at all and one-fifth of all high school graduates can't read their diplomas. What good is being a writer if no one can read your work?

If you care about your craft  and the future of our children, please visit Literacy, Inc. and make a donation.

If you care about great fiction from emerging authors, follow us on Facebook and subscribe to the Underground.

Happy National Novel Writing Month to all you brave enough to tackle 50k words in only 30 days. We at the Underground support your late night coffee binges and all night plotting session. We turn a blind eye to the dust bunny colony growing under your couch. And we promise never to mention the dark bags under your eyes. Good luck! We can't wait to see the finished project.

From now on, our book reviews will be posted every Monday. Thursday reviews will soon be a thing of history. Our new tradition will begin this Monday, the 24th of October, with a review of The Colony by Jillian Weise, brought to you by AB's Newbies. We hope you enjoy starting off your week with a new review. Thanks for your support.
 
-The Underground

As if writing a novel wasn't hard enough while working a full time job, raising two small children and trying to keep some semblance of a marriage, I've reached the part of this process that in my mind feels similar to the scene in Full Metal Jacket where the other Privates beat Pyle with soap-filled socks. Though no one beat me silly, I still feel writing a query tantamount to mental abuse.

I have spent a year of my life slaving away on a manuscript, giving my blood, sweat and tears (or at least every minute of my free time) to characters who now live and breathe in my head. I've gone over every word not once, not twice, but dozens of times until my head is spinning and my fingers feel permanently glued to the keyboard. Then the miraculous happened. I finished the dang thing. I did the dance of joy until I realize what came next- the query. Now I must take my perfected manuscript and set it aside and write a snippet that distills 100,000 words into 500. I must use voice (but not too much voice), make it stand out (but don’t go outside the standard format), sell myself (but don’t come off pompous) and dear sweet God don’t let me get the agent’s name wrong.

If all this sounds impossible, then you and I are in the same boat. And sorry folks, but I think we left the paddles on shore.

Querying is one of the most terrifying parts for the aspiring writer. I hate it. I’d rather scrub the grout around my toilet, clean the cling-ons off my dog's hind end, pretty much anything other than work on my query. It’s maddening. Where else do you work on something for literally years and are then told, no, that’s not how you will be evaluated? Consider this scenario below.

An art buyer sits down with a prospective artist client. Behind her sleek, lacquered desk she looks at the painter. “Here’s how I’ll decide if I want your work,” she says. “Create a painting that represents your masterpiece. But, please make it no bigger than a postage stamp.”

The exhausted, paint-speckled artist’s jaw drops. “I couldn’t possibly make something that small as beautiful as what I’ve already created. I’ve spent years on this painting. Couldn’t you just come see it?”  the painter cries, frantically waiving to where his masterpiece rests just behind the door.

“No, no.” She waves dismissively. “Honestly, I just don’t have the time.”

I can whine and complain all I like, but querying is likely here to stay. The gatekeepers of the publishing world want queries. I want their representation. So I query and, like Private Pyle, keep my sobs quiet under my pillow.

If you’re in my boat, there are lots of great query sites like Query Shark and Writer’s Digest that offer suggestions on how to summarize with style and promote like a pro. For me, I’ll take my beatings and get back to staring at my query.