Jacquelyn Mitchard: How to Wow an Editor: You Have Three Pages to Win Me Over

Jacquelyn Mitchard is the number one New York Times best-selling author of ten novels for adults, seven novels for teens, and five children's books. She is also editor-in-chief of Merit Press, a realistic young adult imprint.

Make your cover letters personal and smart. Don't make it to artsy and elevated, but show me who you are from the first word.

You have a chapter, maybe ten pages to win her over. When you start that conversation with her in those first pages of the book, she wants to be unable to stop reading.

"I need to recognize the emotionally validity of the story right away."

"Why do something this difficult if your not going to publish?...The dance isn't completed until the reader takes your hand."

Jacquelyn says, as writers, we need to do what it takes.