The inevitable journey for authors and illustrators, if you want to become traditionally published, or if you want to secure agent representation, leads to the dreadful and often mysterious query. You'll often notice the Twitter hashtag #amquerying in frequent use by the most hopeful among us. Are you wondering how to query a literary agent? What exactly is querying and how do you do it correctly? Or better yet, how do you NOT query a literary agent? What should your query letter look like? What should it include? Read on and you'll know the answers to all these questions and more!

Many of you know of my writing exploits. Recently, I wrapped up the illustration phase of self-publishing a children's book. It required a surprising amount of effort that was largely based on my naivety. After writing the manuscript, I researched and interviewed freelance illustrators on a freelancer online platform. After finding one I thought would be a perfect fit for my manuscript material, we began working together under contract.

Every step in the book publishing process is an aspect of business. Let's take the author's role for a moment. Authors provide both a product and a service. The product being obvious, a written book, and the service a bit more subtle, the reader's reaction.