Avoid these submission sins when querying an agent

As a young aspiring writer, I was fortunate enough to go to college in New York, the heart of American publishing. I hoped learning how the publishing industry worked would give me an edge, some kind of insider’s insight into a world I knew nothing about.

With this in mind, I began an internship at a small boutique literary agency in the city. Over the course of eight months, I read hundreds of submissions and dozens of manuscripts. I learned about agents, editors, and the journey a book must take to get out of the slush pile and onto a bookshelf.